Closing Catholic parishes: a painful process that could be done better.

Last May, Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley announced that nearly one-fifth of the 357 parishes in the archdiocese would be closed. At the time, various media outlets linked the closings to the sexual-abuse crisis, as did many of Boston's Catholics, who were skeptical of O'Malley's contention that the closings were principally the consequence of a shortage of priests. It is difficult to determine what effect, if any, the scandal had on O'Malley's decision. (He says that insurance policies and the sale of the archbishop's mansion covered the cost of the $85-million abuse settlement; critics wonder who and what will pay for future settlements.) What is clear is that the relentless focus on the scandal effectively obscured several crucial issues raised by O'Malley's announcement.

The closings in Boston mark a historic moment and, as such, provide an excellent opportunity to reflect on parish life today. News of the decision came at a time when many dioceses were engaged in what is euphemistically called the "reconfiguration" process, and the publicity surrounding the announcement made Catholics nationwide wonder about the future of their own parish communities. From Newark to Toledo to Green Bay, it is becoming evident that a church that spent so much of its history building institutions--from hospitals to schools to churches--is now closing them.

Perhaps no other single problem facing the church touches on so many inter-related pastoral and theological issues. The process of closing parishes has made the need for lay involvement and leadership, the deficiencies in religious education programs, and the absence of active young Catholics in parish communities all the more apparent. Most important, the closings underscore what the much-discussed priest shortage really means. Without sufficient numbers of priests, bishops must find other ways to minister to congregations. For some, that means hiring women religious or lay ministers to serve as pastoral directors; for others, it means closing parishes. In many quarters, shutting parishes has renewed the cry to open the priesthood to married men and even to women. In others, it has served as vivid proof that the church must recruit more men into the priesthood if the Eucharist is to remain readily available.

Few would argue against the need to close some parishes. It makes no sense to operate several parishes within a small geographic radius, as is the case in many cities today. The question is how many should close and for what reasons. Should churches close because there are no longer Catholics in the communities they serve? If so, what is the larger church's responsibility to the neighborhood itself? Should parishes be closed simply because there aren't enough priests? If that's the case, what happens in ten years, when there will be even fewer priests? Will bishops continue to close parishes? Is hiring lay ministers the answer? If so, what are the theological implications? The priest is the ordained representative of the bishop and, as such, the most visible apostolic link between the local community and the universal church. Will that link be somehow diminished when a priest is not present? And what will happen when Catholics do not celebrate the Eucharist for long periods of time? It is a measure of the complexity of the issue that each question begets more questions.

The problem is not new. In the early nineteenth century, there were not enough priests to minister to the burgeoning Catholic community in the United States. "The cry from every quarter is: send us a Priest," Bishop Benedict Fenwick of Boston wrote in 1830, "and they are mad because I have none to send them." Seven years earlier, his predecessor wrote to the Catholic community in Hartford, instructing them how to pray together without a priest. "You will do well to procure a room and meet every Sunday to perform together your devotions," Bishop Jean Cheverus wrote. "Let one who reads well and has a clear voice, read the prayers of the Mass, a sermon, or some instructions out of a Catholic book."

Immigration brought more Catholics and, crucially, more priests, many of whom were trained in Irish seminaries. Parishes were built to minister to the new immigrants, most of whom moved to cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Parishes were often divided along ethnic lines and in many cases each had its own church, school, rectory, convent, and gymnasium. Holy Cross Parish in Brooklyn, for example, occupied an entire city block. As John T. McGreevy noted in Parish Boundaries (University of Chicago Press), parishes served both theological and practical purposes. "Catholic parishes were more than the sum of their organizational parts," McGreevy wrote. "Catholic practice depended upon Catholic theology, and more specifically a theological belief that the individual came to know God, and the community came to be church, within a particular, geographically defined space." Leslie Woodcock Tentler, professor of history at the Catholic University of America, agreed. "Catholics are ... a historically conscious people" with a "strong sense of sacred place," she said. In such a culture, churches were not just buildings but in some sense shrines, where generations prayed and received the sacraments. They provided a tangible connection to the past, profoundly shaping the identities of those who worshiped in them.

This helps explain why bishops have been hesitant to close parishes. Even when Catholics left the inner city in the 1950s and 1960s, church leaders remained committed to supplying resources and personnel to urban churches. This was possible not only because there was a surplus of priests, but because of the church's organizational structure. Protestant and Jewish congregations usually hire their own pastors and rabbis; when a given community leaves a neighborhood, so, in most cases, do its ministers. But the hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church has allowed it to supplement the needs of a troubled parish by drawing on resources from elsewhere. "The remarkable aspect of the hierarchy is that it ensured that all of these churches would stay open, even as the Catholics were moving out," said Gerald Gamm, author of Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Harvard University Press). "It helped keep these churches open, which helped keep these neighborhoods relatively stable."

Ironically, as urban populations shifted, neighborhoods with fewer and fewer Catholics often became those in greatest need of the church's presence. "If you close a church in some town in Long Island, people on Long Island will still be fine," Gamm told me. "They still have their [public] school system, they still have their town hall ... they have a lot that holds them together as a community.... In many of these urban neighborhoods, these churches and these parish schools are all that they have that define the neighborhoods."

In many ways, the story of parish closings is the story of the American city. "It's an endless pattern," said Tentler, who wrote Seasons of Grace (Wayne State University Press), a history of the Detroit archdiocese. "Central areas decline, populations change, and institutions move. Protestant churches have long since abandoned the city.... Jewish congregations move, usually in advance of their congregations. And Catholics have just tended to stay behind."

Detroit was one of the first dioceses to close parishes on a large scale. In the 1950s and 1960s, white ethnic groups began leaving the city, and Cardinal John Dearden subsequently considered closing inner-city parishes. Following Detroit's riots in 1967, Dearden changed his mind, Tentler said. (He did not want to deal another blow to the community.) When Cardinal Edmund Szoka eventually ordered the closure of thirty-five parishes in 1989, it came as a shock to the community. Many parishioners felt they had not been adequately consulted, and the African-American community said that the archdiocese was abandoning them. "It created very bad press for the archdiocese," observed Tentler, whose own parish closed.

A year later, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin closed about thirty parishes in Chicago, and it seemed only a matter of time before other bishops would follow suit. But Bernardin, like Szoka, was heavily criticized, and his fellow bishops seemed to take notice and to hesitate. Since 1990, few dioceses have announced closings on a similar scale.

In light of the resistance to parish closings in Chicago and Detroit, many dioceses adopted a more consultative, gradual process. The Diocese of Green Bay, for example, has been engaged in parish reorganization since the early 1990s. From the outset, diocesan leaders have attempted to involve the laity as much as possible. "It's a disaster if the leadership tries to make these decisions without consulting the parishioners," said Mark Mogilka, the diocese's director of pastoral services. Green Bay has also chosen to close parishes over a protracted period of time. Since 1990, it has reduced the number of parishes from 214 to 183. The process has not been easy--"each of these communities would like to maintain the status quo," Mogilka said--but the slower, more gradual process has seemed to ease resentments.

The Albany, New York, diocese has also chosen the gradual route. In ten years, diocesan leaders have shrunk the number of parishes from 194 to 175. What's more, there is now a long-range plan for every church in the diocese, which is available to the laity. That way, they can know what to expect when the time comes for more parishes to close. Still, "there's no perfect process," said Sister Kathleen Turley, who assisted in the consolidation. One problem, she says, is that the laypeople who help decide the future of a parish are often not accustomed to taking part in such deliberations. "The people who are part of this process are just good people who go to church on Sunday who really don't understand what you're talking about when you say, What is the mission of the church? And so one of our challenges is how do you educate and at the same time involve these people in a process that's moving forward," Turley told me. Some wonder whether it might be easier for all concerned to close parishes all at one time. Resentment is inevitable; why not get it over and done with? "There are pastors who say, 'Why don't we accept the O'Malley plan?'" Turley said. "It's hard to know what's the best choice."

Following a growing trend nationwide, both Albany and Green Bay have sought to supplement their aging clergy with what Albany calls "parish-life directors." They are deacons, women religious, or lay ministers who effectively serve as pastors of congregations, though they are unable to celebrate the Eucharist. Instead, they hold Communion services where the Eucharist is distributed using previously consecrated hosts. Parish directors also visit sick parishioners, help couples prepare for marriage, and perform other tasks traditionally assigned to a priest. Not surprisingly, a majority of current pastoral directors are women. According to a recent survey, women religious make up the largest number of pastoral directors.

The arrival of a parish director can be difficult for a community. "There always is an awkwardness when a parish director is initially appointed," Mogilka said. "Given our Catholic heritage, there is always going to be a longing for a priest." The situation can prove rocky. Parish directors and lay ministers are asked to prepare candidates for baptism or marriage, then to step aside when a priest arrives to administer the sacraments. (This is not the case for deacons, who are able to witness marriages and perform baptisms.) This can fuel resentment and could, in the long term, create two classes of pastoral workers. It will also prompt some to question why pastoral directors cannot be ordained. As Thomas Groome of Boston College told me: "I don't think when Jesus said, 'Do this in memory of me' he meant consecrate enough hosts to last a month."

Priestless parishes pose other problems. In Church magazine (Summer 2003), Joseph Komonchak wrote that although priestless parishes offer many opportunities for the laity to become involved, "alternate services in the absence of priests runs the danger of shifting the focus of church life away from the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, toward a focus on Scripture." Another danger is that, with no priest present, the community will see itself as a free-floating entity, with little if any connection to the larger church. Pope John Paul II has written that the ordained minister "is a gift which the assembly receives through episcopal succession going back to the Apostles" and that the "community is by itself incapable of providing an ordained minister." Framed in these terms, one can see why some bishops are hesitant to embrace pastoral directors as the solution to the clergy shortage.

Still, it is problematic that some bishops have chosen to use pastoral directors while others have not. If nothing else, this sends mixed messages. It is also emblematic of a larger problem. As became apparent during the sexual-abuse scandal, each bishop is sovereign in his own diocese; he alone decides which policies to implement. Therefore, if a bishop chooses to close a particular parish instead of bringing in a lay minister, he is free to do so. He is also free not to close parishes, and to leave the problem to his successor. This, it appears, is what happened in Boston: Cardinal Bernard Law hadn't closed parishes, so O'Malley had to close a large number at one time. Several East Coast dioceses now confront the same problem. "Eastern dioceses have been a little bit late in the whole game," said Sister Donna Ciangio, director of pastoral services at the National Pastoral Life Center in New York.

Each diocese faces unique problems and so there can be no single model for closing and merging parishes. That said, a few lessons have been learned. First, some churches should close. It makes sense for neighboring parishes to share or consolidate services--such as Masses or religious education programs--where possible. Second, the consequences of closing a parish are not felt by the Catholic community alone. Inner-city neighborhoods have come to rely on Catholic churches and schools; it would be a mistake to abandon these areas entirely. What's more, these parishes are visible reminders of those who have gone before us, an important connection to the communion of saints. "To close so many parishes in a single blow ... where generations of people have prayed, where the sacraments have been dispensed to hundreds of thousands of people ... [is] kind of un-Catholic in its sensibilities," Leslie Tentler noted.

Third, when parishes have to close, it should be done gradually and involve consultation with parishioners. This may take more time and presumably cost more, but it will be easier on the community in the long run. Fourth, parishes should not be closed simply because there are not enough priests to staff them. If that is the principal justification for parish closings, it will create great anxiety among Catholics who will worry that their church could be closed at any moment, even if the pews are full. Instead, bishops should recognize pastoral ministers as an invaluable resource and hire them to serve vibrant parishes if a priest is not available. As previously noted, Catholic communities have persevered in the past without a priest. At the same time, diocesan leaders must work especially hard to make clear the differences between a Mass and a Communion service. Pastoral ministers should also make clear that their authority is derived from their bishop, and that the local community is intimately connected to the universal church through baptism as well as through the priesthood.

Finally, though parish closings will inevitably be difficult, they offer a remarkable opportunity, both for the laity and for the church's leadership. There is a desire as well as a need for laypeople to assume more responsibility in their local church. Granted, positions on parish consultation boards and as lay ministers are generally only advisory in nature and may not offer the kind of theological or ecclesiastical influence many seek. Still, theological form has been known to follow pastoral function. With time, the visible role of laity in every aspect of church life may have a significant effect on how the hierarchy, as well as those in the pews, think about the nature of authority in the church. Perhaps the increasing role of women in parish life, specifically in the liturgy, will induce church leaders to place them in more positions of real authority and influence. This isn't a radical idea: Catholic tradition has long held that lex orandi, lex credendi--how we worship determines what we believe.

The closing and merging of parishes also offer church leaders the opportunity to rethink how best to minister to Catholics. The forces behind the closings are many, and some--such as the disaffection of young Catholics--can potentially be addressed with better programs or policies. But the pressure on the viability of parishes also reflects deeper social and economic change. Parishes were built to minister to tight-knit Catholic communities, and many of those communities no longer exist. Any parish consolidation process, therefore, should be part of a broader analysis of existing ministry programs. The parish--built mostly for urban, immigrant communities--may not be the way to serve some Catholics. Bishops should not be afraid to experiment with different forms of ministry, such as small Christian communities or neighborhood ministers (ordained or lay) who work out of their homes.

These proposals will inevitably be seen as a diminishment of the church's vitality and presence by those who grew up in the bustling church of the 1950s and 1960s. But it helps to remember that the church, both local and universal, has faced these problems before. Hard work and imaginative thinking helped build the parish system we have today. The same kind of energy must be applied to creating new ministries for a new generation of Catholics.

Maurice Timothy Reidy is an associate editor of Commonweal.