Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [151]
Each parish to some extent has developed and organized leadership in the community to provide safety, sustenance, emergency assistance, and programs for children, etc. When a Church closes, that component of society is removed with the landmark buildings and the already fragile social fabric rapidly disintegrates.
The bishop was ignoring these factors, wrote Father Begin. (Meanwhile, several parishes had appeals in motion to the Congregation for the Clergy.) “For the inner city residents of Cleveland this is a grave scandal,” continued Father Begin to Archbishop Sambi, “a real abandonment not only of Church property of inestimable worth, but also as a real abandonment of truly needy people.”
On the West Side of Cleveland, the recently arrived refugees from Somalia, Liberia, Congo, Sudan and other parts of Africa who have found a welcome in our Churches and a place at the table are devastated and confused by the news of closures. Many of them became Catholics in refugee camps because of Catholic Relief Services. Others are becoming Catholic because of the welcome they are given in our inner city parishes (the only place they can afford housing) …
I have a forty-year history of working with the poor in the inner City of Cleveland and I myself am dismayed. It seems that in one or two years, the work of 40 years can be destroyed by the arbitrary action of Bishop Lennon.34
Four thousand people filled out forms on the importance of the parish, which Begin sent to the bishop. “Lennon had no idea that 30 percent of people in this neighborhood do not have cars,” Begin told me later. “Every day at least fifty people come to our door in need of something. The phone rings all day. We need a full-time outreach worker. I explained this to him. If you’re from Boston and look at Cleveland, it’s kind of the way Cleveland looks at Alabama: you’re surprised if someone from Alabama has a good idea. At another meeting, he said if I was still interested in studying Arabic, ‘talk to your friend Sambi.’ Council members Jay Westbrook, Dona Brady, and Matt Zone showed him a map of the Lorain Avenue Corridor—four square miles without a church. State Senator Tom Patton talked with Lennon. He helped defeat a motion in our legislature to remove the statute of limitations on pedophilia—which Ohio bishops lobbied hard against, having seen California dioceses lose hundreds of millions in lawsuits after a 2002 state law opened the statutory filing window.”
Lennon reversed his decision on St. Colman and St. Ignatius of Antioch, another inner-city parish. “I now have a more complete understanding of the extent of social and community services at the parish and the outreach of the diverse neighborhoods,” Lennon said in a May 1, 2009, letter, rescinding the two closure orders.35 “The reprieve comes with conditions,” wrote Tom Roberts of the National Catholic Reporter:
Fr. Robert Begin has been placed on a four-year clock to end a trend of deficit spending and complete needed capital repairs; to continue growing “in households and in Mass attendance”; to strengthen parish finances and to establish “emergency reserves and build preservation reserves”; and to “remain dedicated to its outreach ministries while becoming a more financially viable parish.”36
“Lennon is a hard man to figure out,” Begin told me, months later, as more priests contacted Sambi to complain about Lennon. “Lennon has a fixation about what he wants to do. He evidently read a book about franchise management. He makes his decisions as if parishes are franchises. If there’s enough room in one church to worship, why have more than one? A particular mission, ethnicity, none of those things mean anything if the customer base can be satisfied by one