Catholics in Baltimore are calling for churches to be kept open

More than 1,000 people showed up at Archbishop Curley High School Thursday evening to speak out about a proposal to close about two-thirds of the city’s Catholic churches due to declining attendance.

They talked about the food banks and youth groups, masses and sacraments, Christmas bazaars and summer festivals in parishes that are about to close. But most of all, they talked about the deep bonds they shared with their fellow parishioners and the churches they had attended for decades.

Robby Jackson, a member of St. Ann’s, a 150-year-old church with a predominantly black congregation, said closing the church “would be like ripping the heart out of the community we serve.”

The speakers took part in a listening session hosted by the archdiocese in response to the Seek the City to Come proposal, which would reduce the number of parishes in Baltimore City and select nearby suburbs from 61 to 21. It would reduce the number of worship services. , or churches where mass is celebrated, from 59 to 26.

Parishes would be combined largely based on geography, a sticking point for many Catholics in Baltimore as each parish generally attracts like-minded people. Some parishes are very conservative; others are more liberal. Some are predominantly black, Latinx or Filipino.

Visitation to Catholic churches has fallen sharply in recent decades. In the mid-twentieth century, more than 250,000 Catholics worshiped in the city; Today, about 5,000 to 8,000 people attend services, and many of them live in surrounding counties.

Still, Baltimore’s Catholic community seemed vital and passionate Thursday evening as cars left Curley’s parking lot and filled the nearby neighborhood. About 400 people crowded into the cafeteria at Curley, an all-boys Catholic high school in northeast Baltimore, and another 700 gathered in the auditorium. The majority of attendees were over 60, and many spoke of decades of volunteering and donating to their church.

The crowd grumbled as archdiocese officials began a presentation on the proposal to close and consolidate parishes. “We can read,” one man muttered.

Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, the pastor of Baltimore and one of the plan’s architects, said the goal was to create a sustainable church and be able to attract new converts to the faith.

“The group of people coming to our churches is getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “In many of our parishes, there are no young people coming after us. At one point all these churches were filled to overflowing.”

Attendees shouted out the suggestion that parish groups meet to discuss the proposal, saying they wanted to maximize their time to provide feedback. The facilitators shifted to bring parish representatives to the front, but before they began, a man in a wheelchair rolled to the front of the room to criticize the lack of accommodations for people with disabilities in many churches.

One of the largest and most energetic groups waved Polish flags and wore T-shirts with the name Holy Rosary, a Polish parish in Fells Point. The church is not planned to close, but the archdiocese’s proposal would move several other congregations, including a Spanish-speaking congregation, to Holy Rosary.

Holy Rosary parishioner Dorothy Rostkowski began her address with a short prayer in Polish. She questioned the Biblical basis for the archdiocese’s decision to close churches due to declining attendance.

“When did Jesus tell his disciples that if they failed to attract 700 people, he would not give his Sermon on the Mount?” she asked.

A listening session in Spanish for the Latinx community is planned for Monday at 7 p.m. at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Southeast Baltimore, but many people at Thursday’s meeting spoke about the ways in which the recent wave of Latin American immigrants have revived their churches. .

Rebecca Bankard said her church, Our Lady of Fatima in Southeast Baltimore, struggled to attract members a few years ago but is now overflowing with devoted parishioners from Latin America.

“We have grown into a thriving and vibrant parish,” she said, explaining how the church now holds bilingual Masses and outdoor rosary prayer sessions every year from May to September.

Many parishioners said that if their church closed, there would be only one Catholic church nearby in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Sharon Johnson-Stewart, a parishioner at St. Ann’s, described the rich history of the church on Greenmount Avenue in East Baltimore. A sea captain built the church to fulfill a promise he made to God during a storm. More than a century later, the archdiocese ordained its black priest here. Today it is a hub for community action programs and a safe haven for students from neighboring Mother Seton Academy, she said.

“Thousands of dollars were spent on consultants during the Seek the City initiative,” Johnson-Stewart said. “Would that money be better spent helping parishes?”

A final listening session is scheduled for 6:30 PM on Tuesday, April 30 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Guilford.

A final decision on the proposal is expected to be announced in June. The process of consolidating parishes, deconsecrating and selling churches would likely take several years.

Church officials say the closures are not related to the archdiocese’s decision to file for bankruptcy in September, before a state law took effect allowing more survivors of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits. Last year, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General released a 456-page report outlining decades of sexual, physical and emotional abuse by more than a hundred members of the clergy.

Many attendees called out the archdiocese for proposing to close churches in the city and less affluent areas of surrounding counties, rather than the wealthy suburbs. They also questioned Lewandowski’s comments about seeking converts among people who do not belong to a church.

“Frankly, the timing for such a lofty undertaking couldn’t be worse,” says Barbara Pivonski of St. Clare’s in Essex. “We as practicing Catholics have the task of enticing people to either return to their Catholic fathers or consider joining the faith. Given the lawsuits, the bankruptcy and now the closure of 70 percent of churches in lower income areas, it’s hard to have that conversation with anyone.”