"We bishops have to do something about this"

In a recent interview with the Catholic News Agency Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York cited four major challenges currently facing the Church. They are

the vocation to marriage, the state of Catholic parishes and schools, the great number of lapsed Catholics and finally the difficulties in a culture desperate to keep the Church and morals out of the public square.

While His Excellency had many valuable things to say about each of these challenges, I want to zoom in here on his thoughts concerning Catholics who are no longer practicing their faith, as this is a critical problem here in DOR.

According to the CNA article,

Moving on to the third challenge for the U.S. Catholic Church, Dolan simply described it as reaching out and inviting our people home.

“It scares the life out of me when I find out that second most identifiable religious grouping on the religious landscape of the United States are people who say, ‘I used to be a Catholic.’”

We bishops have to do something about this, he insisted. “We have to say, ‘no, look, there is no such thing as a former Catholic. Your Catholicism is, as a matter of fact, in your DNA. And whether you like it or not you’re born into it just like you’re born into a natural family.’”

Now, he continued, “you might say, ‘I’m ticked off at my natural family, I’m not hanging around with them anymore, I’ve got things to work out.’ But you’re still a member of that family and sooner or later you usually make your peace with it and go home.”

In comparison, “the Church is our supernatural family,” he explained, “you might be upset with it, you might not be showing up for Sunday dinner, you might be mad at it about a couple of things…but you’re still a member.”

The Church “is your supernatural family, and, darn it, we need you and want you to come back home. You’re always welcome,” Dolan offered.

DOR has lost 25% of its Mass-attending Catholics in a mere 8 years. I don't know how much louder an alarm our leaders need before they realize that we have an ongoing crisis here.

Yes, Buffalo Rd. did launch their Spirit Alive! program last year. However, I have yet to hear of that anemic effort being responsible for bringing a single lapsed Catholic back to the Church.

As the archbishop said, "We bishops have to do something about this."

Are you listening, Bishop Clark?

"Vocations are tied to Church orthodoxy"

From David Hartline's 2006 book, The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism, pages 52-53 (emphasis added) ...

The United States certainly has seen a decline in the number of priests in the last 40 years. However, in dioceses where the practice of the faith is very orthodox, most would simply say there is no priest shortage.

For example, the Dioceses of Wichita, Kansas; Lincoln, Nebraska; Arlington, Virginia; Fargo, North Dakota; and Peoria, Illinois, have been ordaining more men that archdioceses that are five to ten times their size.

...

To say that surging numbers in priestly vocations are tied to Church orthodoxy would be an understatement. Two examples illustrate this point. The Diocese of Rochester, which is considered to be one of the most liberal in America, has a Catholic population of 342,000. They have a total of six seminarians studying for the priesthood. The Archdiocese of Omaha has a Catholic population of 230,000 with 30 seminarians. In Nebraska, the Diocese of Lincoln (run by perhaps the most conservative ordinary in America, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz) has a population of 89,236 Catholics with 24 in their local seminary and 10 in other seminaries. Put another way, while Lincoln and Omaha do not have as many Catholics as Rochester, these two dioceses have sixty-four men studying for the priesthood while Rochester has only six men.

...

Denver, home to Archbishop Charles Chaput, has a Catholic population of 344,042 with 76 men in their own seminary and 2 men studying in other seminaries.

Tip: Gene Michael

Slowing down in Irondequoit

Gene Michael has just put up a post on last night's decision by the St. Thomas the Apostle parish council not to go along with the Irondequoit Pastoral Planning Group's decision to recommend closing the parish.

Having served 7 years as chair of the Eastern Greece/Charlotte Planning Group I must note that the goings on in Irondequoit leave much to be desired.

First and foremost is the secrecy. I can imagine no reason why the IPPG would need to consider its minutes privileged information, not to be shared with anyone in the 5 parishes who asks. These planning group people represent the parishioners of the 5 parishes and those parishioners have a right to know what their representatives are saying and doing on their behalf. 

If things have been going on behind closed doors that one or more IPPG representative would be embarrassed to see made public, then those people need to step aside. Now.

There is simply too much at stake here for the IPPG to continue to keep its veil of secrecy in place any longer.

Gene's post follows in its entirety ...

 

Parish Council Puts on the Brakes

Last night, the St. Thomas parish council stood its ground and put the brakes on the the runaway freight train known as the IPPG. Here are some of the key events that took place during the 2 hour meeting:

• The Diocese of Rochester is afflicted with a deep malaise that is manifested by its lack of passion for evangelization. The entire emphasis by the IPPG and diocesan planning liaison, Deb Housel, is on the closing and consolidation of parishes. There is no realistic talk of evangelization or of engaging lapsed Catholics who are no longer attending Mass. The IPPG, like the diocese, has basically surrendered without a fight. In a manner of speaking, they don’t seem to believe in their product. There is no passion for the saving of souls.
• By the way, there is an evangelization committee for the 5 Irondequoit parishes in the planning group. One of their problems has been in trying to coordinate their activities with the various pastors in Irondequoit. Because the pastors don’t regularly attend the committee’s meetings, requests for authorization get bogged down. Some initiatives that are rooted in orthodoxy have also been turned down or modified. For example, the group wanted to run a blurb in the bulletins about the Catholics Come Home website. They were turned down. Shortly thereafter, a committee member resigned because of the negative attitudes he had encountered regarding anything from EWTN, Catholic Answers, etc.
• It was revealed last night that the reason the IPPG is moving so quickly is because IPPG Chairperson, Betsy Stehler, is setting the deadlines for decision making. She wants the proposal to the bishop right away because of the financial situation of the Irondequoit parishes. Some committee members had expressed concern about the rapid pace of the proposal, but she overrode those concerns. One has to wonder how it is that a layperson, with no pastoral experience, somehow has the authority to put into motion such a devastating proposal. After all, there are several priests on the IPPG.
• There was a noticeable irritation on the part of IPPG members at the questioning attitude of the parish council. This irritation was also evident on the part of some of the St. Thomas parishioners who had worked with the IPPG on subsidiary committees. One member even had the temerity to say, “I’m shocked by your attitude, you’re all supposed to be Christians”. Now this meeting was by no means disrespectful or unruly. The people on the parish council have been kept woefully uninformed about the activities of the IPPG. Not even a month ago, they had a bomb dropped on them by the IPPG. Very little background information was given to the parish council before last night’s meeting. Five members of parish council just began their terms of office several weeks ago. The council has apparently been so neglected that they do not even have a chairperson or a secretary. They have a right to ask questions about why the IPPG wants to close their parish. They would be negligent if they didn’t.
• Diocesan planning group liaison, Deb Housel, kept cautioning members to respect and honor the work of the IPPG. That’s a nice sentiment, but the fact is the IPPG wants to close St. Thomas. Not many council members seem to consider that to be very honorable. The insensitivity of the IPPG is rather astounding. Witnessing the IPPG’s clumsiness in advancing this proposal is like watching someone perform brain surgery with a chainsaw.
• Finances were a big part of the discussion last night. The council members finally received a detailed copy of the facilities report that the IPPG has been utilizing in its decision making. The committee now claims that St. Thomas needs about $975,000 in maintenance and repair. The committee states that the aggregate total for the other 4 parishes in the group is a little over $600,000. When the council pressed for more background, it was revealed that those numbers reflect a 10 year plan for facilities maintenance and improvements. It was also revealed that each parish designated its own facilities expert to come with up a summary of repairs and cost estimates for the IPPG. The St. Thomas facilities report expert stated that he was concerned over a possible lack of uniformity in the assessment process. It would seem that this process is very susceptible to abuse. After all, if the future of your parish hangs in the balance, wouldn’t some people be tempted to be conservative in their cost projections? I’m not saying this happened, but it remains a possibility.
• There are still some big questions remaining about the facilities report for St, Thomas. For example, the former school building has an aggregate total of $453,500 in maintenance and repair items. One of these items is for $120,000 for new energy efficient windows. Another is $70,000 for new energy efficient lighting. A third item is $100,000 to remove and replace asbestos floor tile. The biggest component, by far, of that flooring figure is for asbestos abatement during the removal process. However, more than one parishioner has stated that it is permitted to cover over that flooring with new flooring. Also, there is nothing in the report that indicates that this is an imminent hazard. Removing these three items alone from the facilities report would reduce the aggregate amount for St. Thomas by almost $300,000. Perhaps St. Thomas’ facility has been overly scrutinized in an effort to bring the buildings completely up to date. Many of us would like to have brand new energy efficient windows and lighting. Most of us would be willing to defer those projects in order to remain financially viable.

When time allows, I will be writing a subsequent piece about last night’s meeting. The parish council did an admirable job last night of scrutinizing the proposal. They also were able to get the IPPG to slow down in order to let everyone catch their breath.

St. Thomas has been incorporated as a parish since 1922. There is no need to pronounce it DOA just to satisfy an artificially contrived timetable. The IPPG can wait. St. Thomas is too important.

A little help, please.

Today's mail brought a letter from Bishop Clark.

It seems that with 6 men in various seminaries and another 6 about to enter Becket Hall the diocese is a bit strapped for cash.

According to the bishop it costs $36,000 per year to support each seminarian and each discerner, with the annual total for the 12 in excess of $400,000.

And so he's asking me - and, no doubt, thousands of others - to help defray these costs.

While the cost of preparing priests has skyrocketed over the past few years, we've been able to absorb the cost because we were educating so few. But, now that we are educating many, we're finding ourselves severely strapped.

This is a new problem for His Excellency. At first glance I'm inclined to give him a hand.

Is religion an important part of your daily life?

The Gallup Organization has a new poll out that focuses on the importance of religion to Americans.

This poll asked just one question: "Is religion an important part of your daily life?"

The most religious state seems to be Mississippi, where 85% of the respondents answered in the affirmative.

Vermont came in as the least religious at 42%. (Does that make Vermont the most secular state?)

The nationwide average was 65%.

New York just barely managed to stay out of the bottom ten, with 56% of its respondents claiming that religion was an important part of their daily lives.

Full story, with map and charts, here.

"Unusually high demand"

I was doing some research tonight on the US Census site and the following screen popped up:

It's 11:07 pm EDT on a warm Saturday night in the middle of summer.

I really have to wonder where that unusually high demand is coming from.

More spin from Bishop Clark

Part 2 of Bishop Clark's recent "State of the Diocese" talk to the Rochester Rotary Club is now online.  (Part 1 is here.)

In this latest column the bishop addresses Catholic schools, vocations, the increase in the number of lay "ministers" in parish work, interfaith relations, the Creating a Safe Environment program, his efforts at getting around the diocese, and his impressions of his diocesan flock.

Let's take these topics one at a time.

Catholic Schools

The bishop writes,

I am encouraged by the resiliency of our system in Monroe County, which has rebounded very well in the past year from the sad but necessary school closings. The demographic shift that has forced closure of some parishes also has closed our schools -- but that doesn’t make the decision any easier.

In 1998-09 MCCS K-8 enrollment stood at 7,541.  By 2008-09 it had dropped to 3,700, with 2,321 (60%) of those 3,841 missing kids having disappeared during the disastrous tenure of Sr. Elizabeth Meegan and the introduction- with the bishop's blessing - of her insane tuition plan.

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.)

That performance, Bishop Clark, is not the result of a "demographic shift." Most people would call it "gross mismanagement."

The bishop goes on to say,

I made that decision following the recommendations of a task force of schools that studied enrollment and financial and demographic trends for many months.

A hand-picked committee of the well-off and the well-connected did meet in private and did review data that the rest of us must be too ignorant to understand, as it has never been shared beyond that august group. 

There is no indication that this committee ever visited a single school or ever interviewed a single teacher, parent or student. Instead, they looked at numbers that no outsider has been able to verify for accuracy. (Given the ongoing revelations concerning St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, verification of any DOR-supplied number would seem to be a prudent course of action.)

The committee most certainly never assessed the ability of any single parish to operate its school on its own, an ability at least two of them convincingly demonstrated in the weeks following the school closing decision.

And then the bishop adds,

And I made [the decision] with the aim of preserving the overall system.

Where have we heard that song before?  Oh, yeah, just about every time the bishop and the MCCS have closed schools in the past.  School closures have been going on for so long that the accompanying repeated claims of strengthening or preserving the system have lost any semblance of credibility.

Commenting on the transition of displaced students into new schools, Bishop Clark writes,

I credit ... the work of our pastors, pastoral administrators, school officials and staff members who saw this challenging transition through and reached out in welcome to students displaced by the closings.

What His Excellency fails to mention is any principal who expected the diocese to actually live up to its promises vis-a-vis staffing and other obligations would be forced to resign.  Being able to brag about a balanced budget seems to have been a higher MCCS priority than keeping one's word.

The bishop then moved on to the subject of registration for the 2009-10 academic year.

Registration for this coming school year is going well with several months of registration to go.

According to an article appearing today on the Catholic Courier site, registration now stands at "approximately 3,400."  With "over 4,000 students" having previously been given as the MCCS system's break-even point, it would seem that the diocese has quite a ways to go in the next 4 weeks.

Finally, the bishop moved to the topic of accreditation.

I am proud of the fact that 10 of our schools here and outside Monroe County have received the coveted accreditation of the Middle States Association. In the next few years, I believe all our schools will achieve this prestigious accreditation.

This is just about the only truly positive item in his entire 7 paragraph apologia for his handling of our Catholic schools.

Vocations

Bishop Clark then turned his attention to vocations.  Citing the declining number of priests as one of the factors driving the closure of parishes, the bishop gives us this analysis:

One of the demographic shifts that has contributed to the shortage of seminarians is the dramatic out-migration of 20- to 40-year-olds from our area, since most people make vocation choices after college, after working for awhile, they sign up for diocese in which they are currently living, which, in many cases, is not Rochester.

The bishop fails to cite a source for his claim of a "dramatic out-migration" of 20- to 40-year olds from the diocese. There is, however, US Census Bureau data online which paints a somewhat different picture.  The data shows that the number of males aged 20 to 39 living in DOR has fallen from 239,483 in 1990 to 204,183 in 2000 and 203,262 in 2008.

That is a decline of 15% over 18 years.  While it is significant, it hardly qualifies as "dramatic" and certainly doesn't come anywhere near explaining the fact that our ordination rate has remained at near-zero over those entire 18 years.

Moving on to seminarians, the bishop writes,

I can report that there are real signs of hope. We now have six seminarians. We also have the possibility this coming fall of seven more men in the discernment period for a priestly vocation.

Six seminarians? Aren't there supposed to be 7 (see here). Did the bishop misspeak or has one of them dropped out already?

Next came nods to our extern priests and our deacons.

In addition, we have been helped tremendously by our visiting priests from other lands. They help us sustain our mission and bring a cultural richness and depth to every area of our diocese. I am deeply grateful to them as I am to our retired priests, who continue their generous service among us.

Meanwhile, the number of ordained deacons -- whose ministry in our hospitals, prisons, parishes and service to the poor extends exponentially the good we can accomplish -- has grown to more than 100. Our deacons, most of whom balance work and ministry for the church with active family life, have been a godsend.

Amen and amen.  Our deacons perform yeoman service and without our visiting priests we truly would be much worse off.

Lay Ministers

Bishop Clark had this to say regarding the ever increasing role of the laity in the operation of our parishes:

I would be remiss if I did not express much satisfaction with the marvelous increase in the number of lay ministers serving in our parishes.

These highly trained professionals are administering the daily operations and liturgical life of many of our parishes throughout the diocese, and serving in a variety of full- and part-time roles in many different areas of ministry. This is a national trend and one that complements in wonderful ways the work of our ordained.

I'll leave it to Pope John Paul II and the 1987 Synod of Bishops to comment on the "too-indiscriminate use of the word 'ministry'" in today's Church.

Suffice it to say that I believe the diocese would be far better off without the services of some of our "highly trained professionals." 

One has to wonder at the bishop's reasoning behind his appointment of 2 prominent members of the Women's Ordination Conference to head up parishes and his decision to give each of them her own, special installation Mass.  Just what message was he trying to send here and to whom?

Interfaith Work

His Excellency devotes 5 paragraphs to describing the Jewish-Catholic and Muslim-Catholic interfaith efforts taking place in the diocese. This is important and groundbreaking work and the diocese deserves credit for its efforts.

Creating a Safe Environment Program

This is also important work and the bishop and the diocese deserve credit for their extensive efforts.  As the bishop says,

We are committed to being ever vigilant, and we are determined to prevent abuse by any church employee by whatever means we can.

Getting Around

Bishop Clark makes a point of mentioning his efforts at

getting around our diocese as much as I can in the course of a given year. These trips take me not only to every corner of Monroe, but also to Wayne, Ontario, Livingston, Tioga, Chemung, Cayuga, Tompkins, Schuyler, Yates, Seneca and Steuben counties. Together, this area covers approximately 7,500 square miles.

What he does not mention is that certain parishes never seem to be in his travel plans, parishes where he has closed schools or parishes facing closure themselves.

One local blogger has written the following in relation to the bishop's decision to close 13 Catholic schools,

[The bishop] should be among his flock, working hand-in-hand with them to search for alternate solutions, explaining his decision pathways, and always, always listening ... [I]nstead, he hoped [and] prayed that the matter would simply disappear with time.

When his flock is hurting Bishop Clark makes it a point to be elsewhere.  Let us pray that our next shepherd comes equipped with a real backbone.

The Flock

The bishop closes out his address praising the devotion, character and generosity of the people of DOR.  While he certainly has got that right I also note that he takes no credit for instilling these traits.  I think he's got that right too.