VOTF-NY Supports Our Lady Queen of Angels Vigil in East Harlem

The following important press release from Voice of the Faithful New York provides details about the first vigil/sit-in/sleep-in in the current wave of parish closings in the Archdiocese of New York. This vigil is the next important chapter in the struggle to determine who owns the parishes, the bishops or the parishioners.

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Voice of the Faithful New York

For Immediate Release

Contact: Francis Piderit

917.916.7575

Voice of the Faithful NY Supports

Our Lady Queen of Angels Vigil in East Harlem

New York, New York, Feb. 12: Voice of the Faithful New York supports the parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Angels parish in East Harlem, who began a 24-hour, round-the-clock vigil yesterday to save their church from threatened closure. Located at 226 East 113th Street in East Harlem, Our Lady Queen of Angels has several hundred parishioners and serves the spiritual and pastoral needs of community residents, including significant immigrant populations from Central and South America.

“We know the parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Angels to be a vibrant, faith-filled community of believers who are committed to carrying on the work done in their parish since 1886,” said Francis Piderit, a member of the leadership team for Voice of the Faithful New York. “We support their efforts, and we call on our more than 400 members in the New York area to lend a hand as we work and pray together for the Archdiocese of New York to reverse what we believe is an incorrect decision.”

The Archdiocese of New York published a list of 10 parishes to be closed and 11 parishes to be merged on Jan. 19, as part of its parish realignment initiative. Another parish not on the list was notified of its closure by fax. Archdiocesan officials provided no reasons why specific parishes must close or merge. Our Lady of the Rosary in Yonkers already closed this past Sunday, and two parishioners protesting the closure were arrested by police inside the church and charged with illegal trespass.

“We do not protest every closure decision,” Piderit said, “but principles for the realignment have been discussed only in general terms,” said Piderit. “After 120 years of sacrifice and communal worship, a faith community such as Our Lady Queen of Angels deserves more than generalities before it is shuttered and effectively killed off. What kind of Catholics would we be if we did not fight for the life of the parishes we love? The attitude of the archdiocese seems to be, ‘Trust us.’ But the last time we trusted our bishops with something we loved -- our children -- that trust was too often tragically abused. Will our parishes fare any better?”

A parish church is a physical reflection of the true parish, which consists of the people who gather to worship together in that building. A decision to close a building is effectively a decision to shut down a faith community. The members of a parish who sacrificed to build and financially support the church, and to carry out its mission over many years, deserve to know the reasons why their parish must close.

The absence of a resident priest is not a reason for closing a parish, in the view of Voice of the Faithful. Many parishes across the US have demonstrated that they can survive and even thrive under the guidance of non-clerical parish administrators, with visiting priests for liturgies. Given the shrinking number of priests in the US, every decision to close a parish because a priest is not in residence is a decision to abandon the mission given to Catholics by Jesus Christ to go and spread the Good News to the entire world. In the Albany Diocese alone, there are 26 parishes run by lay administrators, with priests that live centrally and support multiple parishes. This is where the Catholic Church is headed nationally.

The archdiocese has said that it will not sell the property of any parish that is closed. Yet the property of St. Ann’s Parish on 12th Street was sold, and construction of new buildings has already begun. The fact is that many of the parishes slated for closing in Manhattan are located in economically challenged neighborhoods, and lie on valuable real estate. Voice of the Faithful agrees with the view of parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Angels that they are being discriminated against because their community is less affluent than other parishes in Manhattan.

Voice of the Faithful calls on the archdiocese to withdraw the letter of suppression issued to Our Lady Queen of Angels at the earliest possible date. Voice of the Faithful also calls on the archdiocese to provide public explanations of the reasons behind all decisions to close or merge a parish, so that these reasons can be evaluated on their merits.

For the future, VOTF believes that parishes should only be closed or merged through a communal process of discussion, debate, prayer and discernment in which all the members of the community—the laity, the clergy and other religious – confront the strengths and needs of the faith community honestly and openly. Parishes with strong and vibrant faith communities should present reasonable plans for worship and for financial support of continued operations to the entire community. A local determination on a parish closing or merger should then be made through a formal vote. Final decisions should be entrusted to the bishop in consultation with publicly elected, voting members of the clergy and laity seated on diocesan-level pastoral councils.

Voice of the Faithful New York is the local affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, an international organization of Catholics committed to greater transparency and accountability in the Catholic Church. Organized in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals, Voice of the Faithful is committed to three goals: support for survivors of clergy sexual abuse; support for priests of integrity, and the shaping of structural change in the Catholic Church. Voice of the Faithful has 37,000 members in the US and 37 countries around the world.

For more information about Voice of the Faithful, visit www.voiceofthefaithful.org.