CatholicCourier.com posted a story today on the recommendation to close both St. Salome and St. Thomas the Apostle churches in Irondequoit.
I didn't spot any new factual information but the article did end with an intriguing sentence.
Unique traits of all five parishes would be incorporated into the new parish, planners pledged.
I wonder which of the surviving churches will now get an altar rail.
Pay particular attention to the projected number of priests in 2015. I make it out to be about 90 and I have to wonder, despite DOR's protestations to the contrary, whether this is the real driving force behind at least some of the more recent parish closures, as well as some of those now in the works.
Fr. Z. has noted that some people suspect that preference for the TLM over against the Novus Ordo might be largely a function of age. He therefore asked
would some of you younger folks take some time to write your thoughts about the new Mass/old Mass question?
I also invite seasoned Catholics to do the same.
Let’s see some responses.
Some of his responses were published yesterday. The second one came from a lady with experience with the liturgy as celebrated in DOR. It reads, in part,
I am 39 years old ... I went to Catholic school and the parish associated with my school was very orthodox and traditional (in the 1970s-80s everyone still received communion knelling at the Communion rail (mostly on the tongue but you had the choice)), parts of the Mass were retained in Latin, chant, etc. ...
I really had no idea how unusual the parish was or graced I was that I attended it until I left home for college in 1988 and saw the vast wasteland that’s left in upstate NY (Bishop Matthew Clark’s diocese).
I went to the “Catholic” Mass offered by the Catholic campus ministry. I truly did not recognize it as a Catholic Mass. I called my husband (who was then my boyfriend) and told him that I must have gone to a protestant service by mistake. Besides the hideous music, the liturgical dance, the clown vestments and everything about the “worship space”, they had written their own Eucharistic Prayers that had phrases like “save us from the bondage of capitalism.” My time in upstate NY was like being lost in the wilderness (I did not own a car so was forced to endure what I had access to). I stuck it out and went to Mass every week with gritted teeth.
It's still a wasteland, only just not quite as vast as it was 20-some years ago, as more and more Catholics simply quit attending Mass.
"None of the closed schools are being reopened," he said, noting that one reason Bishop Clark approved the task force's recommendation on school closings was concern that if some or all of the schools slated for closure had been allowed to remain open, they might have drawn students away from the county's other 11 schools, thereby destabilizing the entire school system.
That concern persists.
"From a parish perspective, faith formation is a major parish priority as it is expressed in Catholic school," Father Schwartz said. "We see this as a rich and wonderful opportunity to provide faith formation for the growth of our parish."
Father Schwartz said he is optimistic that local control over the school will encourage parishioners to feel more connected to it, allowing the school to continue providing a high-quality education ...
"The viability and the future of the school has just taken a giant step forward," Father Schwartz remarked.All of which leads one to wonder just what Fr. Schwartz' assessment of "the viability and the future of the school" would have been, had it remained under MCCS control.
Since Bishop Mathew Clark closed 13 Catholic schools in 2008, there has been some lingering resentment and skepticism. Parents worried which schools might be next? But parents who spoke today say they like this move.
"It is a good thing. It's actually a very positive thing. It's a relief," said parent Christine Sebastian. Instead of sending her son's tuition money to the Diocese, it will now go directly to the St. Joseph's parish school. "I mean, for years we've worried every timed the tuition list comes out, which schools are going to close. And honestly, the anxiety, the fear is now gone. We can raise money for areas that we wanted to spend money in. And now we can do that."
The full slideshow ...
While the diocese is discussing (some say compelling) the reversion of 4 of its 11 Monroe County Catholic schools to parish school status, it has made it clear that it will not allow any of the 13 schools closed by Bishop Clark in June 2008 to reopen.
YNN Rochester is reporting that
The diocese clarified its plan with a follow-up statement:
"Monroe County Catholic School officials have no plans to reopen any of the 13 schools that were closed as part of the restructuring in 2008. The current study exploring reversion of our existing schools to a parish-run model currently involves several, but not all, existing sites."
About a week ago I "discovered" Father John Riccardo of the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Resembling in some ways Father John Corapi and in others Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Father Riccardo is a highly orthodox, thoroughly lucid and remarkably humble expositor of the faith.
See for yourself ...
Dozens of Father Riccardo's homilies and longer talks can be found here.
I found myself particularly impressed with his series of talks entitled Catholicism for Cradle Catholics, especially number 7 on the Eucharist.
Also, his Faith Under Attack is a must listen for anyone with children - or grandchildren - about to head off to college.
UPDATE: Most of the talks on Father Riccardo's site are in audio format but there are a few videos. One of these, Confession: A Fireside Chat with the Lord, is well worth the 30 minutes it takes to watch it.
Nikki Rudd at News 10NBC is reporting that St. Lawrence School in Greece and three east side schools may soon become parish schools once again.
Well, sort of.
While it will retain control over curriculum and staff hiring and firing matters, the diocese will turn over the financial end of the operation to the schools and their parishes.
The most obvious effect of this arrangement will be a substantial savings to the MCCS' strained budget, as it will no longer be paying these parishes hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent their buildings. How the parishes would deal with this loss of income is unclear at present.
The effects on other financial issues, such as the financial aid currently provided by the diocese, are also unclear.
While the identities of the three east side schools were not mentioned by Rudd, Dr. K. over at Cleansing Fire reports they are St. Rita (Webster), St. Louis (Pittsford) and St. Joseph (Penfield).
The change-over apparently will not be immediate. At the end of her on-air piece Rudd says, "The superintendent tells me it will be a seamless transition and she says it might not happen for another year or two."
Since DOR's education task force made its report to the bishop two years ago the details of its recommendations have been a closely guarded secret. Now one of those secrets has been made public.
Rudd reports,
It was also a recommendation by the task force to have parishes run their own schools instead of the Diocese. This is how Catholic schools were run for more than 100 years.
This confirms something many of us have suspected for some time. While the bishop would have us believe that he had no choice but to close 13 Catholic schools two years ago, we now know that his own task force thought there were other viable options - options which included allowing parishes to run their own schools.
It appears that the bishop thought his own MCCS people were still the best choice for running our Catholic schools, in spite of their abysmal track record.
For instance, DOR assumed control of all Monroe County Catholic schools at the beginning of the 1988-89 school year. At that time it had a system of 39 schools and was serving some 16,000 students. Today, a mere 21 years later, the MCCS System has shrunk to 11 schools educating maybe 3,500 children (2009-10 registration data has yet to be released).
Furthermore, in the 10 years ending with the 2007-08 academic year DOR lost 39.4% of its Catholic school students, the second worst showing among the 37 dioceses with comparable (+/- 25%) 1997-98 enrollments. (Data here.)
If this isn't a record of failure I don't know what one looks like.
