Not sugarcoating the reality that the recently launched “Seek the City to Come” initiative for renewing parish ministry in Baltimore City will be painful and could result in the closure of some churches, Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, C.Ss.R. said it is nonetheless essential for strengthening the Catholic Church’s presence in the city.
Addressing more than 150 people who gathered Oct. 17 at Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore for the first of 18 prayerful community discussions planned for the next two years, the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s urban vicar said the church can’t maintain the status quo and expect any change for the better.
Today, 34 city parishes have more funerals than baptisms and conversions combined. Many parishes in the city do not have faith formation directors, full-time maintenance staff and other support personnel. And, as the city’s population has declined 38 percent since 1950, fewer than 2,000 people attend Mass in the city each week, even though there is space in city churches to accommodate 25,000 people if Mass were held at a single time, the bishop said.
“It’s getting progressively harder to do more with less – to prepare our children for sacraments, to do baptism preparation, to prepare folks for ways to do the work that we need in outreach and evangelization,” said Bishop Lewandowski, noting that parishes are also struggling to maintain large church structures with limited financial resources.
The Seek the City to Come initiative, which involves the 57 parishes of the city and a few neighboring parishes in Baltimore County, is inviting people throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond to help reimagine how the church can serve people in the city.
“We need to do this because we need to rally the church of Baltimore,” Bishop Lewandowski said. “We need to reach out in mission and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to do what Jesus asked the disciples to do before he ascended to heaven: to go make disciples of all nations.”
During the meeting, which lasted more than two hours, participants listened to Scripture readings and held small-group discussions that invited them to reflect on the strengths of their parishes, the needs of their community and their hopes for the Catholic Church in the city.
Parts of the meeting were conducted in Spanish for representatives of the city’s growing Hispanic population.
Tony Landers, a parishioner of St. Anthony of Padua in Gardenville, told the Catholic Review he recognizes the need for change. Historic buildings throughout the archdiocese, though beloved, are becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain, he said.
“For me, there are more important things than the buildings,” Landers said. “My biggest hope is that we can do more evangelizing in the city and that we can have more vibrant churches. I do think we can have fewer churches that are more vibrant. We’ve just got to convince other people of that.”
Mike Duggan, a parishioner of St. Ignatius in Baltimore, said he hopes the city’s diversity can be better represented in the city’s parishes.
“If you go into some of our parishes, you’ll see all white statues,” Duggan said. “We need to have more representation from other cultures to make all people feel welcome.”
Duggan said seminarians of the archdiocese also need more formation in urban parishes so they become better-rounded priests.
Other participants expressed a wide range of concerns about the church in the city. Some said there’s a need for better worship experiences and more public expressions of Catholicism in the form of eucharistic processions and other devotional events. Others said women need more leadership positions, while some said churches must come up with better ways of addressing racism, social justice and poverty.
Father Raymond Chase, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul in Baltimore, told participants he serves two equally beloved communities: those who join for worship at Mass on Sunday and the population of people who are homeless that congregates on the parish property.
Father Chase recalled an incident outside his church involving a fight between two homeless men. One flew into a rage after the other said something that insulted him. The priest got between the two men and desperately tried to make eye contact with the attacker.
“He’s moving to get around me because he wants to get at the other guy,” Father Chase recalled. “I move with him and I keep yelling his name because I know if I can get him to break his gaze on the person he is so angry with, there’s a chance that he might see something more than just this rage.”
The man made eye contact with the pastor and walked away. He later acknowledged to the priest that he held a weapon he would have used had not the priest acted.
One of the challenges for Father Chase’s community and others in the city is to help the celebration of the liturgy and the message of the Gospel touch the lives of the people in the street, he said, and there’s also the challenge of helping churchgoers better understand what people on the street are experiencing.
“All of us in the urban churches – we are invited to look into the eyes of those (we) encounter and to be drawn more deeply into the mystery of Christ and to be able to go out and open the door to new possibilities, the possibilities of the Gospel,” Father Chase said.
Geri Royale Byrd, who is leading and facilitating the Seek the City initiative, said the archdiocese will consolidate all the input it receives over the course of numerous community discussions and will share all it learns. All voices will be heard, she said.
Seek the City is “a calling to bring new life, enthusiasm and pastoral activity to better serve our community and beyond,” she said.
During a question-and-answer session, the first question posed to Bishop Lewandowski was whether the Seek the City process was “all for show.” He responded by emphasizing that the archdiocese has made no predetermined decisions about the future of parishes and ministries in the city.
“If this was all for show, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, noting that “we are all going to do the work together.”
The bishop later added that the Holy Spirit would guide the planning process. He elicited applause when he said there is a need for all people of many different perspectives to come together.
“If we don’t get over this divide between liberals and conservatives, traditionalists and progressives, we’re going to kill ourselves,” he said. “Catholic means elastic. We’ve got to love each other, brothers and sisters, or it’s not going to work.”
Email George P. Matysek Jr. at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org
For more information, visit the archdiocesan Seek the City to Come page here.
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