A parish in suburban Weymouth is scheduled to close Sept. 1, but the parish council is suing Abp. O’Malley to fight the closing.
I hope nobody really expects this case to accomplish anything. The parish council may not even have standing to sue, since it is a purely advisory body. I doubt that it has the power to represent the parish in civil disputes. If my understanding is right, parishes are incorporated separately from the Archdiocese, but each one has a corporate board controlled by officials of the Archdiocese.
And even if the plaintiffs were to win, the Archdiocese would just go through the closure again, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s according to whatever legal form is necessary.
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In Christ, MaryH
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I have no doubt that the parish in question loses money and is subsidized by the Archdiocese. There would be no reason to close it otherwise. While the parish is way out of line to launch a suit, I think that a compromise might be in order. Simply open the parish books, calculate how much more income must come in to bring the parish into the black and open up an account for a similar amount of money to be deposited. If the parish comes up with the funds, they get to stay open as long as money remains in that account. That account is their subsidy line of credit and when it is exhausted, the parish closes.
Chances are, the parish closes in the end. But the Church is in the business of miracles and if evangelization revitalizes a community under the gun, so much the better. In either case, psychologically, the parishioners become the responsible parties and transparent finances mean that they are the authors of their own fate.
Nah. This parish probably isn’t losing money: it has decent attendance (1222) and is in an affluent enough suburb.
I expect it’s being closed for demographic reasons: Weymouth currently has five parishes with 24 Saturday/Sunday Masses. That’s one parish for every 11,000 town residents.
In contrast, my own suburban town has one parish with nine weekend Masses: one parish for 21,000 residents.
Anyway, the importance of money is not lost on us in Boston. The Mass. Secretary of State was so unhappy that his parish in Brighton was being closed that he put up a credit line to guarantee any losses in its parochial school for the year. He can’t save the parish from closing, but maybe he’ll keep the school afloat.
Now that simply doesn’t make sense. If you have a parish that’s financially self-sufficient, why would you ever want to close it? Are there too many mass times and attendence is too sparse? Shuttle a priest between two parishes and cut masses in half at each location, freeing up a priest to be placed elsewhere. That’s where the shortage is, isn’t it?
Why doesn’t the Archdiocese find better ways to pay for Cardinal Law’s crimes than closing down parishes and forcing parish councils to sue them?
Sad to say, Nathan, the Archdiocese has been merging and closing parishes for twenty years, and the current series of closings is long overdue.
A few years ago Fr. Richard Lennon (now an auxiliary bishop) reported that at the time the diocese had 1.6 priests per parish, and based on expected retirements, deaths, and ordinations, the Archdiocese was projecting that the number would decline over a five-year period to 1.0 per parish.
Since it is not good for priests, any more than other men, to live alone, it was irresponsible of the Archdiocese to postpone the mergers and closings as long as they did.