Posted on 02/11/2006 5:51:13 AM PST by siunevada
NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- The Archdiocese of New Orleans issued a pastoral plan Feb. 9 that calls for the closing of seven parishes and delays the reopening of 23 others until there are enough parishioners in an area to warrant the resumption of pastoral ministry.
It also calls for establishing six centralized elementary schools, which before the storm had served primarily as individual parish elementary schools.
The archdiocese, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is facing unknown projections regarding its future Catholic population and hundreds of its properties suffered extensive damage.
New Orleans Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes projected that the archdiocese, which before Katrina was home to nearly a half-million Catholics in 142 parishes, might see its Catholic population return in the next two years to only 60 percent to 65 percent of its August 2005 levels, which would mean a Catholic population of about 295,000.
The pastoral plan, which will take effect March 15, establishes a framework for pastoral ministry in the seven deaneries that sustained the greatest damage from the Aug. 29 storm. Those seven deaneries include the areas of Orleans, St. Bernard and lower Plaquemines civil parishes that were devastated by Katrina's winds and floodwaters.
The seven parishes that will close are St. Augustine, St. John the Baptist, St. Nicholas of Myra, St. Philip the Apostle, St. Rose of Lima and St. Theresa of the Child Jesus in New Orleans and St. Jude in Diamond.
However, St. Augustine Church will remain open as a place of worship, and St. John the Baptist Church, familiar to the thousands of daily commuters who pass its golden dome adjacent to Interstate 10, will remain available as a site for weddings and funerals only.
The plan calls for a formal review process in 18 months, but Archbishop Hughes said the review could occur sooner if an area is repopulated more quickly and a parish needs to reopen.
The plan creates 14 "cluster" parishes in the affected areas that will offer pastoral ministry to another parish or parishes that have yet to reopen. The plan is particularly mindful of preserving worship communities for African-American, Asian and Hispanic Catholics, Archbishop Hughes said.
Pastors of parishes that have closed or have yet to reopen will soon receive new assignments, and Archbishop Hughes said he will offer to send two priests to the Diocese of Baton Rouge for the next two years in gratitude for the help that diocese provided in hosting the archdiocese's central offices and thousands of evacuees after the storm.
Another priest may be offered a ministry assignment in the Diocese of Lake Charles, which was severely impacted by Hurricane Rita.
Because the archdiocese placed a priority on developing a pastoral plan for the seven deaneries most severely affected by Katrina, the plan does not address pastoral or educational ministry in the church parishes located in Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany and Washington civil parishes.
Most of the church parishes in those areas are back in full operation, and many have experienced an influx of parishioners resulting from population shifts after Katrina.
The pastoral plan also provides for new initiatives for parish-based social services in the seven affected deaneries, including community outreach, a family literacy program and a social service center.
"We're obviously going to have to make sacrifices, but I see us being able to live the Gospel message more directly," Archbishop Hughes said in announcing the plan.
"When we experience the loss of material things, there's an invitation to focus on what is more lasting and important. I would hope that even as we make sacrifices and scale back we will at the same time live more simply as families and as church," he said.
Of the seven parishes that are closing, only one -- St. Nicholas of Myra on Lake St. Catherine -- was destroyed by Katrina, although several received substantial damage.
Deliberations on the pastoral plan began in October, about a month after the storm. Archbishop Hughes met with the priests of all 12 deaneries and then determined the archdiocese needed to focus on the seven most damaged deaneries.
He also consulted with the major superiors of men and women religious serving in the archdiocese to gauge their ability to maintain a presence in parishes and schools.
Edmundite Father Michael Jacques, the pastor of St. Peter Claver Church in New Orleans and head of the Council of Deans, coordinated the plan and said he was pleased Archbishop Hughes used a collaborative process.
"He was very concerned that the worship life, school life and social service life is available for the people of the archdiocese," Father Jacques told the Clarion Herald, the archdiocesan newspaper. "By this process he allowed that discussion to take place."
The archdiocese had a total of $13 million in flood insurance on its properties, and damage to more than 1,000 archdiocesan facilities far exceeded that amount. Archbishop Hughes estimated those damages at $84 million.
He also said the archdiocese had projected a $40 million deficit in operations by the end of December 2005, but insurance reimbursements, employee layoffs and the return to relatively normal operations in outlying church parishes had slashed the deficit to $4.5 million.
A lot of the hispanics moving into the area are going to be Catholic. The long term impact may be smaller than they think.
Just a random thought...
But at what point does the Archdiocese of New Orleans drop to the level of simply being a diocese?
The real crime is losing Our Lady of Good Counsel on Louisiana Avenue. It's a gorgeous church and there were plenty of parishoners as well.
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It shouldn't. It has been an Archdiocese since 1850. It is the Metropolitan See for the diocese of Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Houma-Thibodaux, Lafayette, Lake Charles and Shreveport.
Close the Churches where there are few parishioners and open new ones where the parishioners are.
This will be done without a lot of the rancor that would have existed had this been done without the situation of the hurricane. There is always such emotion surrounding the closing of a Parish, but sometimes it has to be done if there is no longer a base of support for it.
Don't ask me - That isn't covered in Calvin's Institutes.
I have often watched Archbishop Hughes on EWTN and he appears to be uncommonly knowledgeable,orthodox and holy and I have wished that the rest of them paid more attention especially to his presentations on catechesis. He called for a lot of changes and pointed out how lacking in Catholicism so many of the textbooks were.
I intend to send him money for his diocese,all of the collections taken up by the USCCB were funneled through that horrible Catholic Charities which receive much of their funding from government grants. For shame,our best means of evangelizing has always been the willingness to follow Christ and the Gospel message,what an opportunity to be light and leaven and salt. We should all be helping the needy,the sick,the poor and what an opportunity this has given us to be what we are meant to be.
I hope the little b bishops at the Conference start to get a grip and recognize what it means to be Catholic and how they have failed to lead their flocks.
Romulus and Bayourant,do you have any comments being right on the scene and all?
Are the predestined to be closed?
Yeah, I sent New Orleans a check as soon as they posted a mailing address in Baton Rouge when they had to relocate after the storm and also St. Charles Borromeo parish in Biloxi. I figured it would take a couple of weeks for the other dioceses to get a collection organized. There wasn't any reason to wait.
"There is always such emotion surrounding the closing of a Parish"
Especially when it is your own.
The worst part about Catholic Charities is their arbitrariness in deciding who is 'worthy' of help. On the MS Gulf Coast, they aren't giving that much money to folks because of their policy of not giving anything to families that are over 120% above poverty level. The problems is, almost everyone, even the 'poor' are above that level. There are families who have lost everything, but are 'middle class', so Catholic Charities is not helping them at all. Almost 90% of the money collected by CC in the collections after Katrina hasn't been distributed because of their policies.
My b-i-l is a pastor of a Parish in the Diocese of Biloxi, and this is driving him nuts because he sees the people who truly need help just being brushed aside. He started a group in his own Parish to help families who need their homes re-habbed. He wants to get folks back in place; their lives have been disrupted for way too long. They don't have the money to do the work themselves because the insurance companies haven't yet made any determinations, and the places where they worked may not be up and running yet, for the same reason. Until then, they're having to live in the FEMA trailers and wait for their jobs to return. He has a man in his Parish who is arranging for high school and college groups to come down and do service work. A group from our Parish is going down there in July.
That fits with things I've heard in the past about Catholic Charities.
Income needs testing in a disaster area? Good grief.
So: To whom do we direct our charitable efforts if Catholic "Charities" is playing stupid games?
My b-i-l's Parish school was the first to re-open on the coast. They only had a little roof damage. They're about 1/2 mile off the water and behind the raised railroad bed, so they didn't have the flooding like the area near the water. My b-i-l rode the storm out at the Parish Center, and watched the surge roll up the road and break just over the tracks, spilling over just slightly. He concurs with most others; the wind tore things up, then the surge carried away the debris, and created some more on its own.
Another way to help families directly is to donate to a tuition assistance fund for those who want to keep their kids in Catholic school, but don't have their regular income right now. They'd be able to pick it back up when their jobs come back, but for now they're in a tight spot. My b-i-l has a few families in his Parish School and the regional Catholic High school in this situation. If you would like to help them, contact me my freepmail, and I'll give you the address of his Parish. If he ends up with more money than his families need, he'll make sure that one of other Catholic Schools in the Diocese gets it, and can help its families.
The plan is particularly mindful of preserving worship communities for African-American, Asian and Hispanic Catholics, Archbishop Hughes said.
&&&
Are not all Catholics equal in importance? What is the relevance of racial/ethnic characteristics?
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