You're right, of course, as so many 'wreckovated' catholic churches discovered after making a similar move. And ... wood endures much longer than fabric.
Milwaukee Cathedral after wreckovation.
(seating capacity dropped from 720 to 694)
Posted on 04/06/2006 6:39:57 AM PDT by NYer
(Boston - AP) - One of Boston's largest churches is expanding into the suburbs.
The seven-thousand strong Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan is spending three million dollars to buy a closed Catholic church in Stoughton.
Jubilee founder Gilbert Thompson says the new church will serve about two-thousand congregants who live in the Brockton and Stoughton areas.
He says Jubilee will purchase the old Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic church, update the sound system, replace the pews with chairs to accommodate more people, and call it Jubilee South.
The new church is scheduled to open in the fall.
Our Lady was shuttered as part of the Archdiocese of Boston's reconfiguration plan.
One former parishioner says she is glad the building will still be used as a house of worship instead of being converted into condos.
It *is* rather ugly, but I'd be skeptical about the $500K repair amount. The archdiocese has become notorious in inflating repair figures as part of the excuse for closing parishes. My parish, Holy Trinity in the South End, is a case in point. It has been let out that we "need" $250,000 in repairs, but outside contractors have been brought in by the parishioners, and the repair total is closer to $50,000, and some of that is merely cosmetic, not structural.
The title of the article is all wrong.
They are not buying the parish. They are buying the church building.
BIG difference.
Exactly! Our parish has chairs, because it's a "multi-purpose facility," not a canonical church building, and we have to be able to move the chairs out for multi-purposes. It really limits the number of people who can sit down for Mass.
If we're still here when the building committee starts up for the "real church," I'm going to make sure I get on it to agitate for pews!
Known as suppression.
Canon Law
Aren't we ALL one Body?
Short answer, no.
Maybe the Archdiocese wants to put the steeple back on...that might bring it up to 250k.
Oh, maybe it's 50k in repairs and 200k kick back to the Archbishop.
Few people know it, but you have to be on a special contractors list to do work for the Archdiocese and it's very difficult to get on that list (my Uncle is a Contractor that does Slate and Copper Roofs) and they typically use the same contractors over and over (who suprise, suprise are BIG donors)
You're right, of course, as so many 'wreckovated' catholic churches discovered after making a similar move. And ... wood endures much longer than fabric.
Milwaukee Cathedral after wreckovation.
(seating capacity dropped from 720 to 694)
Is anyone familiar with the rite to deconsecrate a Catholic Church?
Now that would be very bad financial planning. Those are the properties anybody would keep.
I don't think the shoes in Boston are through dropping. Unfortunately, the benchmark has been established that people can come forward and make allegations 30-40 years after the fact, when the offender and witnesses are all dead and memories have faded - doesn't seem to be any statute of limitations on this at all.
Now, the Boston archdiocese has nobody to blame but itself for being in this fix, given its long history of heterodox, pro-homosexual, enabling behavior. At the same time, though, they have put themselves in a fix where almost anyone can make an allegation and get a settlement. So they may see still more financial obligations coming down the road.
I would not be in Cardinal O'Malley's shoes for quids.
But that's for religious. Does it also apply to parishes?
O'Malley doesn't wear shoes, he wear $125 sandals.
Maybe he can use the money he saves on clothes.
I have to disagree. Sure, from a secular mindset, selling-off income property isn't so shrewd. But we're supposed to go beyond the secular mindset here, and allow the workings of the Holy Spirit to appear a bit counter-intuitive.
Which is worse: to sell off income property and pay off the abuse scandal from the proceeds, keeping parishes intact for the day when the Restoration we're always hearing about comes to pass; or selling the church buildings now, compounding immeasurably the feelings of ill-will palpably present here (you have no idea!) and guaranteeing that any thoughts of Restoration will be merely a pipe dream locally?
In the former case, the income property sell off can help garner some good will among the 6 of 7 Catholics who have abandoned the day-to-day practice of the Faith due to many factors, the abuse scandal merely being the splashiest and most recent. In the latter case, selling off churches will not only harden the hearts of many people who will, wrongly, but understandably on the merely human level, see the mammon-based rationale of the AoB as an excuse never to return, but likely will thereby thoroughly endanger many thousands of souls with respect to salvation. Is that not the Church's primary concern?
For forty years, the Catholic Church in Boston has undergone a self-inflicted period of gradual decline. Virtually all of the factors for Catholic flight can be remedied with a healthy helping of orthodox teaching of both children and (retroactively) adults, orthodox liturgical practice, palpable consistency of application of Catholic moral principles to the apostate "Catholic" politicos hereabouts, and sincerity from the archdiocese in its *frequent* and *public* apologies for the abuse scandal and unambiguous remedies for the same. Let them do *these* things before they close a single parish!
IF they do these things, and IF the hoped-for results are not forthcoming, THEN they can start closing parishes, for then, we will have become as relevant a Christian voice as the ECUSA parish you yourself left. But no parish should close until such things are tried! The churches are quasi-empty around here due to misfeasance and malfeasance of the archdiocese for decades. Let THEM shoulder the burden for once, instead of shifting the burden to the long-suffering in the pews who have done nothing to deserve the self-immolation of the Catholic Church in Boston!
Suppression and deconsecration are not the same thing. Suppression refers to the parish (the congregation), deconsecration refers to the building. A few years ago my parish along with two neighboring parishes in the Diocese of Fall River were suppressed and a new parish formed located at the church building one block away from my church. My church continues to be used for daily mass, weddings and funerals for the new parish.
I'm curious as to which ones you think those are. And I'm posting (rather than sending a private note) because I think the question has some general interest. My wife and I, once urban pioneer types, now live over 30 miles from Atlanta, but we drive downtown at least four times a week for services or ministries at Our Lady of Lourdes church. Our parish now has four weekend masses, and three of them are always filled to capacity. Midnight mass at Christmas was celebrated in the gigantic new sanctuary at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and our Easter Sunday masses will be held in a concert hall because we just do not have enough room for all the people who want to attend.
Many of our fellow parishioners also travel long distances to come to Lourdes. So in the case of our own parish, it seems to me that physical proximity to the church buildings is not all that important. I suspect that would be the case elsewhere if more parishes offered a beautiful, reverent liturgy and a variety of opportunities to serve in meaningful parish ministries.
Generally a new building is "dedicated" to God.
Semantics. The term deconsecration, just like defrock, isn't found in Canon Law.
That is true. I never noticed a difference in the disposition of pews, Catholic vs. Protestant.
Thanks! I really didn't know, since my family was Episcopalian (Catholic Lite) until we jumped ship to Rome.
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