NEW YORK
Times Herald-Record
New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling provided answers to the following questions about the Catholic parish consolidations and mergers announced Sunday. Several parishes in our region will be closed for regular services next August. More than a dozen other parishes will consolidate and merge, but are not required to close churches.
Are the decisions to consolidate or merge – in particular to close – parishes reversible?
…(T)here has been a tremendous amount of information gathering and consultation that went into this process. It is hard to imagine the circumstance under which there may be new, previously unconsidered information that would have a significant impact on a parish’s status, but if there was such information, that would be looked at. Otherwise, these decisions are final.
Will the consolidated and merged parishes take new names?
They may choose to hyphenate the name of the two former parishes that now make up this new parish, or they may choose a new name – for instance, a parish might want to take the name of one of our new saints, like Saint John Paul II parish, or Saint John XXIII parish, or Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Parish.
What happens to the assets and in particular the debts of the parishes consolidated or merged?
If there is any money that comes to the archdiocese, Cardinal Dolan has made it clear that the money will be used for endowing special ministries, like religious education, which we have not been able to adequately support since we were putting so much money ($392 million in the last 10 years alone) into propping up half-empty schools and parishes. Debts and liabilities also follow the people to their new parish, but we will be working with the individual parishes in this regard.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.