The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
THEY COULDN’T GET TO ‘YES’
Archbishop said he offered 3 options; friars said they needed more time
NEW HAVEN — A steady decline in the number of Roman Catholics in New Haven requires a radical change in how to care for the faithful, and change is painful, church officials say.
According to Archbishop Leonard Blair, he is facing that reality as he implements the Archdiocese of Hartford’s plan for the city, which he said will give New Haven’s churches a stronger foundation.
For the Dominican friars of St. Mary Church, the plan means that a single parish, composed of the city’s 10 Catholic churches, will require the friars to leave the priory the order has called home for 135 years.
St. Mary’s four-story priory, built in 1907 and located within Yale University’s campus close to downtown, will be the central residence and offices for the new parish under the “municipal model” the archdiocese has been implementing. That won’t work if the Dominicans continue to live there, Blair said.
“I’m not approaching this from trying to get rid of the Dominicans — far from it,” Blair said. “I’m approaching it for pastoral planning, from the point of view of a pastoral plan for the needs of today.”
The Catholic Church is not alone in its declining numbers. Traditional Protestant denominations also have been shrinking, although not at the rate of the Catholic Church, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, evangelical, Pentecostal and less traditional churches are gaining members.
The Archdiocese of Hartford implemented its first reorganization in 2017, merging 212 parishes into 131 today. Soon, though he would not say when, Blair will bring further consolidation in New Haven, Hamden and elsewhere. “At this point, we want to bring them all under this municipal model and there’s no plan to close any church,” he said.
Rather, the St. Mary priory would house several priests, with one, “a first among equals,” acting as moderator, according to a video shown both to the archdiocesan convocation and to the Dominicans’ provincial council meeting this fall.
When the five friars living on Hillhouse Avenue, two of whom staff St. Mary’s parish, were told they would have to leave the priory, they were given other options that would allow them to continue living in the area, or at least in Connecticut.
“It was my attempt to find some way to keep the Dominicans in the archdiocese,” Blair said. But, he said, the friars responded, “Thanks but no thanks, we’re not interested in doing anything.”
The friars don’t see it exactly the same way, however.
The Rev. John Paul Walker, pastor of St. Mary, wrote to the parish, “As each of these would entail a radically new configuration of the Dominican life and mission in the Archdiocese, the Dominican Province has decided to evaluate these new offers at our next provincial chapter, which will take place in June of 2022.”
The Very Rev. Kenneth Letoile, provincial of the Province of St. Joseph, said, “Each of these requires further study, like any possibility. At first blush there are pros and cons and more details that need to be reflected on.”
He said the provincial chapter of about 40 friars would consider all invitations for Dominican ministry from within the province, which stretches to Ohio and Kentucky He said the proposals from the archdiocese were “offers but not serious proposals because there would need to be a lot more detail fleshed out for any of the three.”
Waterbury, Hamden, St. Joseph
In its video, the archdiocese laid out the reasoning for needing St. Mary to become part of the citywide parish, staffed by archdiocesan priests, and presented the three offers.
New Haven’s Catholic institutions include not only the parishes but the St. Thomas More Center and Chapel at Yale University and the Knights of Columbus, whose founder, the Rev. Michael McGivney, is entombed in St. Mary. These, in addition to ministries to Latinos, Italian Americans, Polish Americans, “is what the municipal model parish in New Haven must supply, and it will require a collection of motivated diocesan priests to provide this array of intensive ministry,” according to the video’s narrator.
The video then presents the three options for the Dominicans: the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury, which was McGivney’s home parish; a combined parish in Hamden, with the friars living in the former rectory and convent at St. Joseph Church on Edwards Street in New Haven; and St. Joseph itself, which could be made into a shrine to the patron saint of both the Dominican province and the archdiocese.
The video suggested advantages of each option. The basilica, with its 1,500-household parish, “would provide a unique connection if the Dominicans were to shift from one McGivney-connected parish to another,” the narrator states.
Hamden, with four churches and 5,000 households, “could be an exceptional chance for the team of Dominican friars to step into a brand new configuration that would allow plentiful opportunities for priestly ministry, for preaching and the salvation of souls,” according to the video.
St. Joseph, which merged with St. Mary in 2017, is 11⁄2 miles from the Hamden line in the East Rock section. The archdiocese would connect the two houses that once were the rectory and convent. The video’s narrator says living on Edwards Street “could be seen as a fulfillment of what might have been, for in 1892 New Haven was tentatively selected as the location for the province’s new studium” or place of study.
Finally, the archdiocese offered St. Joseph as a traditional parish, which, if elevated to the status of a shrine, “could be developed not only to be a financially sound and sustainable location, but, even more importantly, it could become a site of spiritual renewal and even pilgrimage within the city of New Haven,” according to the video.
Letoile said the friars were being told to make a decision by January, when the archdiocese has asked them to leave the priory. “For us in a reactive mode to say, ‘OK, we’ll go here,’ without reflection, would have been ill-advised. We’re not just diocesan priests in white robes.”
Diocesans must live in community and prefer to have different ministries among the priests, Letoile said. “The lifestyle is the basis out of which our mission goes,” he said. He said the friars must hold a “twofold reflection: Does the ministry line up with what we can do and what is our living situation?”
“A key question is, is this ministry going to be self-supporting? … In all three of the proposals that is one of the things we would have to study,” Letoile said.
At St. Mary, Walker and the Rev. Joachim Kenney serve the parish, while the Rev. Jordan Lenaghan is director of religious life at Quinnipiac University and chaplain at Albertus Magnus College, and the prior, the Rev. Jonathan Kalisch, is shrine director at the Knights of Columbus. A fifth friar, the Rev. Augustine
“Henry” Camacho, at 85 has a parttime ministry in Peru. Lenaghan has said Camacho has been unable to leave Peru because of the pandemic.
Lenaghan and Kalisch would live elsewhere in New Haven, joined by a newly appointed chaplain to the cloistered nuns at the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace in Guilford, Letoile said.
‘An open door’
Letoile said when the friars met with Blair during the summer, “the centrality of the priory and our way of life was presented to the archbishop. He responded positively and that there was an open door there.” Then, when talks were restarted, it became clear “that it would not be possible for the Dominicans to remain in St. Mary’s priory.”
Blair said he tried his best to keep the Dominicans in the archdiocese. “The only thing that we did not offer them was to stay in the priory,” he said. “I can’t wait until next year to implement the pastoral planning for New Haven.”
He said the offers are still available, but that may not be the case for long. “We don’t necessarily have the luxury of time,” he said. He said he wondered “why it’s so important to retain this huge building, which is not cheap to maintain.”
David Elliott, spokesman for the archdiocese, said he could not give a date for when the plan would be implemented but said it “will begin to take form very shortly.”
“The Dominicans do not come first in my mind,” Blair said. “The care of the Catholic people of New Haven is first in my mind. … We offered other alternatives. With all due respect, my chief goal here is not to keep the Dominicans in New Haven.” Rather it is “to create a new pastoral model that will best serve the priests and people.”
He said St. Mary, with 400 households, is “near the bottom 15 percent” in the archdiocese. Its membership has dropped from 989 families in 2010, he said. “They also have operating deficits that can’t be ignored, either,” he said.
“It’s not like some huge, thriving parish that I’m closing,” Blair said. “It’s part of the same challenges that others are facing, and it has to be part of the solution that we’re facing.”
Intellectual rigor
Tacy Woods of Guilford, a lay Dominican, said, “We are devastated that they’re leaving. They’re so unique. When I was coming back to the Catholic Church, I was able to do it so easily.” That was because of the Dominicans’ “intellectual rigor” along with their “contemplative life,” she said.
The Dominicans, formally known as the Order of Preachers, are known for study, prayer and preaching. “The fact that it’s here at Yale and they’re part of the whole community, it hurts that they’re being uprooted,” Woods said.
She said the idea of having a citywide rectory for archdiocesan priests, especially young priests, is a positive move, but she wished it didn’t mean the Dominicans would be leaving. “The Dominicans are big on study because intellectually they’re sharing the faith,” Woods said. “Having that intellectual rigor at Yale is priceless, really.”
When students and others come with serious questions, “the Dominicans are able to minister to them in a way that no one else can,” she said.