By JOE FEUERHERD

Some Detroit Catholics, particularly those who live within the city limits, are still reeling from the day in March 2005 when Cardinal Adam Maida announced the closure of 15 urban Catholic schools -- eight parochial schools and each of the seven diocesan-run high schools. It was a painful but necessary decision, Maida told the press.

“Sometimes a bishop has to make very difficult decisions and this is one of those times,” said Maida. “During my 15 years here in the archdiocese, we have struggled to maintain Catholic schools throughout the archdiocese, especially in the urban areas. But we cannot deny the reality of shifting populations, demographic changes, financial constraints and the need to use our resources in the best possible way to ensure the continued viability, presence and vitality of Catholic education throughout the archdiocese,” said Maida.

The closed schools ran operating deficits of over $3 million a year for the previous five years and Catholic school enrollment had declined by nearly half in the same time period in the city of Detroit, according to the archdiocese.

A year later, in March 2006, Maida announced the closing or consolidation of more than 100 parishes over several years.

Those who support these moves see the strategy as a regrettable but necessary recognition of reality. Like much of the rest of those who could afford to move beyond the city’s boundaries, according to this thinking, the area’s Catholics have moved and the church must move with them.

But to others, it’s a tale of two churches: One suburban, large in numbers, affluent and predominately white, the other urban, shrinking, economically needy and predominantly black.

It’s a matter of priorities and mission, say some of those who fought the school and parish closings.

Leonard Holmes, former athletic director at the shuttered East Catholic High School in Detroit, asked the questions on the minds of many Detroit Catholics.

“What are we all about? Building museums, building golf courses, building hotels? How does that convert people? How does that bring people closer to Christ?”

Holmes was referring to archdiocesan investments in Washington’s Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, where the Detroit church has underwritten or guaranteed approximately $40 million in loans to the failing museum and think tank, and to the newly developed Inn at St. John’s, a luxury hotel and 27-hole golf course constructed on archdiocese-owned property (see main story).

Archdiocesan officials say those who compare the expenses associated with the John Paul II Center or development of the hotel, or even the $15 million spent to refurbish Detroit’s Cathedral of the Most Holy Sacrament, are mixing apples and oranges.

“Our involvement with the [center] goes back a decade,” archdiocesan spokesman Ned McGrath told NCR in a February 2006 e-mail in response to questions about the center’s funding. It was, he said, “a time when the archdiocese -- indeed the whole economy -- was more prosperous. Since that time, we can certainly say our support for our parishes and schools was never compromised by our investment in the [center].” The school closings were largely a result of declining enrollment, said McGrath, while “shifting populations in southeast Michigan and the declining number of priests” are the most significant factors in parish consolidations and closings.

Critics maintain that if the archdiocese had put equal effort into fundraising for inner-city Catholic schools, some of those that were closed, particularly at the high school level, could have been saved.

“We don’t teach those kids because they are Catholic, we teach them because we are Catholic,” said Sister of St. Joseph Cathey DeSantis, executive director of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance.

“It’s not just about closing a parish at a particular point in time, it’s about the last 20 or 30 years and how involved have you been in helping to keep that parish alive, how supportive have you been,” DeSantis said.

National Catholic Reporter, March 9, 2007