By Patricia Montemurri
Detroit Free Press
December 2, 2011
http://www.freep.com/article/20111202/NEWS05/112020361/Metro-Detroit-Catholics-blast-plans-church-closings?odyssey=nav|head
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Detroit Catholic Archbishop Allen Vigneron said Thursday that he is likely to shutter about 48 churches in the next five years.
In doing so, Vigneron would be following the recommendations of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, which were released Wednesday night. The affected parishes, among the first to close as soon as next year, would be in Detroit, Livonia, Wyandotte, Roseville, Harper Woods, and River Rouge or Ecorse.
"I would need a pretty good reason to move away from the recommendations," said Vigneron, the spiritual leader of 1.4 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Detroit. "It's not set in stone. New factors may emerge."
The proposed closings would affect nearly 20% of the parishes in the archdiocese, reducing the number from 270 to 222 across six counties in southeastern Michigan.
Critics of the reorganization said archdiocesan leaders didn't listen to them or value their work in small parishes, particularly in Detroit.
Longtime activist and retired Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton decried the proposed closings and mergers as "abandoning the city."
Gumbleton said that "it disappoints him greatly" to hear that his former longtime parish, St. Leo on Detroit's near-west side, is targeted for likely closure next year. The panel recommends merging it with St. Cecilia, then closing and selling St. Leo, while retaining a building there for community outreach. The building would be named after Gumbleton.
"To me, it looks like a disaster in a way," Gumbleton said. "The institutional presence of the Catholic Church is going to be gone from the city of Detroit in any way."
Besides St. Leo, St. Luke and St. Anthony Lithuanian on Detroit's west side may close next year. Many more Detroit churches could close under proposals to merge with neighboring parishes in the coming years.
The recommendations also call for the four Detroit parishes of Nativity, St. Charles, Good Shepherd and SS. Augustine-Monica to merge into one eventually. Ultimately, the sanctuaries would be sold and a new, more environmentally friendly church would be built along the East Jefferson corridor.
But Sister Jolene Van Handel, a parish minister at Nativity, said her parish sustains itself, has 200 families and is in a historic building that should be preserved.
"People say we have these beautiful, historical churches that need to be preserved, and you want to build a new one. That's stupidity," Van Handel said. "We have a lot of alumni who help keep our parishes going. If this is closed, they don't care about somebody else's building."
She urged Vigneron to think creatively about using lay leadership to keep parishes going, even when priests are in short supply.
"I think if they allowed lay leadership, we could manage to keep our parishes going. We could have communion services, even if we didn't have a priest for mass. These things can happen if they allow us to have creative planning," Van Handel said.
Edward (Chip) Miller, a banker and member of St. Paul parish in Grosse Pointe Farms who chairs the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, said its members "didn't enter this with the idea of closing anybody."
But, he said, too many parishes with small congregations in historic, but huge, buildings "are spending significant amount of annual revenues on buildings and maintenance, and we want the focus on pastoral priorities."
Archdiocesan leaders said closings are necessary because of the shortage of priests. There are currently 293 priests serving in 270 parishes, and the archdiocese estimates that it will have one-third fewer priests in the next 10 years.
"This is a pastoral plan to move the life of the church forward," said Vigneron.
Without giving specific figures, Vigneron said many parishes in the six-county archdiocese are fiscally solvent and sound, but others "can't pay their bills" and are delinquent in paying premiums for health care insurance for employees and in pension contributions.
"Change always involves dying. I do have kind of a feeling of dying and loss," Vigneron said of the number of churches to close. "The parish is the basic cell for the life of the Catholic Church -- where people live their faith, raise their children -- and there will be some dying."
Contact Patricia Montemurri: 313-223-4538 or pmontemurri@freepress.com
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