Emotions run high at town hall on plan to realign Baltimore’s Catholic churches: ‘This is a watershed moment’
If there were any doubts about how strongly local Catholics are feeling about the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s proposal to realign the church’s operations in the city, they were dispelled Thursday night as hundreds packed a pair of rooms at Archbishop Curley High School for a town hall-style meeting on the far-reaching reform plan church officials went public with this month.
Parishioners from across the city stepped up to a microphone in the school’s cafeteria — some angry, some wistful, a few on the verge of tears — to share their reactions to the proposal, a plan that would cut the number of parishes in the historically Catholic city and nearby suburbs from 61 to 21 and reduce the number of worship sites from 59 to 26.
The archdiocese first shared the proposal with city parishioners at Masses the weekend of April 13.
Several speakers decried the idea of their own church being shuttered. Others criticized how the multiyear reform initiative, called Seek the City to Come, has been conducted. Not a few suggested the archdiocese should spend its money on ministries, not consultants, or that its motives are more financial than spiritual.
What came through in the nearly three-hour meeting was that Baltimore’s Catholics, be they from Sandtown-Winchester or Mount Vernon, Dundalk or Edmondson Village, care deeply about the fate of their denomination in the city and are, at least at this stage, skeptical that the plan as proposed will save it.
Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski and the archdiocese’s director of community affairs, Geri Royale Byrd, co-directors of Seek the City, took the first half-hour of the meeting to stress the urgency of changing the church’s footprint in Baltimore at a time when attendance in the city’s pews has cratered and the cost of maintaining its historic buildings has grown exorbitant.
As they used a slide presentation to walk attendees through the outlines of the proposal, Byrd repeatedly stressed that it’s not final, that church officials had scheduled this meeting and three others to gather feedback that will be incorporated as the Seek the City team, which consists of more than 200 lay and clergy participants, revises and refines it in the coming weeks.
That didn’t stop parishioners from making impassioned pitches, expressing their fears or even denouncing the idea of reducing the presence of the Catholic Church in the city in the first place.
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“This is a watershed moment, and we do not have the luxury to get this wrong,” said James Conway, a parishioner at St. Wenceslaus, a predominantly African American congregation in East Baltimore. “You’re asking us to diminish the church, but you cannot diminish the spirit of the living God. And in that vein, that means that 21 parishes with 26 worship sites is not enough.”
Now more than 150 years old, St. Wenceslaus would be absorbed into a larger parish anchored by St. Francis Xavier if the proposal is approved.
John Petrick, a longtime member of St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans, said he believes Seek the City has focused too much on demographic research and not enough on understanding parish ministries.
The church would become absorbed into a parish anchored by the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.
“I think what’s being missed in much of this process is the fact that parishes are not subunits of a larger corporation,” he said. “They’re communities. A community has its own organic life. And that life is something that evolves and grows and changes over time, not something that is easily captured in data, especially when those data are collected with questions that act as if parishes are service centers or franchises.”
Conway’s and Petrik’s remarks drew raucous applause, but the loudest cheers came when the evening’s youngest speaker said his piece.
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Thomas Davis, 15, a student at Mount Saint Joseph High School, conceded that if any churches have to be closed, his home parish, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, is small enough to be a logical candidate.
But he was pointed in his critique of the archdiocese, which he accused of “taking my Catholic inheritance and selling it off to the highest bidder.”
“Aren’t Catholics supposed to serve the poor and lost? And are the majority of the poor and lost not in Baltimore? … The archdiocese that tells us we are supposed to perpetuate faith in our communities is stealing our places of worship like reverse Robin Hoods,” he said, and the room erupted in cheers.
Byrd and John Butler, a consultant working with the archdiocese on Seek the City who helped facilitate the gathering, stood beside the lectern and listened, eyes locked on each speaker. Lewandowski sat at a nearby table, also listening.
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The three sought throughout the evening to strike a balance between allowing parishioners to have their say and keeping the session moving, an effort that at times drew groans. The session had run nearly an hour over its scheduled time when Butler drew its formal part to a close.
Lewandowski then reminded attendees that two town halls on the proposal are scheduled for next week. The first, which will be conducted entirely in Spanish, will be held at 6:30 Monday evening at Our Lady of Fatima in East Baltimore. The archdiocese has announced that the second and final meeting — originally scheduled to take place at Mount Saint Joseph in Irvington, then at Our Lady of Victory in Southwest Baltimore — will be held at 6:30 Tuesday evening at the Cathedral of Mary of Our Queen in North Baltimore.
Lewandowski said both will be as important as Thursday’s gathering as his team refines the proposal, then delivers it to archdiocesan consultors and finally Archbishop William Lori for his approval. When Lori signs off on a final plan in June, it will mark the end of a two-year process that has included interviews, listening sessions, demographic research and visits to all 61 parishes.
Lewandowski stressed that the public sessions, however emotional, are integral to a process his team has designed to be conducted in a ground-up, not a top-down, manner.
“I think we’re hearing good constructive criticism,” he said. “We’re also hearing how painful this is. We just have to be in this with each other and work through it. These kinds of nights are helping us shape and reshape the plan. It’s beneficial.”
