Render Unto Rome Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jason Berry
with the hard demographic realities of Charlestown—three parishes with reduced populations, school-age children at parishes up the hill eschewing the neighborhood school—Bowers and the principal reluctantly made spring 2003 the last semester for Charlestown Catholic Elementary School, the one Cardinal Law had told him to save.
During Law’s seventeen years in Boston, he had reduced the archdiocese from 402 to 357 parishes, without great protest. But Bishop Lennon entered a minefield. The Cardinal’s Appeal had raised only $8 million of the needed $17 million for archdiocesan operating expenses. Through the winter of 2003, as lawyers wrangled over the victims’ settlement, Lennon surveyed the topography of Catholic Boston—a church infrastructure in the city and outlying towns crisscrossed with map lines of money. What could be closed could be sold. The proceeds from sales would allow the church to regain its financial footing.
In a city with neighborhoods steeped in tribal loyalties, closing a given church cut deep into social cloth. In “Southie,” as South Boston is called, St. Augustine Elementary School was a bedrock for families of cops, firemen, and blue-collar and city workers. St. Augustine’s Cemetery, with a Greek Revival chapel, was the city’s oldest Catholic graveyard. A Southie pol once quipped he would be buried there because “I want to remain politically active.” 33
But as older people who had raised large families died off, many of their children moved away, and Southie, like Charlestown, had a shrinking core of old Irish mixed with poor people in projects and the incursion of upscale couples, some without children, who were renovating buildings, laying on a patina of gentrification. “Sixty-one percent of South Boston residents have lived here less than five years,” reflected Brian Wallace, Southie’s representative in the statehouse. “The majority of them have no children … and the number of students going to Catholic schools is rapidly declining.” 34 St. Augustine’s, with 158 students in grades K through 8,relied on a $100,000 subsidy from the archdiocese. The pastor, Monsignor Tom McDonnell, was a Southie institution, and he had good ties with the cardinal. Law had forgiven a $328,000 parish debt on its unpaid assessments in 2000.
Three years later, in May, as Bishop Lennon remapped the infrastructure, students went home with notes to their parents: St. Augustine Elementary was closing. “This was a decision that came out of the parish,” a priest-spokesman for the archdiocese stated. Because of declining enrollment and rising repair costs, “the parish didn’t believe it could go on any further.”
Not so, said one of the parents, Anne Spence. The archdiocese “kept vehemently denying that the school was closing. Then, all of a sudden, here’s a letter—the school’s closed, goodbye, don’t bother coming back next year.” 35
In the bitter protests that followed, parishioners screamed at the aging pastor, Monsignor McDonnell, for selling them out. Parish leaders plunged into emergency fund-raising; two city council members and a state senator met with a poker-faced Lennon to pitch a turnaround plan. Brian Wallace went separately to the chancery with a colleague to meet Lennon. Wallace knew the church had a money crisis, but Lennon’s closure on an unsuspecting pastor had hung McDonnell out to dry. In the chancery Wallace took his seat opposite the Apostolic Administrator. Lennon glanced at his watch. “You have five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” snapped Wallace. “Here’s five seconds !” And with that the state representative walked out.
Whatever honeymoon Lennon had had with Catholic Boston soured in the media coverage over the St. Augustine closure. Bitterness over Law’s betrayal spilled out in cascades at Lennon.
When Seán O’Malley settled in as archbishop in the summer of 2003, Bishop Lennon retreated from the spotlight. O’Malley, with his
During Law’s seventeen years in Boston, he had reduced the archdiocese from 402 to 357 parishes, without great protest. But Bishop Lennon entered a minefield. The Cardinal’s Appeal had raised only $8 million of the needed $17 million for archdiocesan operating expenses. Through the winter of 2003, as lawyers wrangled over the victims’ settlement, Lennon surveyed the topography of Catholic Boston—a church infrastructure in the city and outlying towns crisscrossed with map lines of money. What could be closed could be sold. The proceeds from sales would allow the church to regain its financial footing.
In a city with neighborhoods steeped in tribal loyalties, closing a given church cut deep into social cloth. In “Southie,” as South Boston is called, St. Augustine Elementary School was a bedrock for families of cops, firemen, and blue-collar and city workers. St. Augustine’s Cemetery, with a Greek Revival chapel, was the city’s oldest Catholic graveyard. A Southie pol once quipped he would be buried there because “I want to remain politically active.” 33
But as older people who had raised large families died off, many of their children moved away, and Southie, like Charlestown, had a shrinking core of old Irish mixed with poor people in projects and the incursion of upscale couples, some without children, who were renovating buildings, laying on a patina of gentrification. “Sixty-one percent of South Boston residents have lived here less than five years,” reflected Brian Wallace, Southie’s representative in the statehouse. “The majority of them have no children … and the number of students going to Catholic schools is rapidly declining.” 34 St. Augustine’s, with 158 students in grades K through 8,relied on a $100,000 subsidy from the archdiocese. The pastor, Monsignor Tom McDonnell, was a Southie institution, and he had good ties with the cardinal. Law had forgiven a $328,000 parish debt on its unpaid assessments in 2000.
Three years later, in May, as Bishop Lennon remapped the infrastructure, students went home with notes to their parents: St. Augustine Elementary was closing. “This was a decision that came out of the parish,” a priest-spokesman for the archdiocese stated. Because of declining enrollment and rising repair costs, “the parish didn’t believe it could go on any further.”
Not so, said one of the parents, Anne Spence. The archdiocese “kept vehemently denying that the school was closing. Then, all of a sudden, here’s a letter—the school’s closed, goodbye, don’t bother coming back next year.” 35
In the bitter protests that followed, parishioners screamed at the aging pastor, Monsignor McDonnell, for selling them out. Parish leaders plunged into emergency fund-raising; two city council members and a state senator met with a poker-faced Lennon to pitch a turnaround plan. Brian Wallace went separately to the chancery with a colleague to meet Lennon. Wallace knew the church had a money crisis, but Lennon’s closure on an unsuspecting pastor had hung McDonnell out to dry. In the chancery Wallace took his seat opposite the Apostolic Administrator. Lennon glanced at his watch. “You have five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” snapped Wallace. “Here’s five seconds !” And with that the state representative walked out.
Whatever honeymoon Lennon had had with Catholic Boston soured in the media coverage over the St. Augustine closure. Bitterness over Law’s betrayal spilled out in cascades at Lennon.
When Seán O’Malley settled in as archbishop in the summer of 2003, Bishop Lennon retreated from the spotlight. O’Malley, with his