Awaiting closure

A s he looked out over the sea of faces in the packed hall where members of the St. Blaise community had gathered, Bert Galipeau couldn't help but smile.

Two years earlier, as head of the closure committee for Assumption Parish, he had overseen the heartbreaking move of the statues of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Ann, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Blaise, another Bellingham parish 5 miles away. He could still remember the looks of pain and reproach from his fellow parishioners at Assumption, who were being asked to join St. Blaise -- and the looks of wariness and suspicion at St. Blaise.

But the faces of the members of the combined parish last weekend were full of warmth and joy as they marked the 25th anniversary of the ordination of their popular pastor, the Rev. Michael J. Kearney.

"For the first time," said Galipeau, a 66-year-old retired technology executive, "I saw one parish, not two. It was like getting married all over again."

In May 2004, the Archdiocese of Boston announced it would radically reconfigure its parishes in order to address demographic shifts, a shortage of priests, and the huge financial deficits caused by settlements from the clergy abuse scandal. In Boston's western suburbs, 10 parishes were closed, merged with other parishes, or had their parish status downgraded.

In the aftermath, thousands of local Catholics had their religious lives turned upside down. Recent interviews have found that some Catholics have accepted the changes, dutifully attending their new assigned church, while others have moved to other parishes, to other denominations, or even to a new phase in their lives that does not include going to church.

Still others are just beginning the transition process, and some are stuck in a sort of bureaucratic purgatory, waiting to learn whether their appeals of the archdiocese's decisions have been successful.

More than one person commented that the process has made prophets out of archdiocesan officials who said that no parish -- surviving, merged, or closed -- would be the same afterward.

In Boston's western suburbs, three parishes have closed: Assumption in Bellingham, Sacred Heart in Natick, and St. Joseph in Waltham. Three others, St. Jeremiah in Framingham, St. James the Great in Wellesley, and Sacred Heart in Watertown, were ordered closed but the closings have been delayed as officials in either the archdiocese or the Vatican reconsider their fate.

Two parishes, both in Newton, have been combined: St. Philip Neri with Sacred Heart and St. Bernard with Corpus Christi. And finally, two other churches have remained open but seen their status diminish: St. Anselm in Sudbury from a parish to a rectorate and St. Joseph in Lincoln from a parish to an "alternate worship site" for St. Julia Parish in Weston.

In all, archdiocesan officials said, close to 4,000 who regularly attend Mass have been affected by the reconfiguration. And each situation has brought its own challenges, pastors and parishioners said.

In Bellingham, worshipers at Assumption Parish were hit hard twice, first by the clergy abuse scandal, and then by the reconfiguration.

In 2002, the parish's former associate pastor, Paul Desilets, was indicted on 27 counts of indecent assault and battery, 16 involving children under 14 years of age. State prosecutors charged that Desilets molested 18 boys -- some of whom later attempted suicide -- between 1978 and 1984. Desilets, 82, pleaded guilty and served 17 months in prison. He was released last October and given permission to go back to his religious retirement home in Canada.

Less than two years later, parishioners at Assumption learned that the parish and its aging building would be closed.

"To have two forms of grief in a year and a half -- that's not a long time between jolts," said Kathleen Heck, who has served as Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley's point person on the reconfiguration.

Galipeau said that the shock was simply too much for some Assumption parishioners, who stopped going to Mass. Others, angry at the archdiocese over the scandal and the closure, went to parishes in neighboring dioceses in Worcester and Rhode Island. According to archdiocesan estimates, as many as 20 percent of parishioners in closed or merged parishes have either stopped attending Mass or have become so-called roaming Catholics, who continue to attend church but have not registered as members of a new parish.

Still others, Galipeau said, have found their faith strengthened by the fact that they had to fight for it. That includes himself, he said.

"If anything, it showed me how strong the [Catholic] Church is," he said. "It's been around for 2,000 years and it's gone through worse times than this."

Galipeau's pastor, Kearney, said the merger of the two parishes also has made the new entity stronger. St. Blaise, which runs a charitable food pantry, is heavily involved in social justice issues, he said, and the parishioners from Assumption brought with them strong ties to the Cursillo movement, which focuses on the renewal and development of personal faith.

The Rev. George Evans, the pastor at St. Julia in Weston, said a similar situation occurred when the parishioners from St. Joseph in Lincoln joined the parish, bringing with them a strong St. Vincent de Paul charitable program.

Evans also said, however, that the decision by the archdiocese to keep St. Joseph as an "alternate worship site" has created an unexpected challenge. While it preserved the last Catholic presence in Lincoln and pleased some St. Joseph parishioners, it also has slowed the process of bringing the two communities together into one.

"It brings a downside," he said. "As a pastor, I cannot be with each church as much as I would like to be."

In Newton, parishioners at St. Philip Neri, one of the two newly combined parishes, are just beginning the process. St. Philip Neri held its last Mass before being "suppressed" (the official Vatican term) as a parish, and parishioners will attend their first Mass at Sacred Heart, their "welcoming parish," this morning. To mark the occasion and move toward closure, parishioners attached balloons around the neck of the statue of the patron saint in front of St. Philip and attached a sign saying "Follow me to Sacred Heart Parish."

In Framingham, at St. Jeremiah Parish, one of the three still battling the archdiocese's plan, closure -- in both senses of the word -- remains on hold.

Phyllis Olszewski, a 68-year-old parishioner, says the fight to appeal and stop the closure of the parish has, if anything, turned it into exactly what the archdiocese should want -- a strong, involved Catholic community of people who are committed both to their faith and to one another.

"It's funny, you go through life and most of the time you are never really asked to stand up for what you believe," she said. "Then you are. Our faith has never wavered. We want the real, true [Catholic] Church, the way it was supposed to be. And maybe this is the way it was supposed to be."