NEW YORK
Buffalo News
By Jay Tokasz | News Staff Reporter
on August 9, 2014
The 26 teenagers sat stone silent as Bishop Richard J. Malone stepped down from the altar to talk with them about the sacrament of confirmation during Mass inside St. Francis of Assisi Church in Athol Springs.
A confirmation service often is the only direct interaction that many Catholics experience with a bishop in their lifetimes, and Malone, sensing timidity in this group, encouraged them not to be afraid “to talk in church when the bishop asks you to.”
He wanted to know how many of them played sports – a ready icebreaker in sports-obsessed Western New York. He professed his own loyalty to the Boston Red Sox and compared the practice of Catholicism to being a good teammate who trains regularly and keeps in shape.
Malone then ratcheted up the gravity of his homily, urging the young Catholics not to become complacent in their religion. …
Still, the push to revitalize the Buffalo Diocese could not come at a more difficult time.
The Catholic Church hasn’t fully recovered from clergy sex abuse scandals that began rocking the American church more than a decade ago. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 34 percent of American Catholics viewed sex abuse and its cover-up as the church’s most important problem.
In addition:
• For some Catholics, discontent lingers from church and school closings under former Bishop Edward U. Kmiec;
• A shortage of priests will only grow more acute as a large crop of pastors nears retirement age, with many clergy already feeling overburdened and underappreciated; and,
• After years of growth, overall Catholic parish collections, which reached as high as $101 million in 2002, are now headed downward, even as many costs increase, potentially hampering the diocese’s attempts to launch new evangelization programs. The diocese also estimates it has $85 million to $110 million in “long-term” financial commitments for which it must prepare, including priest and lay employee retirement plans and cemetery maintenance costs.
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