MASSACHUSETTS
Western Mass. Politics & Insight
SPRINGFIELD—Pulling into the parking lot of St Anthony’s Church and its connected Ceders Banquet hall, even in the dark of night, a ghastly void hangs in the background. The 2011 tornado that ripped through affluent East Forest Park neighborhood did not lay waste to any of the immediate vicinity. Yet, the once treed backdrop, something many of the city’s leafier neighborhoods have, is gone, a fitting reminder as allies of the nearby Cathedral High rallied to save and return the school to its home at Surrey Road last Thursday.
However, as some have observed it is not the tornado that truly posed the biggest existential threat to the city’s only Catholic high school. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield’s new bishop, Mitchell Rozanski, has put the brakes on rebuilding the school, prompting fears the Diocese will reverse its earlier promises. A coalition of alumni, parents of students past and present and stakeholders in the East Forest Park area, led in part by several of the city and region’s leading political figures.
Ron Chimelis rightly noted that declining enrollment has been a consistent problem at Cathedral and the tornado simply laid that bare. Both declining enrollment and the diocese’s inability or unwillingness to finance to school were a bigger threat to Cathedral than—ironically—any act of God.
That does not excuse the Diocese’s 180 on the subject. Rozanski may be unfamiliar with the Springfield Diocese’s perhaps less than ideal level of trust it enjoys with its flock, particularly as it pertains to non-religious matters. While Catholics everywhere may have fled or split with the church on issues, in the Springfield Diocese, a decided lack of communication and outreach on the secular and administrative matters have rankled Catholics here even more.
That lack of trust has in the past prompted action from political leaders, many with deep ties to Catholic education. When the Diocese closed Our Lady of Hope, the historical mother church of the city’s Irish population, and announced the same for Indian Orchard’s Immaculate Conception, supporters of the parishes turned to City Hall to erect historic preservation districts around the buildings.
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