The Boston Globe apparently specializes in making mountains out of molehills. It claims that a fifth parish has joined the number of those holding sit-ins to protest its closing. What I see is that a handful of people (the article never even tells us how many, but it looks like less than five to me) have taken it upon themselves to occupy the church. How does that qualify as “the parish”?
Keep that in mind as you read all these stories. Apart from the first two former parishes to stage sit-ins, we’re not seeing more than handful of people actually joining in. Even then, it looks like there is a still a substantial number of individual parishioners who are not represented by the protesters, but for whom the protesters are speaking anyway. Once again, not all is as the media would have it appear.
My family has attended this parish (St. Frances Cabrini) for the past four years. It is absolutely unnecessary to close it. Finacially, they are sound and owe noone a penny – HOWEVER the “other” more “popular” parish (by whom I was previously employed) built a monstosoty of a parish center to the tune of 3 million dollars and now holda a huge mortgage on it. This is absolutely unfair.
I forgot to mention that the land the church sits on is worth about $10 million. So if the diocese sell sit they make out pretty well. How sad. Also, this parish has (had – he is now forced into retirement way before his time) a wonderful pastor who was not afraid to preach Catholicism and challenge us to live it. He also tithed over $65 thousand to build a school in INdia and pay medical expenses for its students there.
As I’ve said many times already, financial matters not the only, nor even the primary criteria for choosing which parishes to close. If it were, then every parish serving poor immigrants would close and all the well-endowed suburban parishes with a couple dozen in the pews would remain open.
According to the archdiocesan statistics, this parish had the lowest sacramental numbers of any of the 14 parishes in its vicariate. That’s not exactly a sign of a thriving parish.
As for the real estate claim, I don’t doubt your sincerity but if it were worth that much it would be the most valuable property of a parish being closed and that’s already been claimed for St. Bernard’s in Newton. I don’t think the Globe or the parish closing zealots would have missed the opportunity to raise the specter of a money grab again.
$10 million? No way.
At first I thought that the Archbishop should have had these people arrested for trespassing. Since then I have seen what a folly this would be and how it would fuel the fire of the enemies of the church. The numbers are so small and the church is not pressed to quickly sell off the land. Sooner or later these people will get tired of occupying the buildings and just go home, convert to a Protestant faith or just wallow in their own anger and hatred
Sorry – the property which sits on 25 acres and includes the church and rectory is actually accessed at 4.4 million, not 10. But still a good chunk of change.
The thing which really has me bothered is the fact that the locks were scheduled to be changed Friday, and were then changed with only 1 hour notice to the pastor on Monday – gee, the locksmith must have not had much business that day or what ? Seems like the diocese planned it all along.
Dom, I understand your point but take into consideration one reason why the sacramental numbers are low here – the other Church is a horse carriage ride away from the swanky reception restaurant and the pastor there makes no requirement that you reside in the parish to get married there. So naturally their numbers are high.
I still hold that there is absolutely no reason to close this parish . Two surrounding towns have more than one parish each and none of them are slated for closure.