"Growing, energetic" Knoxville gets its new bishop

Rocco Palmo at Whispers in the Loggia is reporting on the appointment of St. Louis' Msgr. Richard Stika as the new bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville.

Along the way, Rocco gives us a bit of background on Knoxville (emphasis mine).

Founded in 1988, the Knoxville church [with its 60,000 Catholics] comprises just 2% of its area's total population, but stands in the front rank of the Stateside church's ever-burgeoning Southern emergence. Encompassing some 47 parishes and 10 schools spread over 14,000 square miles of Volunteer Country, the growing, energetic diocese has more than doubled in size since 1990. Its seven seminarians may not sound like much, but a diocese of a million members would need 140 men in formation to have a contingent of equal proportion; widely celebrated for his efforts at energizing the turf and bulking up its ordained ranks, [Knoxville's last bishop, Joseph] Kurtz, ordained three priests and 29 permanent deacons in his final weeks before leaving for Louisville. Just in recent weeks, one booming parish near the see city opened a new 900-seat, $11 million church built in the Romanesque style.

DOR would need to have 40 men in priestly formation to match Knoxville's ratio of seminarians to total Catholics.

We have 6.

D&C's James Lawrence: MCCS has "new found economic stability"

Tmac has called my attention to a Friday evening post on the D&C's Editorial Blog. Put up by James Lawrence, Editor of the Editorial Page, the post (with a couple of typos corrected) reads:

Yesterday’s page one story about new found economic stability at Monroe County’s Catholic schools caught my eye.

The story stood out because just a year ago there was a tremendous public uproar about the diocese’s announced plan to close 13 elementary and middle schools to get rid of a $1.3 million deficit.

According to an audit completed last fall, the diocese’s Monroe County Schools System is now operating with balanced budgets. It wrote off fixed assets of $2 million. Deficit wiped out.

With 11 schools remaining and an enrollment of 3,732 students, the local Catholic school system has been certified as fiscally sound.

Sometimes in life you really do have to step back to move forward.

I posted a response on the Editorial Blog inviting Mr. Lawrence to come here (where there are no artificially imposed 1,000 character constraints) and discuss his comments. We'll see if he shows up.

In the meantime the following comes to mind.

First of all, we veteran victims of MCCS mismanagement have been down this "stability" road before so I can't see how anyone can blame us for being a bit skeptical, if not cynical. A couple of examples will make my point:

• An April 12, 2001 story in the D&C quotes the chairwoman of the MCCS Board as saying, "In the last 10 years we've really stabilized the Catholic school system, and we need to take it to the next level."
• A November 12, 2004 DOR press release quotes Bishop Clark as saying, “We really believe this [tuition] model will help preserve the treasure of Catholic education for future generations of families in our diocese."

Both of these quotes accompanied past Catholic school "mergers" and closings. After a while one learns not to pay any attention to either the MCCS or to DOR when they play the "stability card," no matter who they trot out to back them up.

Secondly, Bonadio & Co., LLC, the auditors for the MCCS, say absolutely nothing about the "stability" of the MCCS system going forward. Their report deals only with the MCCS income and expense statements for the 2007-08 fiscal year and the MCCS balance sheet as of June 30, 2008. Regarding these documents they say ,"In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of Monroe County Catholic Schools as of June 30, 2008."

Bonadio & Co. most certainly did not certify the MCCS as fiscally sound. To read that conclusion into their report is to turn that report into a fairy tale.

Whether or not the MCCS is, in Mr. Lawrence's words, "now operating with balanced budgets," or will be doing so at anytime in the future, remains to be seen. The auditors said nothing about this fiscal year's budget. Given the history of the MCCS, however, skepticism would seem prudent.

Their are other issues that Mr. Lawrence's post raises (such as the fact that the real reasons behind the "tremendous public uproar" had little to do with finances and much to do with past gross mismanagement and current deceit and outright lies), but I'm going to stop here for now.

Okay, Mr. Lawrence, it's your turn.

Forty-six seminarians, take 2

Deacon Greg Kandra over at The Deacon's Bench has also posted his thoughts on the Diocese of Wichita and its 46 seminarians.

A couple of his readers have posted comments that should be read and taken to heart by Bishop Clark (emphasis mine).

Josh writes,

I absolutely agree with Fr. Simone's assessment of Wichita's parishes. The ones I've visited have great (young!) priests who profess an authentic Catholic theology,

while Carol adds,

Catholic Culture is something that takes commitment of the Bishop, priests, and lay faithful. It is definitely determined by a movement of the Holy Spirit and the cooperation of all of the Christian faithful even though it may be influenced by surrounding culture in a larger context.

Catholic culture does not just "happen" because the secular culture or another culture is supportive. It takes cooperation of the Christian faithful and grace from God.

Orthodoxy does pay.

Hollow sentiments

Rich Leonardi has a post up with his take on Bishop Clark's current Along the Way column.

One of his readers posted the following open letter in response.

Dear Bishop Clark,

Let's be frank. I have actively practiced all those things you proposed in your New Year's treatise for many years now. I have said yes to just about everything asked of me by my pastor over the past 15 years. My family has gone to Mass every Sunday and supported our parish financially every week. I started a rosary group. My kids are altar servers. I studied the candidates and voted for those with pro-life records. It was the right thing to do. Still, what has this gotten for me?

You closed my school, my mother's school, and my kids' school, all in one fell swoop, so that you could balance your budget. You are crippling our parish with your unfunded mandates. The loss of the school has thrown our parish's CYO program into disarray -- what is winter without CYO basketball!? We are struggling to maintain an empty school building in a down economy. Then you and your staff imposed a $12,000 increase in our parish CMA "tax" the very next year.

I would like to see the leadership of our diocese practice the resolutions it preaches; not give lip service to some lofty virtues. It would help if there was some positive direction that the diocese was headed, rather than the death spiral we are currently in. Forgive my cynicism, but the hurt imposed by these painful changes runs deep. I and many others feel abandoned by our local church. While these resolutions sound nice, the sentiment behind them seems hollow.

- HCMom

"There but for the grace of God went Clancy"

Brian Clancy of Northport, NY has launched a blog which he intends to use to relate many of the incidents that occurred during his 16 years attending various Catholic schools.

This blog should bring a smile and maybe an occasional tear to anyone who served time in the Catholic school system.  It will be written in somewhat the same jargon that a prisoner might use to describe jail time or a veteran might use to talk about his enlistment, because both these experiences reflect my memories of my 16 years in the system.  I hesitate to say only 16 years because the experience molds your entire life, so it is more like a life sentence.  While many of the stories I will post may appear critical of the system, please be assured that nothing could be further from the truth.  There is no one alive who believes in the merits of Catholic schooling more than me.  In fact, I believe that half of America's problems can be traced to the declining enrollment in Catholic schools.  Whenever possible I intend to use actual names of classmates, except where it might cause undue embarassment or leave me open to a law suit.  I invite anyone reading this to leave a comment or a story.  I hope you will enjoy the weekly posting.  First post will be January 5, 2009

His first post is here.

A shrine to obstinacy

Gene Michael is reporting that regular contributor Dr. Knowledge has come up with a weekend Mass attendance estimate for Sacred Heart Cathedral that is a real eye-opener. 

[Dr. K.] estimates weekend Mass attendance at the Cathedral (five Masses in total) to be 470. He bases this on Mass counts that were provided to Rich Leonard’s blog by attendees at the Cathedral. He also factored in the weekly collection amount to come up with his estimate.

(It should be noted that Sacred Heart does not publish attendance figures in its weekly bulletin so the only way to come up with a figure is for people attending various Masses to literally count heads.)

Gene reports that the 2000 average weekly Mass attendance at the cathedral was 1,081. Dr. K.'s estimate of 470 therefore represents a decline in excess of 56% in just the last 8 years.  By way of contrast the diocese as a whole has seen a 22.2% decline in Mass attendance in the 7 years ending in 2007.  (The 2008 figure is due out any day now.)

A few years ago at the beginning of the Partners in Faith drive a former pastor told me that when Bishop Clark originally presented the idea of renovating the cathedral to the Priest Council, that body's initial recommendation was to forget about it. They favored, instead, designating one of the large suburban churches as the new cathedral and they had two main reasons for doing so:  The obvious shift in the Catholic population away from the city and the much lower costs needed to transform a newer building into a cathedral.  The bishop was not to be deterred, however, and so we are now stuck with this (nearly) empty shrine to his obstinacy.

D&C: Monroe County Catholic schools fiscally sound

D&C reporter Erica Bryant has posted a story related to the MCCS System's 2007-08 financial report. She quotes diocesan  spokesman Doug Mandelaro as saying that the forced closure of 13 Catholic schools last June has eliminated a potentially large budget deficit.

It is difficult to communicate that the decision, as hard as it was to do, was made to preserve Catholic education for the long term and to head off financial issues that would have threatened the whole system.

Well, the MCCS may have balanced its financial budget but the long term effect on the diocese's spiritual budget will be nothing but negative. The reason is that the hundreds of Catholic children forced out of the MCCS system will now have to attend a religious education program in order to learn something of their faith. As a catechist in one of those programs I can assure anyone interested that one hour in a religious ed class is but a poor substitute for a full week in a school imbued with an authentic Catholic Christian culture.

Some folks in the Diocese of Tulsa have made this point much more eloquently than I ever could. Their arguments can be found here, especially in the last four paragraphs

Finally, I wish Doug Mandelaro or Bishop Clark or even Anne Wilkens-Leach would tell us why DOR refuses to benchmark and then emulate the best practices of dioceses with successful, growing school systems.  The Diocese of Wichita, for example, has but 1/3 the number of Catholics as Rochester, yet it still serves over 10,800 students in its system of 39 Catholic elementary and high schools. In the last 10 years Wichita has added 3 schools and over 800 children to its system and, since 2002, every one of those schools - every grade from K through 12 - is totally tuition-free to Catholic students. As one report puts it,

Wichita has reaped an enormous reward for its youngest members, flying in the face of conventional wisdom that Catholic schools were doomed to raise their prices to the point of diminishing returns and eventual closure.

The full story can be found here.

What is Wichita doing that DOR is not?  Is DOR doing anything that prevents it from being a second Wichita? 

One would think that our leaders would have have ready answers to those questions. After all, isn't the spiritual health of a diocese much more important than numbers on a balance sheet?