West Side story
10 parishes take hand in restructuring

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Parishioners of 10 West Side parishes know this much: Their parishes cannot continue to function as they have, with not enough people, not enough priests and not enough money to support that many independent faith communities in their area.

But what form the restructuring will take remains to be determined after a May 17 meeting that was the culmination of a nearly two-year planning process designed to get the pastors and people involved in generating creative solutions.

The final decision will be made by Cardinal George, and might not be announced for several months.

About 40 members of the committee which has been working on the plan attended the meeting, according to Jean Welter, the archdiocese’s director of research and planning. The mood, she said, was very thoughtful, prayerful and calm. “They all would like to keep all 10 open, but realize just not possible.”

The group presented three main scenarios to Auxiliary Bishop John Manz at the meeting according to participants. Options included closing six of the parishes, closing five and building a new church in the North Lawndale community, or officially closing all 10 and then asking all of their members to come together and choose five or six sites to re-open.

Any of the options could be combined with a plan to keep one or more of closed churches as a mission site for whatever new parishes or remaining parishes exist. Such a site would offer limited services, such as maybe one Mass each weekend.

“A key ingredient of all scenarios was to keep a Catholic presence in all areas of the community,” Welter said.

Redemptorist Father Ramon Dompke, pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes (South Keeler), said he suggested officially closing all the parishes.

“That way, you have no winners and no losers,” said Dompke. “You take away the emphasis from the past and put it on the present and future.”

That’s one positive aspect of the suggestion to close five parishes and build a new church in North Lawndale, he said.

“Then you would have completely new life,” he said. “It’s a question of, do you pour big bucks into all these old churches to repair them, or pour slightly more bucks into a brand-new church, and maybe sell the old churches to help pay for it?”

However, he acknowledged, some people will try to find winners and losers whatever happens.

Bishop Manz agreed that whatever the final decision is, some people will be angered, no matter how long the process or how much input the community members have given.

“People understand that we can’t keep all the churches open,” he said. “But everyone wants it to be someone else’s church. … How do ask someone to make the decision to close their own parish?”

Betty Freeman, a 48-year parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes, has seen her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren baptized there, and said that if it has to close, it will be hard for her to say goodbye. But after serving on the committee, she’s resigned to the idea that it might happen.

“It’s sad,” she said. “But realistically, some have got to close.”

Freeman said committee members had thought they might be able to get by with plans to close two or three of the 10 parishes, which include St. Agatha, Precious Blood, Blessed Sacrament, St. Martin De Porres, St. Angela, Our Lady Help of Christians, St. Malachy, Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica and Presentation B.V.M., in addition to Our Lady of Lourdes. It wasn’t until near the end of the process that they understood that the 10 parishes combined had, according to archdiocesan figures, enough income to support only three fully staffed parishes.

Bishop Manz initiated the planning process for the area when Cardinal George asked all six episcopal vicars to look at areas that either had more parishes than they could support or were undergoing rapid demographic changes. Ideally, every parish should have a congregations of more than 500 worshippers each weekend during the annual October count; the 10 parishes involved in this process draw a total of 2,500, and some of them draw fewer than 100 people each weekend.

The problem isn’t solely financial, although it strains the parish’s budgets to maintain older churches that were built for far larger congregations. It also has to do with number of priests available to be pastors, Bishop Manz said.

Already, Father Kenneth Brigham serves as the pastor of three of the 10 parishes: Our Lady Help of Christians, St. Martin de Porres and St. Angela. He is scheduled to retire next year. He has help from resident priests at all three, but they are not incardinated in the archdiocese and not eligible to serve as pastors, Manz said. Meanwhile, Oblate Father Patrick Casey is serving as pastor at both St. Malachy and Precious Blood parishes.

But it’s still too soon for anyone to say they know how many or which parishes will remain open or be closed, the bishop said. He plans to discuss the three recommendations with Cardinal George before coming up with a single plan, which the cardinal will likely want to present to the archdiocesan Presbyteral Council in the fall before making a final decision.

That decision then will take several months at least to implement, archdiocesan officials said.

That doesn’t mean Freeman and other parishioners will have to wait that long for a clearer indication of what will happen, he said.

“I would think we would have to say something relatively soon, maybe within a month or several weeks, just to deal with the rumors,” he said.