A year of tears amid the prayers

It is almost as subtle as a bulb burning out every month in a house full of chandeliers. Someone who uses the room where the latest bulb darkened may sense it’s a bit dimmer, but the majority of life goes on with no notice.

Since the January 2009 announcement of final plans for church consolidations throughout the Diocese of Scranton, the doors have been shutting one by one. The diocese was unable to provide a comprehensive list in time for this review, but a search of diocesan and secular archives shows at least 16 churches celebrated their last Mass since the implementation began, often with scant notice, even though they were iconic community institutions for decades, and, in some cases, for more than a century.

The consolidation is monumental. After spending most of its 142 years in a state of constant expansion, the diocese began to see both enrollments in individual parishes and the total number of priests available to serve those parishes shrink. Since 1960 the number of priests dropped from 442 to 162 this year.

When then-Bishop Joseph Martino announced the sweeping consolidations, the plan called for closing roughly half the existing churches.

Often the closing is quiet

It has not always been a particularly public event. Churches have closed with little fanfare. Sometimes, the only notice outside the parish itself was a black and white photo and brief caption in the diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Light. Spokesman Bill Genello noted the diocese leaves it up to the local parish to decide whether it wishes to invite secular media to a closing, and not all chose to do so – or thought of doing so.

That’s unfortunate, Mary Ruth of Wilkes-Barre said. She felt her church, St. Joseph, in the Heights section of Wilkes-Barre, which closed March 21, deserved more attention.

“I spent all of my 54 years as a member,” Ruth said. “I was baptized there, received all the sacraments there. My mother, she’s 78, was a lifelong member.”

“I remember it for all the socialization we had. Our bazaars were so much fun, all the friends you made,” Ruth said. “Your church members were like family, even if you only went once a week. If you got sick, everybody asked about you.

“That’s the nice thing about a small parish. It was a wonderful feeling,” She added. “I don’t see that in the churches I’m left to choose from.”

Founded by Slovak immigrants in 1924, St. Joseph retained that heritage until nearly the end, Ruth said, singing Slovak hymns for certain Holy days, Slovak carols for Christmas, and holding a traditional Slovak Christmas Eve dinner, or “velija.”

Ruth and her husband, James, an “extraordinary minister” who helped with the distribution of the Holy Eucharist at Mass before St. Joseph closed, felt so let down by the closing they haven’t found a new church they are willing to call home. The sentiment extends to their mother, a wiry wisp of a woman with a wry squint in her 78-year-old eyes.

“My mother was in a small group of five or six ladies who would say the rosary every single Sunday before Mass,” Mary Ruth said, describing a very familiar scene to any old-school Catholic: A small band of faithful, almost always all women, fingering 50 chained beads on a rosary (with one bead between each “decade”), and repeating one of the Roman Catholic Church’s core prayers, the “Hail Mary.”

Ethnic parishes hard hit

The loss of ethnic churches has become a sore spot for some who otherwise acknowledge that churches – perhaps even their own – had to close.

Tony Scarnulis of Wilkes-Barre admits the arguments for closing his church, Holy Trinity on South Street, may be valid, but he suggests a greater effort should have been made to preserve each heritage.

“Why not merge some of them? Why not put German parish with German parish, Lithuanian with Lithuanian, Polish with Polish?”

Margaret Enama of Hazleton believes there was a particularly strong argument for saving her church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. “It was the only Tyrolean church in the United States,” she said. Parishioners celebrated their last Mass Nov. 29.

“Our whole parish is gone,” Enama said. “We don’t see anyone in the community. They may never join another church; they just feel things are lost and they cannot be replaced. “

At the very least, some parishioners had hoped to buy the building and maintain part of it as a chapel while offering space for other diocesan uses. Enama noted the diocesan outreach program, Catholic Social Services, is expected to expand into the building from an adjacent location.

“People at the other parishes have been fine and wonderful, but not everyone has gone to those parishes,” Enama said. “We have lost our heritage completely.”

The loss of ethnic heritage, in fact, became a new tactic in the effort to save some churches.

The initial announcement of extensive consolidations prompted a half dozen churches to file formal appeals in February 2009, going through appropriate Church channels. But many lacked resources to push through the multilayer process after initial rejection. Sacred Heart in Wilkes-Barre is a distinct and well publicized exception, with Noreen Foti and her husband John spearheading the formation of a foundation to save the church well before the current consolidation – officially dubbed “Called to Holiness and Mission” – began.

While their appeal is still pending in Rome, they also joined a separate, unofficial and unorthodox effort to save churches, an appeal to a high ranking cardinal from Poland arguing that ethnic churches have been disproportionately targeted for closure in some U.S. dioceses, including here.

The Fotis and parishioners from 21 other churches in six dioceses across the country hope that by raising the issue with the Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, the Prefect for the Congregation of Catholic Education, they will get the Vatican to consider the possibility that ethnic churches were disproportionately closed in some dioceses.

Parishioners from nine churches in the Diocese of Scranton, including six in Luzerne County, added their names to that effort. One argument they put forth: Canon, or Church, Law allows a bishop to treat the assets of an ethnic church differently from other “territorial” churches. While money raised from sale of assets of territorial churches must go toward the parish with which that church merges, assets of an ethnic parish can go to the diocese itself.

The diocese has steadfastly maintained that the process in determining which churches were closed was thorough and thoughtful, with representatives from all parishes involved, and that there was no bias toward ethnic parishes. Asked for comment and additional data for this story, Genello said he would try but was unable to gather information by press time because of a flurry of activity with the installation of the new bishop, Joseph Bambera, on Monday.

With the closings set to happen intermittently through June 2012, and some 20 parishes on the list of those due to consolidate yet to meet their fate, the debate is sure to continue for some time to come.