[Baltimore Sun] Sadness, anger, hope as Catholics confront new city alignment plan
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When Pat Furman went to Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church Sunday, as she has done regularly for more than 43 years, she had every reason to feel good about attending.
She’d brought her four children up in the church in Locust Point in South Baltimore. She’d seen seven grandchildren grow up there and relished seeing two of them celebrating confirmations there soon.
Furman was also proud of Good Counsel’s communal spirit, recent attendance, and record of charitable outreach.
So she was stunned when the Rev. Kevin Ewing announced from the pulpit that the church would be closed or repurposed under a proposal by the Baltimore archdiocese to realign its operations in the city.
“You could hear people gasp,” Furman, 67, said of the scene in church, which was founded in 1855. “It was ‘No, no, no. … We’ve done everything the archdiocese has asked, we’re doing everything right, and you’re going to shut us down? The feeling is, ‘We’re the forgotten community down here.’”
Furman was not the only one experiencing strong emotions. It has been just over a day since the nation’s oldest diocese rolled out an official proposal it could use in its ongoing plan to remake the landscape of Catholic life in its biggest city.
The proposal church leaders shared at Masses over the weekend as part of “Seek the City to Come” — a multiyear initiative through which it hopes to adjust to sinking attendance, declining revenues and the burdens of an aging, expensive infrastructure — would slash the number of parishes in Baltimore and adjacent suburbs from 61 to 21. It would cut the number of worship sites from 59 to 26.
It would also, if approved, incorporate three new models for parish life — the “mosaic,” “radiating parish” and “Catholic commons” models — as part of a reset aimed at streamlining ministries and concentrating resources to serve a city in distress more efficiently.
“We set out many months ago with a call to the faithful: Help the church in Baltimore minister to our neighbors and respond to the needs of the city for the centuries to come as we have since 1789,” the leader of the archdiocese, Archbishop William E. Lori, said in a statement released Sunday. “Together, we must design a plan that confronts decades of disinvestment and population loss in the city and brings the Eucharistic vision to life through mission and ministry.”
The proposal is not a final plan. Catholic faithful will have the opportunity to comment on its contents, offer suggestions and share their feelings both online and at two in-person meetings in the coming weeks.
The first such meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. on April 25 at Archbishop Curley High School in Orchard Ridge in East Baltimore, the second at Mount Saint Joseph’s High School In Irvington, Southwest Baltimore, at 6:30 p.m. on April 30.
“Seek the City has evolved as a direct result of public feedback, and we continue to stand by our statement that no decisions have been made, that there are no preconceived notions,” said Geri Royale Byrd, the archdiocese’s director of community and external affairs and a co-director of the project.
Seek the City to Come — named for a verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament that reads, “for here we have no lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come” — is a multiphase initiative that began in 2022 with listening sessions, visits by diocesan leaders to churches, and “hands-on building from pastors, parish leaders, parishioners and community members,” in the words of one church document. Later phases incorporated demographic research, public meetings, and the work of up to 200 clergy members and lay Catholics to generate preliminary maps and models.
Team leaders worked up incipient plans at meetings in February and March, refined them based on public input, finalized their first proposal on Friday and had parish pastors present it over the weekend.
After further input from the public and archdiocesan leaders, it will be presented to Lori next month. He’ll sign off on a final plan in late May or June.
As open as Seek the City leaders have been with the process, they say, not everyone has been paying close attention — and even for those who have, seeing a formal proposal for the first time is bringing home the message that big changes are on the way.
“It becomes very different when you see it on paper in black and white,” said Regine LaForest-Sharif, a member of St. Francis Xavier Church in the Broadway East neighborhood in East Baltimore who has been sharing developments with fellow parishioners for months. “It has become real even for those of us who have been involved.‘”
Responses across the city came in many forms. Some whose parishes would be repurposed or closed said they weren’t sure they would attend the worship sites that would anchor the new, larger parishes, either because they were too attached to their current churches or because it would be inconvenient.
Furman said the plan’s call to center a new South Baltimore parish at nearby Holy Cross in Federal Hill — where it would absorb St. Mary, Star of the Sea in Riverside, Our Lady of Good Counsel and other nearby churches — meant hundreds of parishioners in a fast-growing part of the city would be forced to get themselves every Sunday to a church with very little parking.
That, she said, along with feelings of hurt at having to sacrifice their parish, had many in her congregation saying they would start going to a nearby Lutheran church — or not attend church at all.
“The archdiocese has slapped us in the face,” she said, her voice roiling with emotion. “It’s awful.”
She wasn’t alone in expressing anger. As parish council president of a pastorate formed among St. Francis Xavier Church, St. Ann’s Church in the Barclay neighborhood, and St. Wenceslaus Church in MIddle East — all predominantly Black churches in East Baltimore — LaForest-Sharif is familiar with the challenges involved in bringing independent parishes into a harmonized whole.
“Some of the meetings have been very heated,” she said, as even God-fearing, loyal parishioners have squabbled over how to organize events across parish lines.
Many were upset, confused or sad when they learned Sunday that St. Ann’s and St. Wenceslaus would be folded into a parish anchored by St. Francis — and possibly attached to another territory anchored by St. Ignatius Church in Mount Vernon — under the plan, in part because families have attended their chosen church for decades and expected younger relations to enjoy sacraments there, too.
“I think everybody is very antsy and anxious about what this is all going to look like,” LaForest-Sharif said. “But we’re trying to be patient and prayerful and remain focused on the bigger picture.”
One part of the city where the proposal landed hard was in Northeast Baltimore, where for several years the Rev. Patrick Carrion has been serving as pastor for five churches — St. Francis of Assisi in Mayfield, Shrine of the Little Flower in Bel Air-Edison, St. Anthony of Padua and Church of the Most Precious Blood in Parkside, and St. Dominic in Glenham-Belford — organized into a pastorate loosely known as “the Five.”
Earlier Seek the City models the priest had seen indicated that at least one of those churches would remain a worship site, he said, and that had been encouraging to his modestly sized but faithful flock.
Across five Masses on Saturday and Sunday, though, Carrion had to announce that all five would be folded into a new “Near Northeast” parish, one anchored by St. Matthew Church on Loch Raven Boulevard.
“It was very sad, very daunting, to have to say to parishioners, ‘All five of our parishes are proposed to be closed,’” he said. “After the first two on Saturday, I thought, ‘Okay, maybe I can do this.’ But it never became easy.”
Carrion wove the announcements into his homilies but decided it would be inappropriate to open the floor for questions. Instead, he led a meeting for parishioners Sunday afternoon. About 50 people showed, he said, and flashed a range of emotions and concerns. Some came to learn the fate of St. Francis of Assisi School, which serves preschool through 8th grade at that parish. They were happy to be reassured that no parochial schools will be closed as a part of Seek the City.
Some, he said, were skeptical that the archdiocese is really listening to feedback, and others that thought the entire motive was financial.
Carrion says he bristled at the suggestions but understood where they were coming from.
“I’m not surprised people are angry,” he said. “You never think it’s going to be that day. And when that day happens, your reaction is still very emotional. It’s human nature.”
Sue Barcus can relate. A parishioner at St. Pius X in North Baltimore for 20 years, she had gotten the impression that the archdiocese would retain the church as a worship site, only to learn that the proposal would see it absorbed into a larger parish anchored by the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland.
She said St. Pius X has a tight community and a range of hard-to-replace ministries, including a volunteer-run garden that contributes fruits and vegetables to a nonprofit that supplies affordable housing.
Barcus said concepts like “mosaic” parishes are hard to understand and that many who are used to walking to St. Pius X will have a hard choice to make.
“I’m going to have to get up earlier and drive to church, ” she said. “I probably will, but I can’t say that I’m too thrilled about it. I think there’s going to be a lot of frustration.”
The Rev. Richard Bozzelli said the parish he leads, St. Bernardine Church in Edmondson in West Baltimore, is to remain a worship site and parish anchor under the new plan, so there was a “sigh of relief” when he delivered the news.
That quickly morphed into concern for how it would affect the members of nearby parishes, he said, and his flock began discussing how to offer support.
That, he said, is the attitude church leaders pray most Catholics will adopt — to think beyond their own church and consider the greater good.
“They’re open to trying to figure out how to respect this time of grieving but also to reach out and help,” he said. “They want to be part of the solution.”
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