Detroit Free Press
Dec. 2, 2011
Detroit Catholic Archbishop Allen Vigneron said Thursday that he is likely to shutter about 48 churches in the next five years.
In doing so, Vigneron would be following the recommendations of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, which were released Wednesday night. The affected parishes, among the first to close as soon as next year, would be in Detroit, Livonia, Wyandotte, Roseville, Harper Woods, and River Rouge or Ecorse.
"I would need a pretty good reason to move away from the recommendations," said Vigneron, the spiritual leader of 1.4 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Detroit. "It's not set in stone. New factors may emerge."
The proposed closings would affect nearly 20% of the parishes in the archdiocese, reducing the number from 270 to 222 across six counties in southeastern Michigan.
Critics of the reorganization said archdiocesan leaders didn't listen to them or value their work in small parishes, particularly in Detroit.
Longtime activist and retired Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton decried the proposed closings and mergers as "abandoning the city."
Gumbleton said that "it disappoints him greatly" to hear that his former longtime parish, St. Leo on Detroit's near-west side, is targeted for likely closure next year. The panel recommends merging it with St. Cecilia, then closing and selling St. Leo, while retaining a building there for community outreach. The building would be named after Gumbleton.
"To me, it looks like a disaster in a way," Gumbleton said. "The institutional presence of the Catholic Church is going to be gone from the city of Detroit in any way."
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But Sister Jolene Van Handel, a parish minister at Nativity, said her parish sustains itself, has 200 families and is in a historic building that should be preserved.
"People say we have these beautiful, historical churches that need to be preserved, and you want to build a new one. That's stupidity," Van Handel said. "We have a lot of alumni who help keep our parishes going. If this is closed, they don't care about somebody else's building."
She urged Vigneron to think creatively about using lay leadership to keep parishes going, even when priests are in short supply.
"I think if they allowed lay leadership, we could manage to keep our parishes going. We could have communion services, even if we didn't have a priest for mass. These things can happen if they allow us to have creative planning," Van Handel said.
(same theme as the Austrians, Germans, Belgians - Mike)
full story at Detroit Free Press
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