‘Leave churches open, close the archdiocese’: Baltimore Catholics react to merger plans | READER COMMENTARIES

Whether a local Catholic church closes or not should be up to its parishioners and not those running the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

How will the Church serve the poor from afar?

The Baltimore Sun and the media generally have given the story of the closing of Catholic churches in Baltimore City extensive coverage (“Emotions run high at town hall on plan to realign Baltimore’s Catholic churches: ‘This is a watershed moment,’” April 26). Coverage has emphasized in particular the sense of grief and even abandonment that many of us feel, being torn from our loving and familiar communities of fellow worshippers. Though we will miss the historic church structures, it’s the people we will really miss.

Nonetheless, scant attention has been given to the mission of service to God’s people in each church’s unique neighborhood context. Those ministries will soon be missing. How will the Catholic Church in Baltimore replace all of those services?

I am a parishioner at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Jonestown, located across from the Shot Tower and in the heart of Baltimore’s “homeless corridor.” Hundreds of unhoused persons ply Front Street every day, and many very low-income families live in our neighborhood. A few of the ministries offered our community for decades — all involving untold hours of volunteer labor — include weekly Friday night dinners (typically serving 150 souls), Men’s Clothing Ministry (twice a month), Food Pantry weekly, emergency financial assistance (helping with BGE bills, rent, etc.), meeting space for multiple AA groups, and our Resource Exchange program, which has furnished homes for over 1,300 formerly homeless households over the past 13 years. So many of our brothers and sisters use St. V’s Park or front steps as a resting place.

St. Vincent’s is just one church providing vital services to its particular neighborhood. How will the Church exercise its “preferential option for the poor” blocks or miles away from where the poor actually live? I grieve for the loss of our parish community and of those we serve.

— Joseph Cronyn, Towson

Leave churches open, close the archdiocese

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has created a hornet’s nest with its cockeyed scheme to close churches in Baltimore, and now the results are really hitting the fan. The meeting with the Black Catholic parishioners has the same results as white parishioners and other ethnic groups (“Black Catholics perceive echoes of neglect in church’s realignment proposal,” April 25).  These “proposals” rankle all Catholics who are looking at the potential closing of their own parish church that has provided spiritual sustenance for their families and ancestors.

I have come up with a solution: Leave all the churches open to operate on their own and be responsible for the church maintenance and finances, and close down the archdiocese! The churches don’t really need the archdiocese for anything, but the archdiocese needs the churches for money. Then, if church parishioners decide to close their church, let it be their decision. The Archdiocese of Baltimore should serve the needs of the people and not the other way around!

— Stas Chrzanowski, Baltimore

Each parish is a ‘community of devoted Catholics’

North Baltimore residents know where to go to buy a Christmas tree — St. Pius X on York Road in  Rogers Forge. Nothing in the Code of Canon Law requires the parish to run its annual Christmas tree program, but it’s a parish effort, and it helps to keep the parish going.

St. Pius X, along with many other Catholic churches, is to be closed by the Archdiocese. Dan Rodricks is correct that the closures represent a decision by the Archdiocese to give up on bringing former Catholics back to the fold (“Baltimore parish plan a concession that fallen-off Catholics aren’t coming back,” April 18). But there is more to it than that. St Pius X has energetic parish leadership who successfully operate a parish even though they were without a priest for a number of years and now have a shared priest with St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans, also to be closed. St. Pius is technically a parish subject to control by the archbishop, but it’s more than that, it’s a community of Catholics.

The archdiocese is correct that there is a crisis in the Catholic Church in Baltimore. It is rare for a church to have its own pastor. In East Baltimore, for example, five Catholic churches — St. Francis Xavier, Most Precious Blood, the Shrine of the Little Flower, St. Dominic and St. Anthony of Padua — share a parish staff. All are to be closed. In South Baltimore, a single priest serves three parishes, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Holy Cross and St. Mary Star of the Sea; two are to be closed. The Cathedral of Mary Our Queen priests staff not only the Cathedral but St. Thomas Aquinas in Hampden as well, slated to be closed. St Thomas Aquinas dates from 1867, 157 years, but will be no more.

Rodricks hit the nail on the head when he described the priest celibacy program as ridiculous. He could have used the same adjective for the refusal to ordain women priests. The crisis in the Catholic Church is self-inflicted. What the archbishop ought to do is petition the Pope for authority to allow married priests and women priests. The church leadership in Brazil petitioned the Pope in 2014 to allow married priests to serve in remote areas, but nothing came of it. The situation in  Baltimore is no less drastic. It does no good to sweep this problem under the rug — this “ridiculous” situation cannot last forever. In the meantime, don’t close any parishes. You close a parish, you lose a community of devoted Catholics. Keep the parishes open, and, who knows, you might find that some return.

— John Murphy, Baltimore

‘Give until it hurts’: a too-frequent Church refrain

I just read Fred Schneider’s letter to the editor (“Visit St. Joseph’s Monastery Church while you still can,” April 23), and I would like to share my experiences with Catholicism.  I attended a Catholic church and school from 1954 to 1962 in Northeast Baltimore. I was an altar boy my last two years. In 1961 the church conducted a funding drive to build a new church. As officials collected over $250,000 for this project, the priests always said in two sermons at every Sunday Mass and Holy Day of Obligation, to “give until it hurts.” My father donated one week’s pay, as did many other hard-working, middle-class people. However, when the building was going up, all of the parishioners were aghast to learn that the parish chose to build a $250,000 rectory for three priests assigned there instead of a church. The church flat-out lied to their faithful parishioners for nearly two years.

After the rectory was finished, the church began the drive for the new church. Oh, yes, that same litany, “give until it hurts”  was routine once again. I heard that litany many more times than I ever heard the Litany of the Saints. My dad was so enraged that he pulled my kid sister out of the church’s school beginning her fourth-grade year. Then the church actually had the audacity to send a priest over to our house to inquire as to why my sister had been removed. The priest and my dad were close to coming to blows when the priest wouldn’t leave our property after he was ordered to by my dad. The priest finally left our front porch and drove away in a shiny new black Cadillac.

What will my experience be should I ever elect to enter that “while I still can”?  Do you think I’ll feel the presence of God?  Or will I hear this entreaty that I have never forgotten and continues to reverberate in my spirit: “Give until it hurts”?

I maintain that the Catholic Church’s number one set of priorities will continue to remain money, property and prestige. Now, Catholicism will become a “rich man’s religion.” In all probability, most of the Roman Catholic parishes will be outside the Beltway where the money is.

— George Hammerbacher, Catonsville

Has population flight contributed to Catholicism’s decline?

Dan Rodricks cites a sharp decline in Baltimore City of church-going Catholics, down over time to 5,000 from 250,000 (“Baltimore parish plan a concession that fallen-off Catholics aren’t coming back,” April 18). He opines that the cause is disaffection with organized religion, especially Catholicism, in favor of a spiritual-based private recognition of a supreme power, in Rocricks’ words “a spiritual force of some kind.” (Maybe God?)

He cites another possible factor: the abuse situation in the Catholic Church, insinuating that the situation explains, in no small part, the decline in city-dwelling Catholics.

Perhaps a look at statistical demographics would offer an alternative explanation: According to USAfacts.com from 1985 to 2022, Baltimore city population dropped 25%, with approximately 200,000 residents leaving the city.

Could that perhaps be an addition to, or more likely a replacement for, Rodricks’ explanation — the fact that big cities demonstrate substantial declines in populations (Catholic and otherwise)?

— Don and Jenny Killgallon, Hunt Valley

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