Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [148]
“Some were big surprises—St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. James in Lakewood and St. Colman in Cleveland,” wrote Michael O’Malley in the Plain Dealer:
Shutting down Colman and Ignatius means the darkening of two brilliantly lighted West Side steeples, both of which are prominent landmarks reaching into the city’s skyline …
“The suburbs are isolated from the poor,” said Colman parishioner Carol Romansky of Berea, noting how inner-city neighborhoods took the biggest hits in the downsizing. “Would Jesus have stayed in the suburbs?”25
“We’re just too big for the number of people that we have,” Lennon told Mike O’Malley, as emotions roiled in many of the targeted parishes.
Cleveland did not have the black hole of deficit financing Law had left Boston. Indeed, for all of his petty greed and secrecy, Tony Pilla, like a wily ward boss, had paid attention to the real estate; he kept old churches open, even as maintenance costs and unpaid assessments rose. Catholic Charities would counter the worst ravages of urban decay. Although his diocese did face tough realities that a prudent plan of limited closures could have mitigated, Lennon’s rationale stemmed from Boston, liquidating assets to cover the operational shortfalls. For Cleveland, Lennon took preventative steps. But Cleveland in 2006—four years after Pilla’s frantic midnight calls to Joe Smith—had gained $1 million in parish Offertory donations, taking in $106.1 million, while Boston since 2002 had steadily registered losses and deficits. Cleveland had seen a drop of $2 million from 2002 in reaction to the pedophilia cover-up. But in 2004, the Sunday plates began a steady climb and in 2005 registered $104.5 million. In 2006—the year the secret files on Zgoznik and Smith made headlines—the collections rose again, by $1.6 million.26 Quite the opposite happened in Boston, which one could take as a popular repudiation of Lennon’s Reconfiguration plan. Cleveland’s numbers track the national data cited in the prologue of Catholics who kept giving to their parishes despite the spectacle of their bishops slogging in scandal muck.
Lennon approached Cleveland like a banker redlining loans in poor neighborhoods. As chief executive officer he would follow the trail of prosperity, shift priests to suburban parishes, recapitalize the diocese. Shuttering inner-city churches and historic gems in old enclaves was pragmatism. In Boston he had suppressed wealthy parishes in order to sell churches in plugging a deficit that trailed back to the 1990s, exacerbated by the abuse cases. In Cleveland he would prevent deficits with early, tough chopping-block decisions.
“He was clueless about Cleveland philanthropy,” explains Sister Christine Schenk. “In Los Angeles, the archdiocese does an annual collection for the urban parishes. We mentioned that at our meeting with Lennon. But he came with his own mind-set to do it his way without recognition of the safety net woven by Church in the City. This diocese was used to interactive decision making. Some parishes needed to close, perhaps fifteen rather than fifty-two.”
Lennon sketched his logic in a sequence of short pages resembling a PowerPoint presentation via the diocesan website. The Catholic population had declined by 19 percent since 1975. Mass attendance was down 56 percent, to 29 percent.27 Despite the cost of maintaining inner-city churches, Cleveland had a tradition of people from the suburbs driving in for Sunday Mass in the old neighborhoods, which undergirded Pilla’s Church in the City program. Pilla’s plan became Banquo’s ghost for Lennon: he could not escape the urban church in the memory of Catholic Cleveland. Instead of summoning the hope inherent in faith as an appeal for hard-times generosity, Lennon tried to sell people on fear.
AN OVERVIEW OF KEY DIOCESAN REALITIES FINANCIAL EROSION
• Some parishes are