Posted on 07/01/2008 5:16:47 AM PDT by Serviam1
NEWS RELEASE
MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE MOURNS CLOSING OF HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today mourned the closing of the venerable Holy Trinity church in Boston's South End. The parish was suppressed today by a decree of Sean Cardinal O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston. The last masses were celebrated yesterday, June 29th, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
Holy Trinity was the last German Catholic parish in New England, and was one of only two venues in the Archdiocese which offered weekly Sunday celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass. In a surprise move, the Archdiocese announced that Holy Cross Cathedral will now provide regular Sunday celebrations of the Tridentine Mass.
The Archdiocese did not consider the parish to be financially viable, although it had nearly a quarter of a million dollars in the bank and a weekly income from collections alone of more than a thousand dollars.
The parish, which opened in 1844, introduced the Christmas tree and the Christmas card to Puritan New England. Its parishioners were among the founders of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The present church building, which dates to 1877, was designed by the renowned Irish born ecclesiastical architect Patrick C. Keely, who built scores of churches and cathedrals in the eastern United States.
The Catholic Action League called the closing "another tragic and wounding loss to the spiritual and cultural patrimony of the Catholic community in Boston."
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle stated: 'Magnificent churches of irreplaceable artistic, architectural, and historical value are being plundered for their assets and then sold off in the elusive quest by the Archdiocese to achieve financial solvency through downsizing. Meanwhile, church structures of little or no aesthetic or historical significance remain open. The destruction of our Catholic heritage must stop."
yep - more destruction by the baby boomer bishops that hate anything created before vatican II.
The above article said it better then I could. As I have said a few days earlier, if the Boston Archdiocesse gaved it to a TLM order of priests, it would have saved it since it was built in the first place for that. But then again Cardinal O’Mailey said something about not being for the TLM.
This is what Cardinal Sean O’Malley had said:
“This document will not result in a great deal of change for Catholics in the United States. This issue of the Latin Mass is not urgent for our country. “
Sad.
Please see post number 4.
Since you expressed an appreciation for TLM, I will note for you that EWTN today is televising a celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the High Mass.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2039070/posts
Thank-you. I have been catching bits and pieces of TLM going on EWTN and still going on right now. I see how reverent it is. This is just my guess and I could be wrong, but it would not suprise me that when Pope Benedict XVI last summer declared in the Motu Propu, that what he was doing was that by having TLM offered for those who want it, he is working with the help of God to clean up the newer Mass and bring a bit more Latin into it. Just a reflection.
I wonder how the Archdiocese defines "financially viable."
That is a good question you ask.
A good question to ask is: is that $250K newly raised? Or is it the leftovers of a once much larger endowment?
What are the annual operating costs of the parish?
Given the cost of maintaining an old building, heating it, and lighting it, and paying the staff, etc. in one of the most expensive cities in North America that $250K could have been run through in a year.
My take on this is that Holy Trinity sits on very valuable (south end) Boston land that will sell for major bucks.
If you recall a recent article, the Boston Herald will be relocating shortly leaving their very large lot to be developed. Just across the Street, no doubt doubling the value of the HT site given the outrageous development opportunity now open to Major Catholic Donors to the Archdiocese.
I would think the vacant land alone would be worth 12-15MM, less if they take the structure, but I would imagine the Homosexuals in the neighborhood are salivating at the chance of turning it into a gay nightclub called
I was there, very sad, two of my Uncle’s too.
One hadn’t been to a TLM in 40 years, Latin responses still very impressively on the ball.
11:00 is tough...also the parking can be bad at the Cathedral. I can’t even make it this Sunday because of my Nephew’s birthday party so off to Dan Schutte and the Novus Ordo down the street.
I go to the daily Mass there anyway, but the Dan Schutte dribble makes me sick, so being there on Sunday is another experience all together.
Hopefully something earlier will appear.
You know, I’m upset when any Catholic parish is closed but that article has to be wrong on the collection. We have a small parish and our collection is closer to 2K a week.
1K a week would barely pay for the utilities, wine, hosts and missalettes. Then you add in any other expenses, priest, DRE, bookkeeper, janitor, Catechism supplies, building upkeep, insurance, ....it was not bringing in enough to sustain it even with 250K in the bank.
It takes every bit of the money we take in to run a small parish even here in the boonies where things run a little cheaper than in the Northeast.
Speaking of diminishing proceeds...before the closure issue, the parish was routinely pulling in $2500+ per week from a relatively small congregation of Traddies and Germans. Per capita, the contributions were solid compared with other parts of the archdiocese. If the Traddies had been allowed to advertize and "grow" their numbers via such avenues (indeed, before the closure issue, we were slowly but steadily growing anyway), we doubtless could have contributed more financially, but the two Cardinals in residence in Boston during our tenure at Holy Trinity certainly weren't interested in seeing the TLM flourish - there or anywhere else!
Between the financial shell games going on with the collections over the years, the deliberate, massive underreporting of the parish's sacramental index numbers over the years (which figure hugely in whether a parish avoids closure around here, these days), and the local ordinaries' palpable disinclination toward the TLM, Holy Trinity was never given a chance. It has been a miracle of grace that we staved off the actual closure for several years. We still hope this presages a successful appeal, and the providential naming of Archbishop Burke to head the Signatura may be a continuing of the miracle of grace.
It seems simple to us...if the TLM had been allowed to flourish, it would have. There are 300 people in Newton, the 150+ showing up lately at HT, several other small "start ups" springing to life under the Motu Proprio, and a number of parishes scattered around in the process of petitioning their pastors. These people didn't just spring from the rocks last Tuesday. If Law, Lennon and O'Malley had facilitated the TLM a bit, these folks would have found their way to Holy Trinity long since, even under the old Indult.
But no! They did nothing to help us, obstructed requests for other Sacraments at every turn until very recently, gave us octogenarian and nonogenarian priests from the Regina Cleri retirement home to serve most of our needs (even while denying repeated requests from the FSSP to take over the parish), and made it abundantly clear to all of us that we were 3rd Class Catholics all the way. In spite of this, our collection numbers held their own right up until the rigged closure process (maybe I'll get into that fiasco later - I'm at work now and have to type fast on break) made it clear that nothing would change the minds of the powers that be.
With these guys, it seems to be all about the money, and pastoral considerations take a decidedly "back seat." But, apparently, in their zeal to stifle the TLM and close a church with massive historical, architectural, musical and cultural significance, even this crowd doesn't want our money!
I'm just warming up, but I have to get back to work...
Actually the expenses were reasonably low I would think.
The DRE was a Volunteer, the Parish was under joint administration and the Priest lived two blocks away in another rectory (very common in Boston to combine rectories even if not parishes). No daily Mass which drives down many of the expenses as well.
The Rectory was actually leased out as well, so I’m certain that was generating revenue.
I also believe the attendance would have been higher had the Sword of Damocles not been hanging over them the past ten years.
Folks,
Also check out Fr. Zuhlsdorf Blog. He has posted Monday’s Boston Globe article. Your thoughts and perspective can add well to the on going discussion and help dispell the usual misconceptions and administrative/pastoral apologetics.
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2008/07/tears-and-anger-in-boston/#comments
From Masstimes.Org:
220 visits Holy Trinity [German] (617) 426-6142 Web Map Updated: 12/16/2007 Sunday: 10 AM [English], [German]; Address: 140 Shawmut Ave. Boston MA 02118-2227 US
Website is:
Holy Trinity (German) Church -- Boston, MA -- http://www.holytrinitygermon.org
This thread seems to be all about the second guessing of the Magisterium of the Church.
If they had two masses a week, then there might be a real reason to save this church.
But according to Mass Times, they only have one MASS a week...
When one has a Diocese in trouble, one must be practical, and try to be a Good Shepherd to the flock...
Remember that Jesus had lived a life of poverty -- during his public years, he never had a roof over his head.
He was more concerned with his flock than building temples in Jerusalem...
That they did none of these things, or, at best, did them half-heartedly in a way that any half-asleep layman could see was an exercise in "mailing it in," speaks volumes concerning the issue of diminishing attendance in many churches here. As it is, Holy Trinity had been growing (slowly, to be sure, but growing, nevertheless)every year from the mid-1990s, thru the onset of the abuse scandal, and right up to the point where we were first slated to be closed. With a little help from the higher-ups, the TLM alone could have staved-off HTs closure, especially if either the FSSP or ICKSP had been allowed in. But, as I said in another post, the success of the TLM (and, by extension, Holy Trinity Church) was most unpolitic, and had to be countered.
We Catholics belong to the same Church that sent Saint Boniface out among the pagan germanic tribes, with an expectation of his success. Nowadays, our bishops are too afraid to even attempt to re-evangelize their own, merely lapsed flock, who surely cannot be as openly hostile to the Faith as the germanic tribes Boniface dealt with were initially. These "pastors of souls" have quit the field before they even get in sight of it! This is most certainly true here in Boston, and is true enough in whole swaths of the Western Church. The exceptions are few and far between.
Bottom line: we would not have "attendance problems" at Holy Trinity or elsewhere had the bishops and priests been doing their God-appointed jobs all along. We would not have such problems if they saw their work as a "vocation" rather than as a mere "career." We would not have these problems if the teaching orders of nuns were not allowed to become heretical and apostate, thereby infecting whole generations of nominal Catholics with similar mindsets. Do the laity have a responsibility to see to their own proper catechesis? Certainly. But their responsibility is mitigated when a second (and now a third) generation comes along without (generally speaking) even an awareness of their deficiencies, and they can be somewhat excused when only one in six of them condescends to go to Sunday Mass here. They don't know any better. As for Holy Trinity, the attendance didn't drop off all that sharply even after the announced intent to close (though the donations did, I grant), and the 250-300 people forcibly moved to Newton in 2007 nearly all continued going to the Mass there. They hung in there, and did not wander off in a huff or join some schismatic group. In spite of everything. And now, the church they attended for 17 years (since the Indult was granted to HT in 1990) is closing "because no one goes to it."
Holy Trinity has great local and national significance for its history and its musical and architectural heritage. This significance is ongoing. Old North Church, on the other hand, has a national notoriety and significance because of events that took place there on just one evening, specifically, the evening of April 18-19, 1775. Yet, could you imagine the outcry if anyone in the Congregational Church (or whatever it's affiliated with these days) decided to close it down? Why, even the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston would be appalled!
Pastoral solicitude for an “itty-bitty parish” is analogous to the man who leaves ninety-nine sheep to save one. Our Lord’s pastoral logic flies in the face of modern day asset management. Does it not? Unfortunately, all too many dioceses are being administered by hirelings...and the hireling flieth.
Matthew 10:13
13 And the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep.
Matthew 18:12-13
12 What think you? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them should go astray: doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go to seek that which is gone astray? 13 And if it so be that he find it: Amen I say to you, he rejoiceth more for that, than for the ninety-nine that went not astray.
BTW, we DID have two Masses, right up till last Sunday. Masstimes.org apparently hadn’t been updated since the TLM was forced to leave Holy Trinity in April 2007. When the TLM was allowed to return last February, it was given a Mass time of 9 AM, the German/English Mass was moved to 11 AM.
Thanks for the link!
If closing a very small parish does this, then I consider that to be good.
People from this parish may have to transfer to another parish...
Cardinal O'Malley inherited a mess from Cardinal Law...
And he might make mistakes when trying to clean up the mess, but he still deserves the support of Catholics of Boston.
Unless there are those who wish to form a schism in the Church and go the route of SSPX...
I imagine it had over $20k from offerings on Sunday.
The Cathedral for the Archdiocese of Atlanta also has 7 masses on Sunday -- one in Spanish.
Now the Archdiocese of Atlanta is a very healthy diocese compared to a liberal Northeastern diocese like Boston.
Boston is going to have problems as long as the local Catholics think they are better than the Cardinal and go around criticizing the Cardinal and the actions of the Archdicoese.
I can of feel like groups like Call to Action are rejoicing in threads like this.
Jesus did not say that if He had 100 stones and one of his stones was missing, he would leave the 99 stones and search for the stone that is lost.
A church is building -- not a living thing. It is possible, though difficult for parishoners to go to other parishes.
It is an unfortunate situation -- I admit that.
But if the faith of these parishoners are shattered because the Archdiocese is closing their parish due to financial hardship, then they have weak or little faith.
The movie Lilies of the Field tries to depict what some people have had to endure due to hardships in believing in the Catholic faith but not having a real Church to worship in. There are people in other countries that suffer real hardship because of religious oppression (Iraq, China, Vietnam, Sudan, etc. to name a few).
This is more a Call to Action type topic than a conservative Catholic topic.
pastoral way to pay for the settlements would be to do something like the following:
Step 1: Then-archbishop O'Malley buys 10 minutes of simultaneous air time on all local TV outlets, paying a premium to take up the end of their 6 PM news slots (this type of time-blocking has been done around here many times by pols before an election).
Step 2: On the simulcast he has just paid for, the archbishop, in simple Franciscan habit, flings ashes on his head from the pile he is sitting on, begging the forgiveness of his flock while promising (under an oath he has just taken on the Bible) the following:
A) ALL priests found guilty of sexual abuse of minors will be dismissed from the clerical state forthwith.
B) ALL priests will be obliged to live up to their promise of celibacy, including those involved in "consentual relationships with adults. From this date, all of these adult relationships will cease; any further continuances will result in a dismissal from the clerical state.
C) The seminaries will be purged of their homosexual occupants, both among the faculty and among the seminarians. Policies will be put in place to ensure that the archbishop has a hands-on ability to see to it that these corruptors do not infiltrate again.
D) The seminaries will also be purged of heterodox teachers and teachings (this will largely overlap the purge of homosexuals, but not entirely overlap them). Seminarians and priests of the archdiocese will begin a "review" of proper Catholic theology. Liturgies will be mandated to follow the missal. Failures in this regard will be dealt with personally by the archbishop. Preaching will be coherent and related to the readings, remedial help will be given to those priests and deacons found deficient in this area. Reports on progress will be public record. With this loud, public commitment to Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxis, the archbishop is overtly wooing back those disaffected by the institutionalized laxity in theology and practice that has infected the archdiocese for well over 30 years.
E) In a related effort, ALL parish CCD programs and parochial school religion courses will be stopped immediately. The content, universally guaranteed to be dreck-filled, will be replaced by one or another of the several "sound" CCD text series out there (Ignatius, for example). DREs and other teachers will be obliged to demonstrate competency in theaching the authentic Catholic Faith; heterodox agendas will NOT be tolerated. The archbishop will take-on personal responsibility for oversight in this matter.
F) The archbishop will make clear that the settlements will be paid for by a combination of the insurance money and the proceeds from the sales of several pieces of archdiocesan property (sold for a total of well over $100,000,000). NOT ONE PENNY of the settlements needs to come from the closure and sale of churches, and not one church will close on this basis alone. Between the two sources named above, there is more than enough to pay-out all of the existing claims. If there is a future need to settle more claims, then, before the Church uses even one church as a cash-cow, it will begin selling off the over one thousand pieces of property it holds that do not affect parishes.
G) The archbishop will mandate that all archdiocesan clergy, beginning with himself, will personally visit with every single Catholic family (or at least attempt to) in the archdiocese, imploring them, on a one-to-one basis, to consider the contrition of the Church about certain recent events, and its resolve to remedy them. Sexual, catechetical, theological, liturgical, etc.
H) The archbishop will then continue to heap the ashes on his head, and make one last, plaintive appeal to Catholics to "come home," promising, under his aforementioned oath, to make things right for them. In other words, he will swear to do the job he was consecrated for. -30-
If the then-Archbishop O'Malley had done these things when it was opportune, I strongly suspect he would not have had to even consider closing one single church. Even now, if he implemented the actions noted above, and promised no more church closures, he would go a LONG way to restoring the number of faithful attending Mass and other Church functions each week, and thereby solve his real and imagined financial problems.
Will he do this, or even anything slightly bearing resemblance to this? Almost certainly not! This kind of thing is too hard, and might not generate a cash flow as quickly as selling-off the patrimony, infrastructure and sweat-equity accumulated by many generations of Catholics here! No! Better to destroy that patrimony, abandon the inner-cities, and further alienate the 360,000 remaining Catholics (out of 2.3 million nominal catholics) who have heretofore hung in there in the maelstrom known as the Archdiocese of Boston! Sure! That's the ticket!
Look, you don't live here. You don't know the MESS that the AoB is and has been for at least a generation. You have no idea of the anger, hurt and sense of betrayal that PERMEATES this area. Even among - and ESPECIALLY among - long-suffering orthodox Catholics who have seen their heritage destroyed and the salvation of many thousands of souls seriously imperilled by the misfeasance and malfeasance of those in power here.
Don't condescend to us about the "regretability" of "having" to close "some churches"! They don't HAVE to close ANY! The settlements are more than paid for by the insurance and the BC sales alone. These guys are selling off churches and schools to create a safety net for "The End" of the Church here in Boston, which looms on the horizon precisely because these guys would rather sell-off EVRERYTHING than try to reclaim the hearts and minds of the erstwhile faithful. All they are good at is alienating the people who have hung-on all this time to now. They will NEVER get back into the fold ANY of the folks who have left over theology, liturgy, sexual abuse or the existing church closures. NEVER!!! Only a remnant of us will remain, and that is only because we trust in Christ enough to see us through. Even then, many of us will take as much of our "business" as possible to legitimate venues outside of the diocese, to Providence, Worcester or whatever.
This place is a seething cauldron of resentment. Even among those of us who know the faith reasonably well, and can see - to some extent, at least - past all of this toward the "bigger picture." DON'T lecture us about how it's a "good thing' to close a beautiful piece of Catholic patrimony with as much historical and musical value (did I tell you that the HT organ, combined with the acoustics inherent to the building, makes for one of the best pipe organ experiences in the eastern US, according to experts?) as Holy Trinity has! It's a crime and a scandal, and I'm sure it's part of a much bigger package around here that will be something requiring an "answer" one day from the person(s) who perpetrated it.
I may be prejudiced by some dioceses being in hard financial times -- such as the Diocese in Oregon that filed for bankruptcy.
Maybe there is a better way.
One thing is for sure -- even if Cardinal O'Malley says that a parish will be closed -- even that can be undone.
May take people taking sack cloth and ashes and lots of prayer...
But nothing is impossible with God...
Over 30 parishes have been recommended to be closed.
We are still waiting for the decision by Rome.
It does seem that our Bishop(Galanti)has a history of closing down parishes.
Father Frank Pavone was in the credits of the movie. He also gave a retreat for the cast. He knew how important this movie was to the pro-life movement.
Yet, two months after the movie was out, he was doing a whimpy job of promoting the movie.
On the other hand, even though Boston was not a target market for the opening of the film, Cardinal O'Malley was able to help get the movie INTO THE BOSTON MARKET.
The only thing coming out of PFL was a whimpy message from Father Denis Wilde, OSA, saying that this movie needed to be in the Boston market.
Basically, PFL went around crying about things and did nothing. Cardinal O'Malley even went so far to put this on his BLOG -- about the movie coming to Boston.
If Father Frank were competent, he would have promoted this movie a month before it was scheduled to open and urged activism from pro-lifers to get this movie into more locations. Instead, it was almost Christmas time before PFL started to roll into gear.
From what I have seen, Cardinal O'Malley has done a good job -- not a great job. The mess he inherited and the attitude problem of Bostom Catholics who look for leadership more in John Kerry and Ted Kennedy -- is about 90% of his current problem.
This and the fact that many Catholics in Boston turn to PAGAN run newspapers such as the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe for Spiritual Guidance.
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