We can all see where it is headed -- 20 years from now, our children will be asked to drive to the only Catholic Church left in New Jersey, Sacred Heart in Newark, to go to Mass each Sunday.
Years ago, about 3 times per week I used to stop at a quiet little chapel on Burnt Mill Road in Cherry Hill, Holy Rosary Church, to pray before the Eucharist.
What is that location, now ?
There is a sign outside saying
"SWAMINARAYAN MANDIR"
Yup ! It's Hindu !
I don't think that the Hindu congregation, there, is currently active. But, the sign is still there, as I write.
Which brings us to St. Laurentius, in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia ...
In its haste to wipe out as much of our Catholic heritage as possible, the Philadelphia Archdiocese has de-consecrated this beautiful masterpiece of God-honoring Catholic art, telling Catholics there, "Drive farther and farther every week to go to Mass or confession in still-mortgaged little shoeboxes of glass and aluminum and sheetrock. St. Laurentius costs too much to keep-up."
One wonders if that is true at all. They -- Catholic administrators -- have lied to us so much in recent decades, mostly by silence, while they pretend that there is nothing bad to talk about. I have a feeling that "too much to keep-up" means, "Look, we have to maximize our return when we sell Church properties, to pay for multi-zillion dollar lawsuits against the Church in the priest cases, now that we are such a bad risk that insurance companies won't insure us. So, we really can't afford to sell more-modern church buildings, because of the mortgages on them. Selling one of them is the financial equivalent of giving it away ! Why bother ? So, we have to sell as many unmortgaged old, beautiful church buildings on commercially-valuable streetcorners as we can, even if it means wiping-out the congregations there and annihilating Catholic heritage more effectively than a nuclear explosion."
In other words, I wonder if, even if a source of maintenance funding enabling the Catholic building to remain there for free turned-up, would the Archdiocese say, "Oh ! How wonderful ! Now we get to keep it open for the Catholics in Fishtown !"
I doubt it !
Don't be surprised, Catholic sisters and brothers in Fishtown, if you wake up one morning and there is a sign in the front of St. Laurentius reading,
"SWAMINARAYAN MANDIR"
For those who think I'm going father than I should in this case, what did I just find out? I found out that the Archdiocese declined to unload the church for $1. Crasser folks might say, "Ah, come on, Pete! You know what the drill is -- the Archdiocese is afraid that the laity might muck-up repairs, so that some court will end up foisting a mess back onto the Archdiocese." Hmmmm. Okay. Let's assume that the uninsured Archdiocese is a better risk, which it probably isn't these days -- at least not by much. Suppose the families got construction bonding for the repairs.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, I don't think that it is possible to offer the Archdiocese a deal it would accept.
ReplyDeleteI think that the real problem is this: Remember in the gospels when Jesus dispatches the Apopstles to go out and preach to humanity?
Well, they've all come back home, put their sandals and walking sticks into the closet, and they are tired, and they want to crawl into their beds and sleep.
What no one will ever get to see is a full analysis of the dynamics of the Philadelphia Archdiocesan budget. Most, if not all, Catholic dioceses in the United States are self-insuring, now, after they lost their insurance as 5,000 claims for compensation for gay priests grabbing and engaging in anal and oral sexual behavior with boys and young men exploded into 50,000 cases. Philadelphia has had its share of such cases and prosecutions. The cases cause a diocesan collapse which feeds on itself. People see the headlines. They are scandalized. They stop going to church. Properties need to be sold for lack of supportive contributions from a laity that doesn't want to come to church anymore. Less churches mean even fewer contributions. More churches must close.
ReplyDeleteAll today's priests are doing is managing a collapse. They are dynamiting our Catholic heritage to make sure that it collapses to the ground in its own footprint. Controlled demolition.