Saturday, May 9, 2015




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Noon Mass on Friday at St. John the Martyr on the Upper East Side.CreditChristopher Gregory for The New York Times

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced on Friday the shuttering of seven more churches as part of the biggest reorganization in its history, a process of parish consolidations that will leave the archdiocese 20 percent smaller than it was last year.
Three of the churches on the latest list to be closed are in the Bronx, one is in Manhattan and the other three are north of the city. They are added to more than 30 church closings that were announced in November.
The churches whose closings were announced Friday are St. John the Martyr on East 72nd Street on the Upper East Side; St. Joseph on Bathgate Avenue, St. Anthony on Richardson Avenue and Our Lady of Grace on Bronxwood Avenue, all in the Bronx; St. Mary in Newburgh; and St. Joseph in Clinton Corners and Immaculate Conception in Bangall, both in Dutchess County.


Regular Masses and sacraments will no longer be offered at these churches, though they might be open on special occasions. Instead, nearby churches will become parishioners’ new “home” churches.

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St. John the Martyr is among those the archdiocese plans to close.CreditChristopher Gregory for The New York Times

Church officials had announced in November a much larger round of mergers and closings, involving more than 110 parishes that were being combined to create fewer than 60 new ones. This time, 31 parishes are being consolidated into 14. In most of these mergers, however, the church buildings of the former parishes will remain open for Masses and sacraments.
Falling attendance, a shortage of priests and other factors are behind the push to consolidate parishes across the archdiocese, which covers Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven counties north of the city. The new round of cuts, however, stands out because of how the archdiocese arrived at the decisions. The earlier group of closings followed more than a year of discussions between parishes and an advisory panel. In the new cases, however, the proposals came directly from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolanand other senior archdiocesan officials.
But the number of churches that are being effectively closed is more modest than expected: In December, the archdiocese released a list of more than a dozen churches it was considering closing.
These from the December list were spared: St. Thomas More on the Upper East Side; St. Gregory the Great on the Upper West Side; St. John Neumann on Staten Island; St. Francis in the northeast Bronx; Our Lady of Carmel in White Plains; and Our Lady of Pompeii in Dobbs Ferry.
No more church closings or mergers are planned, officials said. The decisions are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Combined with the shifts announced last fall, the archdiocese is merging 143 parishes into 69 new ones.

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St. Joseph in the Bronx is also slated to close. No more church closings or mergers are planned, officials said. CreditChristopher Gregory for The New York Times

The result is an archdiocese of 296 parishes — 20 percent smaller than a year ago, when the archdiocese had 368 parishes.
“For too long,” Cardinal Dolan said in a statement, “we have been in the business of maintaining buildings and structures that were established in the 19th and early 20th centuries to meet the needs of the people of that time, but which are not necessary to meet the needs of the church and its people as it exists today.”
At St. John the Martyr on the Upper East Side, a modest church with wooden arches and wallpapered columns, three people came to the noon Mass on Friday. One of them, who gave her name only as Diane and said she had been attending the church “forever,” was realistic and resigned about the closing. She said she would worship instead at St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church a few blocks away.
“What are you going to do?” she said. “It costs a lot of money to keep it open.”
But another longtime parishioner, Lutzea Satin, said she was devastated.
“My heart is bleeding,” Ms. Satin, who works in finance, said through tears on the telephone. “Right now, my faith is questionable. As a parishioner, and as a Catholic, I’m just hurting. It’s like losing a member of your family.”

Friday, May 1, 2015

North Carolina Church Receives Heartwarming Note With 18-Cent Donation

By NICOLE PELLETIERE and MICHELLE MANZIONE

North Carolina Church Receives Heartwarming Note With 18-Cent Donation
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North Carolina Church Receives Heartwarming Note With 18-Cent Donation (ABC News)
Sunday's service was business as usual for First United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
But it was one offering that warmed the hearts of everyone at the congregation, and it wasn't the amount of money that moved them.
"After the service we have a couple of people called counters who process the offerings and put them in our safe," Pastor Patrick Hamrick told ABC News. "The secretary called me over and in the envelope was a dime, a nickel, and three cents. That was the 18 cents. We flipped it over and the note was there."
The note, written by an anonymous donor, said:
"Please don't be mad. I don't have much. I'm homeless. God Bless."
"We were very touched by it," Hamrick said. "I just had a phone call from the person who says that he's the one.”
Barry Collins, a long-time church member and office volunteer, believes the man had eaten breakfast with the church Sunday morning and left the note behind afterwards.
“Every Sunday morning, we serve breakfast to our homeless neighbors,” Collins told ABC News of what is known as the “Muffin Ministry.”
Hamrick, who posted the note on the church Facebook page, told the mystery man that the community could rally together for him should he reveal his identity, but the man chose to remain unnamed.
"He's asked me to keep it between me, God, and the church," Hamrick said. "He's not upset about it, he just feels that he wants to be private. I have to honor it professionally.
"It warmed our hearts because proportionally that gift could be an average middle class person giving a 1,000 dollars," he added. "I feel like he gave everything he had that morning and it's a touching example of someone” who has so little to give.