Posted on 02/20/2017 12:41:26 PM PST by BlessedBeGod
If Cdl. Blase Cupich gets his way, the 102-year-old landmark will be sold to the Chicago Academy of Music, its convent converted into dormitories, its rectory turned into a living space for musicians, and its Italian marble sanctuary renovated into a stage...
In July, parishioners formed the nonprofit St. Adalbert Preservation Society, and filed appeals to the archdiocese against selling off the church. A canon lawyer also filed an appeal to Rome asking that Cupich's decision be reversed.
Multiple requests by the group to meet with Cdl. Cupich have gone unanswered.
Emily Nielson, co-founder of the Coalition to Save the Shrine and a Chicagoan who supports saving the parish, spoke with Church Militant. "It is disappointing that, over the past year of tireless work by the parishioners of St. Adalbert's (now the St. Adalbert Preservation Society), including raising over a million dollars and forming valuable partnerships with community groups, the archdiocese has consistently refused to meet with them," she said...
Although the Academy says it's open to sharing its renovated space with Massgoers on Sunday, parishioners object to putting the sacred space to profane use...
"The Archdiocese has been positing a false dichotomy in which a sale to CAM is presented as the only alternative to demolition," Nielson told Church Militant.
Nielson also notes the double standard of the archdiocese, which is using an image of St. Adalbert's "iconic towers and graceful façade" to help raise millions for its capital campaign, all the while planning to sell it off to a secular group.
"That the archdiocese should use this beautiful churchs image to attract donations while simultaneously seeking to sell it away from its dedicated parishioners shows a cynicism of the deepest order'," she remarked. "It is only more heartbreaking that a number of the faithful most committed to St. Adalbert's are the direct descendants of the people who built it in the first place...
Basically it is a building....a pretty one, a historic one, but a building. If it cannot be supported in its present status, then to sell it to a reputable music organization where it will be loved and treated with respect sounds O.K. to me. Our city had trhee Catholic churches when we moved here...as the population changed we couldn’t support all of them,. We now use one, one has been razed, and one is in use by a mission type organization that feeds the hungry and homeless....time goes by.
99% this is a done deal, like scores of others across the country. If the church has been desacralized (blessed Sacrament removed) it’s 100%.
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