The fate of the inner city parish

by Ralph Roister-Doister
Like many dioceses across the country, and especially in the northeast, my diocese, the diocese of Buffalo, is undergoing a severe contraction. Churches and schools have already been closed or "consolidated". No one knows as yet what the final figure will be, but fifty is a reasonable guess, and may indeed prove to be a conservative one. A disproportionate number of these parishes will be in the city. The suburbs will be virtually unscathed. Why? Because that’s where the people are, and that’s where the money is. To many, this is the sensible, "businesslike" way of doing things, and ought to be accepted by Buffalo Catholics, chronic losers that they are, with benumbed stoicism. After all, sensible suburbanites reason, if these people had had any sense, they would have scurried to the suburbs decades ago, like we did.

A marketing genius in the diocesan bureaucracy dubbed this "business decision" , with doubtful inspiration, "A Journey in Faith and Grace". But for the handful of "loser" – largely Polish -- Catholics left in the city, the three-year agony and ecstasy of bargaining and bean-counting has been painful and dispiriting, doubly so because it is viewed by many as a sham process, in which the outcome was never in doubt. With the closing of these east side and central city parishes, the last vestiges of their Polish-American heritage will be gone. The streets of their blighted districts will be given over completely to scuzzy pizza parlors, rent-to-own clip joints, bodegas run by Koreans and Arabs (where elderly Polish ladies pay three times as much for a can of chicken noodle soup as their sons and daughters in the suburbs), bars where blacks stab and shoot other blacks, and anyone who happens to be in the way, and abandoned buildings by the score, where squatters sell each other drugs, and assault, rape and steal from one another to pay for them. And on everything, everywhere you look, tags, tags, tags.

Recently, the "journey" took a particularly stupid and ugly turn. The Buffalo City Council decided to add its two-cents worth. This aggregation of (in my humble opinion) thieves, prostitutes, and scum-on-the-make, felt the time was right to express their heartfelt concern over the effect that the closings of these churches might have in the districts that, under their stewardship, have degenerated to their present blighted state. The piece-de-resistance came from an ineffectual mama’s boy of a councilman by the name of David Franczyk, who opined that the diocese of Buffalo, in closing these predominantly Polish parishes, exuded to his sensitive, patrician nostrils, "the whiff of ethnic cleansing." Franczyk, a Catholic democrat in the Brian Higgins mold, got what he was after: instant notoriety. He granted interviews to every local radio talk show host who asked, and all of the local news programs prominently displayed his soft, pudgy, Neil Cavuto-like face in good-as-gold sound bites. "It’s a form of homogenization," he obligingly explained. "It’s a protestantization of the church, too". Homogenization, protestantization, and ethnic cleansing. Pearls of idiocy, from the mouth of a craven -- as only Buffalo democrats can be craven -- politico.

Catholic establishment outrage was predictable. Catholic League president William Donohue threatened a lawsuit. Local commentators, echoing the smugness of suburban Catholics, professed wonderment that the diocese should be criticized for running itself like the business it is. Even Bp Kmiec, who has a wondrous gift for not noticing anything unpleasant or discomforting happening around him, bristled at Franczyk’s remarks. Franczyk kept firing, plainly tickled by all the attention his loutishness had garnered.

And, in the end, it was Franczyk who uttered the germ, the crumb, the speck, of truth: "they [the diocese] should be encouraging people to worship in these churches, rather than building in the far-flung suburbs."

Precisely right.

Many of the most inspiringly beautiful churches in the diocese are located in the city, and will close. It is truly a tragedy, and doubly so, because the surviving parishes – the parishes with the money -- are largely suburban cow palaces that should never have been built in the first place. One such church is just down the street from me. It is an oyster-shell shaped monstrosity, like a concert hall, built in the sixties. Sunday Mass communion processions are like Keystone Kops chase scenes, with EMHCs fanning out in all directions, and bewildered communicants stumbling after them. Awful. Even the traditionally-designed suburban churches are strangely barren – "protestantized", in Franczyk’s suddenly not-so-idiotic term. Their walls are bare, save for the periodic station of the cross faux carving, with stained glass windows that seem somehow generic and plain, next to no statuary, probably no communion rail, a tabernacle that may be located anywhere – I’ll stop now – you know the litany, I’m sure. One church has a small crucifix on the wall, and a large, bare, "protestant" cross suspended from the ceiling like something hanging in a famous aviators’ museum. It is all so depressingly sterile, a stroll through a museum exhibit of the vestiges of a dead civilization.

Such impoverishment led me to start going into the city for Sunday Mass several years ago. Buffalo is not a big city. It takes 15-30 minutes to get from my suburban cape cod to virtually any parish in the city. The churches are beautiful, the attitudes usually prayerful. Most of the time, no one grabs your hand rapturously, and best of all, the guitar stylings of Buffy, Muffy, Lance and Tyler, teenage performance artists of a spiritual turn, seem to be confined to the suburbs (except for one mission on the east side).

I can't tell you what a huge difference it makes to attend Mass in a large, ornate, traditionally designed church, full of statuary, side altars, and beautiful details etched, carved, and painted, in some cases over a century ago, by artisans who probably attended the church themselves. The sense of tradition and continuity is palpable, even in this day of the anti-traditional novus ordo. An extra twenty minutes on the road is a paltry expenditure for such an experience.

Buffalo has many such churches. The following is a short link to a photo collection of three of them. I have been to each, and can testify to the dimensions of what Buffalo Catholics stand to lose:

http://www.unavoce.org/buffalochurches.htm

For the record, St Ann’s is scheduled for closing. So far, Corpus Christi is not. Blessed Trinity is protected by virtue of the fact that it is an historical landmark. It gets state money – on the other hand, it hosts "ecumenical events", such as a concert, in the church itself, by the combined voices of the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus, and the Buffalo Unitarian-Universalist Chorus. What joyful noise the power of the purse may bring! Dozens of smaller, but no less beautiful churches, are also on the block.

So why are these churches being closed? Because attending Mass has become a matter of convenience, something that has to be fitted in to a schedule of more consequential things, like breakfast at Denny's and the NFL. Mass is not an end in itself. And Bp Kmiec, like dozens of his colleagues, has chosen to take Deep Throat’s advice and follow the money. If the people with money want fast food, McDonald’s and Burger King will give them inferior food fast. If the people with the money want Sunday Mass fast, the diocese will give them nearby churches, short, contentless sermons, battalions of EMHCs to expedite the flow of communion lines, and will even hold the door for them as they scuttle out to their cars with the Host still dry in their mouths. Can valet parking be far behind? I scent the birth pangs of a new ministry!

In one sense, it is hard to blame Bp Kmiec for most of this, even though his managerial stolidity invites it. The hard facts of available priests and available funds cannot be denied, and decisions about them are no less hard. But the managers are making the wrong decisions, IMO. Instead of following the money, they ought to exhort their flock to treasure their diocese’ most beautiful churches. Instead of settling for the basic "protestantized" meeting place, or modernistic art house, they ought to force the flock to nurture their faith in surroundings actually conducive to that end – surroundings lovingly built by their forebears, who knew nothing of EMHCs and the St Louis Jesuits. If anything has to be razed or peddled to Wal-Mart, let it be the worst of the suburban cow palaces, which have contributed so much to the impoverishment of our experience of the Mass.

Topical PS: On January 14, 2006, an article was published in the Buffalo News documenting the request of Catholics led by the local chapter of Una Voce for a traditionalist parish:

http://www.unavoce.org/news/2006/Buffalo.htm

According to the article, "Una Voce Buffalo wants to add a priest from outside the diocese, trained in celebrating the traditional Mass, to serve as pastor. Group members say they'll take just about any church the diocese offers, although they would prefer one with Old World architecture". Una Voce even had a particularly distinguished candidate in mind: "Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro Carambula, a native of Uruguay who serves as director of the Rome office of Human Life International, a worldwide pro-life advocacy organization based in Virginia."

Barreiro Carambula confirmed to the News that he was interested in the assignment:

"For years, I have done a work that hopefully I cannot be reproached for, but at the same time it has been mostly intellectual and administrative, so as my life enters into its declining years, I would want to offer to the Lord some real priestly work".

Eighteen months, fifty-odd closing parishes, and one motu proprio later, the Buffalo diocese’ intrepid shepherd of souls has yet to respond.