We’ve apparently heard the last word on changes to the Boston parish closing plan today, barring one final decision.
The archdiocese announced today that a church in Squantum, a part of the city of Quincy, where protests were happening, will become a chapel where one Mass per week will be celebrated. Of course, the protesters aren’t happy because they didn’t get everything they wanted, but based on the pastoral statistics, this tiny parish had no basis on which to remain open.
After that decision, the archdiocese announced that the Meade-Eisner committee, which was re-examining the closing process, had finished its work, although the fate of St. Jeremiah in Framingham will be decided in two weeks. That leaves a number of protesting groups without a resolution. The archdiocese is also providing air conditioning for the church for the protesters over the summer. Apparently, because the church had been air conditioned and had its units removed when closed, they will get them back. Unfortunately, all the other parishes in the archdiocese without AC will remain sweltering.
The parishes whose status remains as closing are Our Lady of Mt Carmel in East Boston (although there’s negotiations for it be a chapel, which the protesters are balking at), St. Therese in Everett, St. Frances Cabrini in Scituate, and St. James in Wellesley.
Predictably the protesting crowd isn’t happy that they didn’t get their way. When will the archbishop send in the constables to remove the trespassers and get his excommunication letters written? Oh, hee, hee, I crack myself up.
My daughter just finished reading “The Book of Flight,” and I read a bit of it too. The moral vacuousness that is ment to be taken for profundity in books like this dovetails nicely with this pervert’s self-serving c**p.
It matters not what one does in life just so long as one finds his “true self.” And every sort of commitment and duty and moral consideration can be cast aside in this Gnostic quest. Perhaps this is the toxin that this guy referred to.
What have we done? Surely we are somewhat responsible for these horrible attrocities he comitted as we knowingly let him out to murder and to rape. How base and hardened to the innocent we have become.
Also scary are some of the obscene comments posted on that blog.
More evidence of why we need the death penalty.
Perhaps Star of the Sea had no basis based on pastoral statistics to stay open, but the idea of pastoral statistics being a rational basis is tenuous at best. Statistics are part of that celebrated trio of deception: lies, damned lies and statistics.
For example, the statistics for Holy Trinity in Boston are as follows:
Mass Attendance: 243
Baptisms: 7
First Communions: 0
Confirmations: 0
Marriages: 1
Funerals: 5
However, the statistics do not give a good picture of the status of Holy Trinity. First of all, the Mass attendance is from two Masses only on Sunday: the 10:00 am German/English and the 12:00 pm Latin. Second, the Latin Mass has been growing even since these stats of 2003. There are no first communions or confirmations because the Archdiocese FORBAD any…but there are children in the parish who made first communion and confirmation, but had to do so in other parishes. There is a large number of children in CCD, these stats would not reveal that.
Let’s look at some Brockton churches (which I know well from living here).
St. Casimir (Lithuanian):
Mass attendance: 193
Baptisms: 10
First Communions: 36
Confirmatinons: 0
Marriages: 2
Funerals: 22
Wow, 36 First Communions. That looks pretty good in a parish with only 193 at the weekend Masses. Except that the stats don’t tell you that St. Casimir has a K-8 school, and there is an “in parish” tuition rate that is better than the outsider rate. People register as parishioners and so their kids make their first communion at the parish where they go to school. Then, after grade 8 they go to the parish where they live, which is why there are no confirmations. This is not an unusual pattern for parishes with schools. When I taught at a Catholic school in Wilmington, Delaware, we had lots of families who became parishioners for the time their kids were in school, then reverted to their original parishes once the kids left for high school. You end up with inflated, and misleading, statistics. If we were to add all the Brockton stats from 2003 together, and then look at 2005 stats after the October census, I can pretty much guarantee you that the totals will be smaller. St. Margaret’s and Sacred Heart have closed (Sacred Heart having merged with St. Colman’s to become Christ the King), and many of those folks have simply been lost to the Church. Yes, we can say that that’s their fault, but in fact, the loss of many who felt that they had been dealt a raw deal (especially after not giving up when the scandalous behavior of some of the clergy was revealed) was entirely predictable. People are being lost to Christ and the Church, and nothing, that I can see, is being done about it.
The problems that got us here were lack of solid preaching, lack of evangelization, poor leadership (episcopal and prebyteral) and failure to live out the Gospel. Closing churches will not solve those problems. And speaking dismissively about the “protesting crowd” will not help either.
St. Francis began with rebuilding empty churches and shrines, embracing poverty and preaching the Gospel, not tearing down churches to find money enough to institute plans. Our archbishop would have done better, imho, to have followed our holy father Francis a bit more literally.
Oh, BTW, Meade-Eisner never contacted anyone at Holy Trinity. Apparently the folks there didn’t even merit the courtesy of a form letter in reply to the various letters and emails that were sent in.
Statistics are part of that celebrated trio of deception: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Yes, yes, nice cliche, but meaningless. Statistics can be twisted to mean other things, but they are still a measure of something, and what they measure here is that certain parishes are so small that they can be conveniently absorbed by a neighboring parish which is often within walking distance.
Your interpretation of the statistics for example is flawed. Whatever the reason for low attendance at one parish in Brockton and high attendance at another, the fact is thatould have Communion services with stolen Hosts. Make sure it makes the pages of the Globe and Herald and make sure Margery Eagan writes about it. Oh, and toot your own horn regarding feeding the poor at the parish – don’t do it under the radar like you have been doing.
I hate to be cynical, but it seems to me that behaviour like the above is what works… the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
What7;Malley will never do any of those things. He, for some reason I cannot explain, is letting himself be steamrollered by disobedient, heretic, recusant spoiled brats like those in St. Albert’s who are aided and abetted by the historically anti-Catholic Boston Globe and Church-hating columnists like Margery Egan.
“You have an axe to grind against the process because your church is closing”
Actually, this is an incorrect assumption. I do attend Holy Trinity once per month and sing as a member of the schola, but it is not my regular parish. I usually attend the Anglican Use Mass out in West Roxbury. For several years prior to this, I attended St. Colman’s in Brockton, which didn’t close…the merger of St. Colman’s with Sacred Heart didn’t affect St. Colman’s much. The parish name changed, and the Haitians who worshipped at SH now worship at St. Colman’s Church in Christ the King parish, and SH school is now part of the new parish.
So I don’t have an ax to grind. Like you, Dom, I at first felt that the Archdiocese’s stated purpose was just, if regrettable. After many months, observing how things have been carried out, I can no longer see the justice in this process. Nor do I concede that “we need parishes to close”. More than 80% of the Catholics in the diocese don’t even come to Mass on Sunday. Why aren’t we doing something about that? Get people in Church and the money issues of keeping the parishes open will disappear.
Yes, there’s the clergy shortage. And the long-term solution to that will take a lot of work. Starting with the solid preaching that will help regenerate the Catholic family, the proximate source of religious and priestly vocations. But in the short term? Holy Trinity, for example, could well be served by one of the traditional priestly societies…but they’re banned from this Archdiocese, for reasons never stated publicly that I’m aware of.
“Your interpretation of the statistics for example is flawed. Whatever the reason for low attendance at one parish in Brockton and high attendance at another, the fact is thatee that where that thought process leads.