Cardinal William H. Keeler, announcing the closing of a Roman Catholic parish in Baltimore and the "scaling back" of 13 others, said yesterday that an urban study of financial resources prompting those decisions will be expanded to include churches beyond the inner city.
Praising the yearlong "restructuring" process that involved dozens of meetings by hundreds of city laity, most of whom fought successfully to prevent the immediate closing of their parishes, Cardinal Keeler said similar archdiocesan surveys will identify "demographic shifts and new needs beyond the circle of the urban church."
One effect of the inner-city downsizing, he said, is that "hundreds and hundreds of lay people" who assisted Auxiliary Bishop John H. Ricard with the studies "have been called to a deeper spirituality."
At most of the threatened churches, attendance and contributions increased slightly during the past year. This could also happen in suburban areas where the numbers of Catholics have been on a steady rise, he said.
Cardinal Keeler and Bishop Ricard, in a joint appearance at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in South Baltimore, announced the fate of 14 parishes that had been warned last May they might have to be closed because of dwindling income and membership.
As reported by The Sun yesterday, only one -- Our Lady of Lourdes at Liberty Heights Avenue and Edgewood Road -- will be shut down this month. After 70 years of ministry to the Ashburton area, it will have its last Mass Feb. 19. Its church and classroom building, rectory and garage will be sold.
Here is what parishioners at the other 13 parishes were told:
* St. Alphonsus, the 150-year-old Gothic Revival edifice at Park -- Avenue and Saratoga Street -- where St. John Neumann was pastor in 1851 -- will become a "national shrine." New uses for its other downtown buildings near the Catholic Center will be studied. Its Sunday Mass in the old Latin rite will be continued. Cardinal Keeler said he hopes the shrine designation will publicize St. Alphonsus' architectural and historical significance and draw pilgrims from all over the country.
* St. Ann, Greenmount Avenue and 22nd Street, and St. Wenceslaus, Collington and Ashland avenues, will be "twinned" under one Redemptorist-order pastor and staff. While the churches themselves will be saved as they provide scaled back religious services, ancillary buildings in both parish complexes may be sold.
* St. Cecilia, Windsor Avenue and Hilton Street, and Immaculate Conception, Mosher Street and Druid Hill Avenue, will both stay open with more limited schedules. They will be administered by a pastor of the Vincentian order living at Immaculate Conception, which will retain its church, rectory and hall built in 1972 when its 1850 landmark church was torn down. Some of St. Cecilia's buildings may be sold.
* St. Gerard, Charlotte and Cardiff avenues, and Holy Redeemer, 800 S. Oldham St., will retain their relatively modest buildings and continue as chapels of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church on Conkling Street in Highlandtown, administered by priests of the Redemptorist order.
* St. Peter the Apostle, Poppleton and Hollins streets, and St. Martin, Fulton Avenue and Fayette Street, will form an as-yet undefined relationship with a third church that was not part of the original restructuring study -- St. Jerome at Scott and Hamburg streets. While one or more of the three large, historic churches may be closed, Bishop Ricard said, it is not likely to be St. Peter's, the "mother church" of West Baltimore founded in 1838. St. Peter's Greek Revival church was built in 1842.
* St. Michael the Archangel, Lombard and Wolfe streets, and St. Patrick, Broadway and Bank Street, will be paired. St. Patrick's will cut back on services, and the Redemptorist priests responsible for both parishes will look into possible sales or new uses of ancillary buildings such as rectories, schools and parish halls. The Hispanic ministry will remain at St. Michael's.
* Most Precious Blood, 5010 Bowleys Lane, will keep its church and residence dating from 1948 but share a priest with the far larger St. Anthony of Padua Parish, 4420 Frankford Ave. Fewer than 300 people attend weekly Mass at Most Precious Blood, which closed its school in 1988.
* St. Stanislaus Kostka, 700 S. Ann St. in Fells Point, administered by the Franciscan Friars, will be paired with St. Casimir's at Kenwood Avenue and O'Donnell Street in Canton, also a Franciscan church. Both are historic Polish parishes. At St. Stanislaus, reducing the size of the church complex is likely.
Both Cardinal Keeler and Bishop Ricard, speaking after the 10:30 a.m. Mass at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church, said they saw the downsizing of urban parishes as a more practical use of dwindling resources and not as an abandonment of inner-city neighborhoods.
Since the 1940s, Mass attendance at the city's Catholic churches has fallen from nearly 150,000 to fewer than 33,000, although the names of about 89,000 Catholics are kept on city parish rolls.
Asked how much money would be saved by the restructuring, Cardinal Keeler deferred to Bishop Ricard, who said it was too early to tell. Whatever saving there is will not occur this year, the bishop said.
"There was a great deal of participation in this process, and we faced some painful realities," Bishop Ricard said, "but we have remained committed to the church in the city."
Although he has made several recent appearances at St. Alphonsus Church, which is without a pastor, Bishop Ricard said he will not be moving there -- as rumored.
Consideration had been given to the possibility that the bishop might spend a few nights a week at St. Alphonsus during its transition from parish to shrine. But he said he will remain in the rectory of St. Francis Xavier Church in West Baltimore, staffed by the Josephite order. Bishop Ricard is a Josephite priest.
Cardinal Keeler said he had high hopes for the newly designated St. Alphonsus Shrine, noting that Baltimore's old cathedral -- the Basilica of the Assumption -- received more national attention and increased visits after its recent designation as a shrine.
Bishop Ricard said St. Alphonsus will continue to minister to Lithuanian-speaking Catholics as it has done since being designated a "Lithuanian national parish" in 1917. Many of its supporters of Lithuanian ancestry now live in Baltimore County.
Current Sunday Mass attendance is about 340, but St. Alphonsus is unusual in having more weekday Masses -- five and sometimes six -- than Sunday Masses. On Sundays, there are four Masses, including the one in Lithuanian and the Tridentine Latin Mass no longer allowed at most Catholic churches. Cardinal Keeler scheduled the 12:30 p.m. Tridentine Masses in response to requests from Catholics who travel many miles to attend it.
St. Alphonsus also has Miraculous Medal Novena services every Monday and Tuesday and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament all day Thursdays, closing with old-fashioned Holy Hour worship. It is not certain what changes, if any, will be made to those schedules of devotional services.