Death of a Brooklyn Parish, Part 7
In Part 6, I outlined what I had discerned might be somewhat standard operating procedure for shuttering and merging parishes in Brooklyn. In this post I plan provide more detail relating to how it worked in St. Augustine, in particular:
Here’s how they do it. Note that this list is not chronological. Many of these facets of this procedure are executed concurrently.
Dangle the “save your parish” carrot. Siphon out as much cash as is possible.
Shrink the parish.
Disappear personnel, pastor included, if possible. (Install diocesan asset.)
In cases of forced merging only) identify parishioners willing to preside over the resurrection of the parish by contributing time, talent and treasure.
Institute radio silence.
Here’s how it happened at St. Augustine:
Dangle the “Save Your Parish” carrot and aim to siphon out as much cash as possible.
Diocese heads generally cite the priest shortage and the failure of a parish to produce enough income for its own survival as cause for shuttering and merging parishes. Nicholas DiMarzio (bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn) advised us, at St. Augustine, about five years ago, that our parish was in financial trouble and might be required to merge with St. Francis Xavier parish. Talk of merging had been in the air even before that time, but quieted down for a while, in part because objection to merging had been so strenuous.
In about spring of 2019, a small group of parishioners undertook a somewhat dramatic campaign to raise more money within the parish for the parish. I suspect such efforts rarely work, by the way, because by the time parishioners find out that such measures are warranted, the diocese is already shuttering or force-merging behind the scenes. The frog is already in the pot of lukewarm the water.
The diocese is dangling the carrot of hope that should dramatic efforts might succeed the parish might be saved, but they know this is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, so they are already working on the merging/shuttering as the parish is rallying financially.
I don’t know whether the diocese fails to discourage this rush to rally fiscally because it wants a fatter the calf for sacrifice, or because like the parishioners, they hold out hope that some angel benefactor — some Bells of St. Mary-style millionaire — to save the parish in question. It may be both.
In the case of St. Augustine, the efforts to raise this money of last resort were fevered. In the summer/fall of 2019, I received a couple of rather formal-looking fund-raising letters by mail in quick succession as well as an email or two. All of these came after months of radio silence. Some parishioners threw thousands into the pot “to save the parish.” While the parishioners of St. Augustine were rallying to get their parish out of the red, the diocese was on the move, recruiting/forming a merging committee, locking down the rectory, and emptying church-adjacent properties preparatory leasing and selling them.
In apparent response to parishioners who had complained about the lack of fiscal transparency, the parish also sent out several weird and obviously (selective in their reporting) missives designed to explain and account for parish spending. If memory serves, I received these via post during the end of 2019/ beginning of 2020, via postal mail, between late fall and the start of the New Year. I didn’t know much about finance in my parish, but these combinations seemed perfunctory, imprecise and unprofessional. There were small amounts of income knew had not been represented in this content. I could be wrong about this.
I saw from the first letter how this was going because I had been paying close attention to parish shuttering in Brooklyn for years. Even if I had not long ago sworn off of contributing to conventional Catholic parishes I would declined to contribute to this effort, because I knew giving St. Augustine cash at this point would have been a bit like sending a ransom payment for a kidnapping victim who had already been executed.
Shrink and enervate the parish.
The Brooklyn diocese learned through experience that a smaller, demoralized parish is easier to shutter or merge than a large, thriving one. The last thing the diocese wants when it decides to merge or shutter a parish is a fight.
That’s why the first move was to remove the beloved pastor. A good pastor understands what a healthy parish is. he knows that a parish like St. Augustine which did amazing work out in the world is a sacred ecosystem. A good pastor isn’t likely to be the most helpful collaborator in dashing a parish to smithereens.
This explains the Brooklyn Diocese’s choice not to assign a real pastor after removing the beloved one. This also explains the choice the Brooklyn diocese made not to engage the parish via parish-wide meetings and instead cultivated select parishioners who were likely to support the diocese’s plans in the hopes that this team might later be put forth as some kind of de facto representative committee. The people on this folks are boiling frogs too. They think they are being recruited ay first to save their parish, and subsequently, to make a difficult transition smoother. Unfortunately they can wind up as collaborators in entrenching powerlessness among parishioners. This is divisive. But divisive is good when the goal is to demolish a parish.
Bishop DiMarzio and the Brooklyn Diocese knew people would be angry about the merger. He knew that it would be easier to manipulate parishioners who were hurt, enervated, exhausted and powerless. He knew that a smaller parish would be easier to manipulate than a large one.
Hence the “desaparecidos” phenom that began with the summary remove of the beloved pastor and continued for a few years. The dissolution of solidarity that ensues the wake of hiring, firing, transferring personnel as well as in the piecemeal departures of parishioners who leave in disgust leaves parishioners more compliant and afraid.
Another advantage to shrinking a parish is that smaller parish yields a lower Sunday per capita (weekly offerings) take. This fiscal shrinkage makes it easier for the diocese to say “See you aren't even keeping your lights on!” Once the goose stops laying the golden eggs, there’s no reason to keep it around listening to it squawk. The powers that be know that once there’s no more cash to siphon out, a smaller parish is easier to merge.
In the case of St. Augustine, the diocese was able to cut the size of the parish population in half with a few strokes. By cancelling the Sunday Creole Mass at St. Augustine, and establishing one at the Co-Cathedral (of St. Joseph, the Bishops 18.5 million-dollar spare cathedral) the diocese was able to accomplish two goals: 1. fill seats at the not exactly bustling cathedral, and 2. reduce the population of St. Augustine by one-third to one-quarter.
The Spanish language Masses at St. Francis of Xavier had been eliminated a few years before the start of the forced merging, so all the Diocese of Brooklyn had to do to extract most of the Hispanic/Latinx population from both St. Francis and St. Augustine. So the Brooklyn diocese slashed Spanish language Mass at St. Augustine. This facilitated the creation of a Hispanic/Latinx pipeline to the Co-Cathedral.
By poaching the Haitian-Haitian American community and the Latinx/Hispanic community from St. Augustine, DiMarzio et al were able to reduced the population of St. Augustine— by half— and at the same time create a new, substantial revenue stream for the Co-Cathedral. Not only that, this maneuver rendered St. Augustine, a formerly half-white parish, majority white. The alpha parish, St, Francis Xavier, located in one of New York City’s most affluent majority white neighborhoods, has long been a majority-white parish. DiMarzio and team, not without cause, I am told, likely believed that merging two majority-white parishes would go more smoothly than merging a majority-white parish and with a (roughly) 50% white parish. So, to summarize, by cancelling the Creole and Spanish language Masses, the Brooklyn diocese was able to remove most parishioners of color from St. Augustine and install them in the under-performing cathedral preparatory to merging the newly white St. Augustine with another white parish.
What seems to happens in the course of sieges such as that over which the Diocese of Brooklyn presided at St. Augustine and St. Francis Xavier parishes, is that some parishioners stay and wait patiently, hoping that the diocese will, in time, provide; some defect to other parishes and other churches; and others just depart Catholic practice in disgust.
What I have observed among St. Augustine parishioners is that the many of the most involved parishioners weathered the insult and injury and stayed. The diocese can use this as a kind of test to determine which parish “leaders” will support them in the last stages of the stripping of the parish for parts. The diocese knows it can be reasonably sure that those who remain involved while the stripping of the parish for parts is ongoing are the most likely to collaborate in rebuilding the “new parish” by sharing time, talent and most of all, treasure. How sinister this is is difficult to see from the inside. Had I not spent fifteen years studying the diocese of Brooklyn, I might have been on that special team myself.
People remain steadfastly cooperative for many reasons, the most compelling of which, might be desire to hang on to traces of the parishes in which they baptized children, married, and buried loved ones — parishes they love. The {Q} “Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer?” {A.} “Because it feels so good when I stop.” factor can’t be underestimated. Those who stay fully committed during and after a parish has completed its stripping of the parish parts, they often feel relieved, refreshed, and glad to be free of the hammering. The diocese counts on this, and that these feelings can be capitalized upon —literally.
Disappear and Replace (Or Decline to Replace) Personnel
It was not on the day in the summer of 2017 when I learned of the sudden transfer of our beloved, exemplary pastor that I realized our parish would soon be forced to merge — but on the day I realized the Diocese of Brooklyn was in no hurry to replace the pastor. A caring, conscientious, talented pastor, is an obstacle to shuttering or force-merging a parish. That’s why the quick surgical removal of a loving pastor, and of any other caring personnel n leadership positions is so important to stripping a parish for parts.
Within weeks of the summary transfer of our pastor, the name of the longtime pastor of St. Francis Xavier began to appear at the top of the (online and printed) weekly bulletin of St. Augustine Church. There was, in other words, a pastor on paper, but not in the flesh. Not one person among the 12 -15 people I asked had ever over the course of the year or more that this priest was listed as our parish leader, had even once this phantom pastor anywhere in or near the church during the time he was our official pastor.
During the 2017 to 2019 period, the group of men with developmental disability to whom I referred earlier in this piece who, paid below-market rent in the building that used to be St. Augustine’s convent were moved “to somewhere nice.” (I pray that is true.) No announcement was made in any context about the sale or releasing of this property or the disposition of these men, who, for many years, attended the noon Sunday Mass at St. Augustine.
The nun who more or less directed the RCIA/catechesis program was disappeared and replaced without any notice. A maintenance man was fired. Young part-time workers who sat at the front desk in the rectory lost their part-time gigs. The genius music director “retired.” A couple of per diem priests, I believe, were yanked from their regular Mass schedule (This, before COVID). Parishioners started to leave and scale back their commitments. I suppose, when I returned from school to Boston, I was one of those.
DiMarzio installed a deacon, an ex-cop, who was, to say it generously, a poor fit for the parish and for his duties. The deacon, on the other hand, was in a tough spot, because he wasn't really installed to minister; he was was posted to handle day-to-day administrative operations in the parish, and to serve as a DiMarzio asset. He seemed ill-prepared in all areas, especially in liturgical/pastoral context. His commentary in the church bulletin looked like a fifth grader had written it. From what I heard and experienced, he had little feel for ministry. This appointment made no sense; that is, until it suddenly all made sense. I believe the deacon’s primary duties were to lock down the rectory and to police it as the diocese could move forward with a plan to lease it.
Soon after the deacon took command, the church rectory of St. Augustine, a splendid Victorian architectural brownstone wonder with over 20 bedrooms which had housed most of the parish’s several ministries two decades at least, was declared off-limits to parishioners. Upt to this point, book clubs, RCIA, Gregorian Chant, parties, Lenten workshops, ad hoc pastoral counseling and so much else took place in the parish rectory. The rectory was a parish hub, always humming with activity, always in use.
Until the deacon, acting on orders from the bishop, locked it all down.
Once the rectory was locked down, ministries scurried to claim/share small corners and spaces in and around the hall —“Monica”— it was called it, after Augustine’s mother — That, or fade; and some faded. The resident priests were moved out of the rectory. It took a few years to bring this emptying to completion, but it’s empty now, and my guess is it won’t be long before a multimillionaire who works for the New York Nets (Barclay Center is five blocks away. More on that, soon!) moves in with his shiny family.
A few months after installing the deacon and the phantom pastor, DiMarzio was smart enough to deodorize this sinful shit-show by dispatching a smart, thoughtful non-resident priest to offset the phantom pastor and lackey deacon. I didn’t know him, but I know that many people in the parish liked this non-resident priest very much. The non-resident aspect is key. It’s not possible to lock down a rectory with a resident pastor in it.
Maintain Radio Silence
I suppose some parishioners were in the loop for the duration of the stripping of the parish for parts, and received notifications along the way. I received no information about developments in the parish between the summer of 2019 and the January of 2021, but I had ignored the several fundraising letters, and had been caught complaining about the “stripping of the parish for parts” on social media and at least one person on the team found this discouraging.
Somewhere between 2019 and 2020, we got a new priest. I hear people referring to him as a pastor, but I noticed yesterday that his title is not “pastor” but rather it is “administrator.” I’m not sure what that means. The new guy seems lovely. He seems great, and good. I worry though, whether maybe he’s too good to be true.
Michele Somerville
March 16, 2021
Read “Death of a Brooklyn Parish, Part 1
Read “Death of a Brooklyn Parish, Part 2
Read “Death of a Brooklyn Parish,” Part 3
Read “Death of a Brooklyn Parish,” Part 4