Closed for business.

I have just finished reading Maurice Timothy Reidy's article "Closing Catholic Parishes" (September 10). By consolidating parishes, it appears church leaders are pursuing a "cathedral" model of church where the bottom line is efficiency and the goal is to build huge Mass attendance. In the process we are losing essential communal and Catholic values of intimacy, community building, and close-knit relations between a people and its pastor. How can a parish of four or five thousand families remotely hope to have a shepherd who knows the people?

Imagine instead a multitude of small, close-knit parishes where the primary activity is not administrative matters but the pastoral and spiritual growth of a people who have a sense of neighborhood and history. I have visited a number of Episcopalian parishes that continue to survive and thrive with one hundred or fewer families. Our evangelical brothers continue to "plant" and develop new churches by the dozens in every community in order to serve existing and prospective congregants. These efforts often begin like the communities in Acts, meeting in homes and rented facilities. They are first about ministry and service, not about buildings, and certainly not about efficiency.

The current trend toward closing parishes is depressing and disrespectful of our Catholic heritage and values. In many cases it is being done by co-opting both the clergy and the laity, giving them no alternative except to acquiesce. It is also being done with surgical speed and precision to minimize any backlash or bad press. If this problem is not confronted soon, and on a national basis, your parish may well be next.

(DEACON) MIKE EVANS 

Anderson, Calif.