St. Brendan’s is a magnificent old Catholic church that was
opened in the Dorchester area of Boston in 1933, during the worst part of the
Great Depression. Like Old St. Pat’s church in Chicago, the majority of the
parishioners were immigrants from Ireland.
Noreen Kelley always sat in the same pew for Sunday Mass at St. Brendan, halfway up the church, on the right side.
It’s where her mother, Rosemary O’Brien, always sat. It’s where
her grandmother, Nonie Sullivan, always sat.
Noreen Kelley’s grandmother was a longtime parishioner at the
church that opened in 1933, at the height of the Depression. Her mother was in
the first graduating class at St. Brendan church.
They will probably be the last. St. Brendan, one of the great
Catholic churches of Dorchester, has been designated by its pastor for
so-called relegation, which sounds more like the fate of an underperforming
soccer team than a neighborhood institution that means so much to so many.
The
church’s future now lies in the hands of Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Sean
O’Malley, but the current pastor, the Rev. Chris Palladino, has recommended the
church be closed, citing declining attendance and $1.6 million in repairs
needed over the next 18 months. Whatever Cardinal O’Malley decides, Father
Palladino said there will be no more services after May 31. Her three daughters became the fourth generation of their
family to worship at St. Brendan Church.
In 2018, St. Brendan was merged with St. Ann’s, a mile away in
Neponset, to form the new parish of St. Martin de Porres. Father Palladino says
St. Ann’s can easily accommodate those who now attend Mass at St.
Brendan.
But parishioners like Kelley say talking about St. Brendan as if
it is nothing more than a building fails to appreciate that it has its own
distinct history and culture, that families measure their lives and every
signature stage in those lives — birth, marriage, death — wrapped in the comforting
arms of a space and a spirituality that can’t simply be moved like furniture.
This year, for the first time in her life, Noreen Kelley will be
unable to attend Easter Sunday services at St. Brendan’s.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/11/metro/sins-father-geoghan/
Kelley believes the beginning of the end of St. Brendan began 20 years ago, when the Archdiocese was roiled by the massive coverup of sexual abuse of minors by priests. In the 20 years that followed, she said, St. Brendan has had a dozen pastors, with needed maintenance not deferred so much as ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Archdiocese_of_Boston_sex_abuse_scandal
No man was more scandalous
and evil than the predator
posing as a priest named John Geoghan. Geoghan was the poster boy
for the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese. St. Brendan, where he
served three years in the early 1980s, was merely one of his myriad postings,
as he was moved around by bishops more concerned with protecting the church’s
reputation than protecting the bodies and souls of the young people he raped.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston sex
abuse scandal was part of a series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in
the United States that revealed widespread crimes in the American Roman
Catholic Church. In early 2002, The Boston
Globe published results of an investigation
that led to the criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests and thrust
the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy into the national spotlight. Another
accused priest who was involved in the Spotlight scandal also pleaded guilty. The Globe's
coverage encouraged other victims to come forward with allegations of abuse,
resulting in numerous lawsuits and more criminal cases.
John Geoghan (1935–2003) was accused
of sexual abuse involving more than 130 children. Charges were brought in Cambridge, Massachusetts alleging molestation that took place in 1991.
Geoghan was laicized in
1998. In January 2002, Geoghan was found guilty of indecent assault and battery for grabbing the buttocks of a
ten-year-old boy in a swimming pool at the Waltham Boys and Girls Club in 1991,
and was sentenced to nine to ten years in prison.
The trial included testimony by the
victim. Dr. Edward Messner, a psychiatrist who treated Geoghan for his
sexual fantasies about
children from 1994 to 1996 also testified, as did Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes,
who testified that he banned Geoghan from the swimming club after a complaint
that he had been proselytizing and
had engaged in prurient conversations.
After initially agreeing to and then
withdrawing a $30 million settlement with 86 of Geoghan's victims,
the Boston archdiocese settled with them for $10 million, and is still
negotiating with lawyers for other victims. The most recent settlement proposed
is $65 million for 542 victims. The settlements are being offered in response
to evidence that the archdiocese had transferred Geoghan from parish to parish
despite warnings of his behavior. Evidence also arose that the archdiocese
displayed a pattern of transferring other priests to new parishes when
allegations of sexual abuse were made.
Geoghan was charged in two other
cases in Boston's Suffolk
County. One case was dropped without prejudice when the victim
decided not to testify. In the second case, two rape charges were dismissed by
a judge after hotly contested arguments because the statute of
limitations had expired. The Commonwealth's appeal of that
ruling was active at the time of Geoghan's death, and remaining charges of
indecent assault in that case were pending.
On August 23, 2003, while in protective custody at
the Souza-Baranowski
Correctional Center in Shirley,
Massachusetts, Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death in his
cell by Joseph Druce, a
self-described white supremacist serving
a sentence of life without possibility
of parole for killing a man who allegedly made a sexual advance
after picking up Druce while he was hitchhiking. An autopsy revealed the cause
of death to be "ligature strangulation and blunt chest trauma." There
have been questions raised about the advisability of placing these two men on
the same unit, as prison officials had been warned by another inmate that Druce
was planning to assault Geoghan.
Because of
molestation claims, at least 325 of America's 46,000 priests were removed from
duty or resigned in the year following the Geoghan case. Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop
in December, giving up his post as spiritual leader to 2.1 million Catholics
because of his mishandling of abuse cases.
Cardinal Law was
not the only archbishop who covered up the sexual abuse committed by priests.
According to the
National Catholic Reporter, the abuse scandal has cost the Catholic Church
close to $4 billion. In
addition, separate research recently published calculates that other
scandal-related consequences such as lost membership and diverted giving has
cost the church more than $2.3 billion annually for the past 30
years.
Over the last 14
years, 19 Catholic dioceses and religious orders in the United States have
filed for bankruptcy protection because of the clergy sexual abuse crisis,
according to the watchdog group Bishopsaccountability.org.
The Diocese of Tucson was one of the first to
file, and it settled for $22 million in 2004.
I grew up in the Twin Cities, which was not
immune for the sexual abuse scandals. The Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in
2015, after agreeing to pay $210 million to 400 victims.
Even today, cases are still pending for 5 more
dioceses.
Attendance at
Catholic churches has been declining for years. In the United States, 38% of the
Catholic population attends mass on a regular basis, and it is much less than
that in European counties.
https://comparecamp.com/church-attendance-statistics/
In France (where
only 12% of the Catholics attend mass regularly) any church built before 1905
is actually owned by France, rather than the archdiocese of Paris.
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2019/04/we-are-all-french_19.html
So, what will happened
to St. Brendan’s?
As developers gobbled up
churches in downtown Washington in 2013, the Rev. Amy Butler had a realization.
Institutional Christianity, she believed, was unlikely to revive itself after
decades of declining membership.
Butler later learned that religious institutions in the United States were valued at $1.2 trillion. And she met a man who was distributing money to anyone he perceived to be working for some kind of community healing.
Those experiences prompted a lightbulb moment for Butler. Why couldn’t money left in the coffers of dying churches be repurposed to fuel projects aimed at doing good in the world? Years later, Butler has brought her idea to life through Invested Faith, a fund established to receive assets from closing houses of worship and disburse them to entrepreneurs motivated by faith and focused on social justice.
Now the pastor of National City Christian Church in Washington, Butler knows that some see accepting the closure of churches as akin to giving up on institutions that mean a lot to many. But she rejects that framing, reminding skeptics that belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead lies at the heart of Christianity. “We don’t need to be afraid of death,” Butler said. “We’re people who believe that after death is resurrection.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/04/15/amy-butler-invested-faith-dying-churches/
There’s a possibility
that St. Brendan’s will be sold to developers and torn down, making room for
new offices or condominiums.
In Europe, old
churches have been re-purposed as libraries or gymnasium s or restaurants – and dozens of other uses.
Noreen Kelley
will likely regret the death of St. Brendan’s, but in the greater scheme of
things, it is a blessing in disguise.
On the day that
we celebrate life after death, what could be more fitting than to see the
church being repurposed as something else that is more relevant to the current
needs of the community it served?
As always, you provide thorough documentation.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast to the mega-churches (Texas for example), consider Baptism River Church in Finland, MN. Sunday services may have as many as 25 people in attendance. Few are Lutheran.
A friend of ours was just installed as Pastor, in time for Easter. Deborah Birkland. She is 73 years old.
Another friend, a Quaker, acted as pastor for several months.
Even we Baha'is were welcome to attend services.