"To be honest, this is driving me away from the church," said Karen Countryman, 63, a parishioner since she was 10.
For Denise Mungiole, moving to a new parish after 21 years is akin to a "death," a fact that the bishop is doing little to allay, she said. "This is my church, my faith," she said. "You get invested."
Pamala Messina, who grew up at Most Holy Redeemer, forced herself to go to Mass recently at St. Patrick's. She was so shaken up, she said, she left in tears.
"I want to go to St. Pat's," she said. "I can't do it."
Nothing can shake her faith, Mrs. Medany said. She will celebrate Mass -- not at Holy Angels, because she cannot set foot in there, she said, but somewhere. Nobody should be surprised, though, if she takes a piece of her church with her. Her family donated a pew decades ago to honor her brother, who died fighting in World War II.
"When you see in the papers a story about an old woman who was walking down Delsea Drive with a pew on her back, you'll know it's me," she said
From Jan. 31st paper: Read NY Times Article HERE
We are glad that the NY Times chose to profile Most Holy Redeemer in Deptford Township, but unfortunately the premise of the article is largely wrong. They assume that attendance is dwindling and that there is a priest shortage, that somehow the parishes slated to close are closing because they have financial difficulties. Those of us who are paying attention to the facts know that this is not the case. We have spoken to employess of the Diocese who work in Camden who have told us, off the record, that the the closure pattern makes no sense from a parish financial stability point of view, so something else must be going on. (We have been repeatedly told that many of the churches that are to remain open or that are seats of the mergers are among the worst off financially.) We have shown that the priest shortage is, in reality, not the case statistically and where it is not, it is being created by the Chancery in the form of priest reassignments (usually away from service to parishes) and the discouragement of priestly vocations.
Though the NY Times article seems sympathetic to parishioners and their "pain," it fails to question the basic presumptions of the mergers/closures and the motivations of the bishop who has spearheaded the travesty. Sadly, they buy all the numbers spewed by the Diocesan officials, and in this sense it is poor journalism because we've seen these "facts" regurgitated before.
The bottom line is that our parishes are a part of our Catholic history, identity, and the way we worship. A good parish should also be a community of faith, and this is nothing that should be taken for granted. It is a sad state of our Church when, even if a parish was having financial difficulties, that that would be justification enough for its forcible closure. For example, what in the world is the Bishop's Appeal for if not to support the Body of Christ?
If a community of Catholics needed to demonstrate its ability to materially support itself before building a church, then what is the point of missionaries to poor areas? What is the point of evangelism? Christ came to teach us many things, among them charity to the poor and the necessity of spreading the Faith. Christ did not come only for those who are financially solvent.* It seems to us that the current Diocesan administration is a sad example of these two basic Christian teachings. Instead of helping those in need, they say instead, "shut 'em down!"
*Luke 6:20: "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."