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Hamill: Timothy Cardinal Dolan says long-dreaded parish changes are to 'spruce up the life of the church'
By Denis Hamill
On Sunday morning, a solemn-faced Dolan released his list of 112 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York that would be merged in 55 new ones in the face of shrinking congregations. Empty churches, Dolan says, are not caused by a shortage of priests, but 'a shortage of the faithful.' Timothy Cardinal Dolan walked slowly into the Catholic Education Building on First Ave. at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday with an Irish tweed cap pulled down over a face as sad as that of a man who’d just had to put down an old and very faithful dog. In the morning he’d released his long-dreaded hit list of 112 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York that would be merged into 55 new ones. Parishes in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx, and in Westchester, Rockland, Ulster and Orange counties felt the pain. “Thanks for coming in and letting me ruin your Sunday,” says Dolan, plopping down at a table in a 20th-floor conference room. He asks which parish I grew up in. I say St. Stanislaus Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn, long ago closed. “Heartbreaking,” he says. “Whenever I meet someone in New York, they usually start by telling their parish is gone. And now we have a whole new slate of others today.” The numbers are alarming: Just 12%, or 346,000, of the 2.8 million Catholics in Cardinal Dolan’s New York Archdiocese still attend Sunday Mass. In the 1980s, there were 1,200 priests; today, 365. I ask Cardinal Dolan how the church had lost so many paying customers. He chuckles darkly and says: “That’s what everybody is asking throughout the world. That question gave rise to Pope John Paul II’s new evangelization. He said we can no longer presume that the faith will be passed along by culture and families; more and more people are drifting away from the church; that we must free ourselves from maintaining institutions and real estate and do more preaching, sanctifying, loving and serving the elderly, providing more health care, campus ministries, beefing up Catholic Charities.” Dolan says the decline in Catholic worshipers over the past three decades in the Northeast finally caught up to the New York Archdiocese. “In the South and West, we can’t build parishes and schools fast enough because of the demographics,” he says. “When I meet the archbishop of Atlanta, he says, ‘Thanks for your people.’ Our generation of New Yorkers is retiring to the South and West. He’s got our cops and firemen. When I go to Florida, I meet a ton of our former parishioners down there.” But don’t we get just as many new immigrants coming into New York? Whenever I meet someone in New York, they usually start by telling their parish is gone. “Yes, a huge influx of new immigrants, thanks be to God,” he says. “But we don’t need all these parishes to serve them well. I was in St. John Chrysostom in the Bronx the other night celebrating its 100th anniversary. It’s now all Latino. Sister Mary Elizabeth has a waiting list of dozens of kids who can’t afford the tuition. If I wasn’t spending money to keep parishes open that we don’t need I’d be able to help pay for them.” Haven’t Pope Francis’ inclusive policies brought into the pews more Catholics who are gay, unmarried couples or people who have gone through a divorce? “Yes, and Pope Francis has also said we’re not about buildings and institutions,” Dolan says. “We’re about embracing, welcoming, loving, and serving everyone. You’re right; we need a change in tone. “So the whole purpose of these changes is to spruce up the life of the church, to get back that magnetism that first attracted people. Some people blame empty churches on a shortage of priests. I say it’s a shortage of the faithful.” Didn’t the priest sex scandals lead to that shortage of the faithful? “Some of it did,” he admits. “Yes, some problems, like sex abuse, are internal. Did it drive people away? Yes. But external causes are also responsible. The slogan today is, ‘I believe; I don’t belong.’ Faith is important, not the church. We have to win back those people.” How do you do that by shutting and merging parishes? “We’ll be leaner, stronger, more flexible to meet the needs of the old and new. In the last 10 years the diocese has spent $392 million to subsidize struggling schools and parishes ... I know I’m being attacked for running the diocese like a corporation. But in fact I want to stop being a property manager so I can unleash the power of God’s people, our priests and sisters, and financial resources where they can do the most good. “All that said, my heart is heavy. One of my priests told me, when he announced they’d be merging today, his people started to cry, which made me want to cry. But my job is not to feel sorry for myself. It’s to move from maintenance to mission. Pope Benedict quoted Scripture when he said, ‘The vine must be pruned in order to grow.’ He was right.” Amen.
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