St. Mary joins new list of threatened parishes

Some members of St. Mary Parish in Plymouth were surprised when a regional cluster of parishes did not recommend that it be closed as part of an archdiocesan reorganization. The 89-year-old Catholic church is near two larger, thriving parishes, St. Peter in Plymouth and St. Joseph in Kingston, making it appear vulnerable.

But its situation apparently did not escape the committee of Boston Archdiocese officials responsible for making recommendations to Archbishop Sean O'Malley on which parishes should be shuttered. They announced last week that St. Mary is one of 37 additional parishes under consideration.

"Given the drastic nature of this whole process, location definitely comes into play," said the Rev. Bryan Parrish, the pastor at St. Mary. "We're not happy about it, but we're not entirely surprised either." His sentiment is shared at other parishes south of Boston included on the list made public last week.

With the exception of St. Susanna in Dedham, where parishioners expressed outrage over the naming of one of the town's two Catholic parishes, other recommendations for possible closings, including four parishes in Brockton and two seasonal parishes in Marshfield, are somewhat less surprising.

Many of the recommendations were made after local parish clusters were unable (or refused) to recommend parishes to close. In March, 80 clusters across the archdiocese recommended about 100 parishes for consideration.

In the three-parish Braintree cluster, where church leaders said they would prefer to merge into one town-wide parish, the archdiocese central committee has recommended closing St. Thomas More.

Other local parishes added to the list of potential closures include: Sacred Heart, St. Casimir, St. Margaret, and St. Colman of Cloyne in Brockton; St. Ann by the Sea and Our Lady of the Assumption in Marshfield; Most Blessed Sacrament in Quincy; and St. James in Stoughton.

Those join 15 parishes in the region already recommended by their regional clusters as first choices to close and 16 others recommended as second or third choices.

The Rev. Francis Cloherty, pastor at St. Patrick in Brockton who serves as the regional vicar in charge of all Brockton-area parishes, is on the archdiocesan committee assisting O'Malley in the closings.

He said committee members were asked to consider every parish in the archdiocese and whether surrounding parishes could absorb parishioners should it close. That led to parishes with low attendance, such as Stoughton's St. James, being placed on the list of additional recommendations, even though another Stoughton parish, Our Lady of the Rosary, already is recommended to close, he said.

"The idea is to try not to disrupt people's lives, but on the other hand, why keep a parish open if you don't need it and there aren't enough people to do all the jobs that a parish needs to do?" he asked.

He stressed that not every parish under consideration will close. Nor are parishes not on the list totally safe, he said.

"Not being on the list is no cause for rejoicing, and we certainly don't want to come across as arrogant, special people because we're safe for now," he said. "Just because you survived the plague doesn't mean you should be having parties."

The archdiocese plans to announce on May 25 which parishes will close.

Michael Paulson of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Joanna Massey can be reached at massey@globe.com