Our Lady of the Rosary
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.
The old urban areas are simply going to have to close some parishes - they don't have the population to support them any more.
Even in Atlanta, where we have a lot more Catholics than we used to, there are some downtown parishes that need to go. The downtown has lost its resident population almost completely -- almost nobody lives south of Five Points and very few north of there until you get up to Peachtree & Alexander. Immaculate Conception will stay even though it has no real parish population -- it's reinvented itself as a noontime church for the office workers. But I think sooner or later the Archdiocese is going to have to do some reconfiguring.
Like the former parishioner, I'm glad the building is being used as a church (I wonder did they deconsecrate it already?)
Why would have they have to?
Aren't we ALL one Body?
Do Evangelicals consecrate a new building?
It's better than when they turn churches into discos and nightclubs!
I think it had to be deconsecrated before it could be sold. I don't think you are allowed to sell consecrated items - (sin of simony.)
That's right -- I remember the tremendous brouhaha when somebody was selling consecrated items on EBay. (Usual dodge - selling the reliquary or container, not the consecrated item). I think some idiot may actually have offered a Host on EBay - although whether it was unconsecrated or not may have been in some doubt . ..
Not really. The "Church" is the congregation, not the building. Evangelical Churches can meet just about anywhere (as it was in the beginning when there were no dedicated church buildings and Christians met in homes or anywhere else they could find to meet.) A building is typically "blessed", but it is generally no more mystical than blessing your food.
Here is another article on this:
Boston church buys Our Lady in Stoughton: City’s largest black church pays $3M for closed Catholic facility
By Patriot Ledger staff
STOUGHTON - The Jubilee Christian Church in Boston has bought the closed Our Lady of the Rosary Church and rectory for $3 million.
The sale was recorded March 17.
A spokesman for Jubilee Christian Church couldn’t be reached for comment about the church’s plans for the property.
Our Lady of the Rosary, which opened in 1958, closed in February 2005 as part of the archdiocese’s consolidation plan stemming from a shortage of priests, money and declining attendance.
Some parishioners wondered which Stoughton church would close - Our Lady of the Rosary or St. James.
Boston Archbishop O’Malley, who was recently elevated to cardinal, decided in December 2004 to close Our Lady of the Rosary on Park Street when officials found structural problems with the building. The estimated cost to fixed the building was reportedly $500,000.
Town meeting a year ago rejected a plan to rezone the property.
The planning board had proposed designating all of the church’s property at the corner of Park and South streets as a business district. Much of the land is zoned for residential use.
The Jubilee Christian Church located on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston’s Dorchester section is the largest inner city congregation in New England, according to its Web site.
It is headed by Bishop G.A. Thompson, who is founder and senior pastor.
Bishop Thompson is former pastor of the Shawmut Community Church of God in Boston's South End.
He and his wife, Pastor Yvonne Thompson, later founded the New Covenant Christian Church, which is now called the Jubilee Christian Church.
The church’s Web site states Bishop Thompson was given a vision to establish ‘‘a house of worship that would transform the city of Boston spiritually, economically, socially, educationally, politically, and culturally - by any godly means necessary.’’
The Jubilee Christian Church reportedly has more than 4,000 active members and ministers to nearly 5,000 during three Sunday services.
Bishop Thompson is presently the president of the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston, the largest African-American clergy association in New England that serves more than 30,000 people in the Boston area.
Copyright 2006 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Wednesday, April 05, 2006
This seems backwards to me, unless they mean that in addition to removing the pews, they're going to fill all the previously vacant space with chairs.
As a general rule, pews hold more people than a similar array of chairs, because you can put more people into the pews just by having them sit closer together. With chairs, each person takes a "chair-sized" space, regardless of the person's size.
Actually Stoughton isn't an "Urban" area it's a middle to upper middle class (even aruably affluent) suburb South of Boston.
It's actually a growing community with an influx of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants who are joining Urban transplants who've moved into the area.
It's also about 25 miles from where the the Evangelical Congregation is located.
On the face of it, it appears that the Evangelical Congregation is about to abandon an Urban area for the greener pastures of an affluent suburb.
oops, forgot to mention, it's a very ugly building in need of about 500k in repairs.
"Evangelical church to buy former Catholic parish"
Well, I guess that one way to get Evangelicals into a Catholic Church?
"It's better than when they turn churches into discos and nightclubs!"
Exactly. Nearby there's a church that's been converted into a rock climbing gym.
"replace the pews with chairs to accommodate more people"
Is this really necessary?
I speak from personal experience . . . our former ECUSA church was built in the 60s when Episcopalians were taking a page from VCII . . . it was a "church in the round" with no choir, no organ . . . and bucket seats instead of pews. Supposedly the symbolism was "each person's individuality before God" -- but it meant you couldn't tuck your children under your wing during the service.
When the sanctuary was renovated a few years ago, they put pews in. My husband was head usher at the time, and he said it increased the capacity of the church significantly. Not double or anything like that, but maybe 30 percent. If there're little kids (or good friends) they hardly take up any space in a pew, where with the bus stop seats every kid had to have his own chair.
Perhaps you are right concerning inner-city demographics. But Stoughton is a fairly wealthy suburb 15 miles south of Boston. The distribution of Catholic Churches in the area is still in-sync with the number of Catholics living there.
The problem is that the archdiocese is intent on selling churches to pay off the sexual abuse settlement, and that is not a problem about demographics. At the very least, the low Mass attendance of late is explainable as something the archdiocese itself is responsible for (the aftermath of the abuse scandal itself, heaped on decades of poor catechesis), and the archdiocese should be taking *serious* steps to do whatever is necessary to win people back and finally catechize them *before* it closes even one church.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the archdiocese, via the proceeds of a $100 million sale of seminary and chancery land and buildings last year, already HAS virtually the entire amount of the settlement ready to go. Why, then, does it feel the need to close one parish in five throughout the archdiocese at *this* time? Compounding the problem still further is the fact that the archdiocese is on public record as holding the deeds to over 1800 properties within the archdiocese itself (who knows what the potential figure is outside of it). Out of that, less than half have anything remotely to do with the primary mission of the Church (357 parishes, about 200 parish centers, 100 schools, a few hospitals). When one considers that *no* effort is being made to sell-off some of the income generating properties *first*, one can see the seeds for more long-term ill-will among already demoralized Catholics around here.
The Church is not "about" raising income, though, obviously, there is a need to raise funds. It's primary mission is to lay a foundation for the salvation of souls. Along the way to that end, the Church has an Everest of mea culpa's to put on prime time TV, an equally challenging mountain of retroactive orthodox catechesis to instill in nearly everyone under 55 or so, the immediate removal of the extremely large and entrenched gay subculture within the ranks of the clergy, and the purging of priests and other "professionals" who seem to think that the *only* mission of the Church is social service along the lines of the usual misguided "peace and justice" schtick.
When these things are accomplished, the Church may find itself welcoming back a lot more people due to a new sense of relevancy and contrition for past misfeasance, malfeasance and spiritual neglect. It *might* then need to have some in-place infrastructure to deal with the reverts. Closing the huge number of parishes contemplated is NOT a viable means to that end, and is a massive slap in the face to the descendants of the thousands of people who built these parishes with sweat equity and their scraped together pennies. These closures will serve to only guarantee that contributions will be *permanently* down in the long run. If the guys running the show around here are mere pragmatists, they might want to at least consider that fact.
Spot-on!
Our Lady of the Rosary
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