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Priest: Diocese's plan to cut costs hurts clergymen

The Associated Press

BOSTON — The Boston Archdiocese's proposal to cut costs by organizing its 290 parishes into 125 groups that share resources could crush its pastors, who now face a bleak future after sustaining the church through the abuse scandal, a veteran priest wrote in a letter to Cardinal Sean O'Malley obtained by The Associated Press.

"I can well imagine that the very process of implementing such a proposal would result in serious psychological and even physical sickness," wrote Monsignor William Helmick, pastor at Saint Theresa of Avila in West Roxbury.

"(The priests) would feel as if they and what they have done and continue to do is of no value and is not appreciated," wrote Helmick.

Helmick wrote O'Malley on Dec. 9, days after all archdiocesan priests gathered at a South Shore function hall to discuss the proposal, which aims to improve efficiency and put the archdiocese in better position for growth and to spread the faith.

The letter was given to the AP by Peter Borre, head of the Council of Parishes, a group formed to oppose church closings. Borre said he didn't get the letter from Helmick, but he released it with permission from someone who received it from Helmick.

Phone and email messages to Helmick on Thursday weren't returned.

Terry Donilon, spokesman for the archdiocese, noted that the letter was written two months ago, and said it's since become increasingly clear to many priests that, though the plan is far from final, the archdiocese is headed in the right direction.

"If we do nothing, we're going to have fewer priests, we're going to have fewer people going to Mass, we're going to have more parishes in financial trouble ... and the Cardinal is saying, 'I don't accept any of that. I do not accept that premise,"' Donilon said.

The Boston archdiocese, with 1.8 million Catholics, is the nation's fourth largest.

The church released its proposal late last year, arguing its traditional parish structure can't be sustained in an archdiocese where just 16 percent of local Catholics attend Mass and more than a third of parishes can't pay their bills.

The key part of the archdiocese's proposal sees the parishes divided into 125 "collaboratives" - each containing one to four parishes, which would share buildings and other resources and be run by a "pastoral service team," led by one pastor.

Helmick wrote that his concern starts with "simple mathematics," which indicate that 165 priests now serving as a pastor at a parish won't be chosen to lead a collaborative and will be dismissed as a pastor.

"Given that all of us who are pastors are vessels of clay, and not all of the pastors are equally effective, it is nonetheless true that the pastors, in a most significant and irreplaceable way, kept the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Boston alive in the parishes following the devastating reaction ... to the abuse scandal," he wrote.