parishioners to continue appeal of church's closure

Parishioners of Our Lady of Peace will appeal a Vatican decree upholding the closure of the nearly 100-year-old church by the Archdiocese of New York and its merger with a nearby parish.

The decree, by the Congregation for the Clergy, followed five extensions by the Vatican body to allow it to gather and review more information from parishioners and the Archdiocese.

Since appeals by various churches within the archdiocese also shuttered in 2015 were being looked at individually, parishioners were hopeful the Congregation would overturn the Archdiocese’s decree.

“We had very high hopes,” said Janice Dooner Lynch, a longtime parishioner who is on the church’s appeals committee. “I don’t know what happened. I thought we had a good case.”

Parishioners received a letter containing the decree on Jan. 9. They intend to appeal to the Apostolic Signatura, in effect the Vatican’s Supreme Court.

“We move on and we won’t give up,” said Lynch, whose family has worshiped at Our Lady of Peace since 1921.

The Archdiocese cited declining attendance, shifting demographics, financial constraints and a shortage of priests for the closure and merger of Our Lady of Peace and dozens of other parishes in the city and across the region in late July 2015. Parishioners at Lady of Peace have since disputed each of the Archdiocese’s assertions to close the East 62nd Street church, whose parish was merged with the Church of Saint John the Evangelist on East 55th Street.

The church’s appeals committee sent the Congregation roughly 10 volumes of documents, including financial records, to try and persuade the Vatican the Archdiocese acted without merit in closing the church. Parishioners argued that the church had a vibrant and growing congregation and had long been in the black.

Shane Dinneen, a 10-year congregant at Our Lady of Peace and the president of Friends of the nonprofit Our Lady of Peace, said the Congregation for the Clergy’s seven-page letter, while detailed, failed to reflect the vibrancy and vitality of Our Lady of Peace.

While the Congregation’s decree says that the parish’s documentation had been carefully examined, at least one error, as well as an omission, suggests that did not happen, Dinneen said.

However paradoxically, that is reason for optimism, he said. “What encourages us is the actual letter itself,” he said. “This is so bad it’s good.”

While the Congregation’s letter states that church attendance at Mass had quadrupled in a year, documents relayed to the Vatican said only that the congregation had grown by about 7 percent in each of the five years before the church was closed.

The letter, correctly noting that the church is about 100 years old, also said Our Lady of Peace would therefore “need substantial maintenance and repairs in the coming years.” It neglected to note a $450,000 renovation — paid for by the congregation itself — of the church completed in 2009, Dinneen said. It also failed to mention that, following the Archdiocese’s decree, congregants raised more than $500,000 through a nonprofit, an amount they said would pay church expenses for 10 years.

“It makes you wonder how carefully they examined our documents,” Dinneen said.

Dinneen went on to rebut the Archdiocese’s reasons — all buttressed by the Congregation for the Clergy decree — for closing Our Lady of Peace. He emphasized a passage within the letter that says “just cause” to shutter the church “must primarily be the betterment of the pastoral provision for the salvation of souls,” also known as care of souls, which in Catholic doctrine centers around the celebration of the Eucharist.

But citing results from a survey of Our Lady of Peace congregants taken a year following the church’s closure, Dinneen said regular Mass attendance for former church parishioners had declined 30 percent, with 12 percent not having attended Mass at all.

“You tell me is that demonstrating care of souls?,” Dinneen said. “They’re not getting the Eucharist. … How can that be good for the care of souls?”

The survey also revealed that more half of former Our Lady of Peace parishioners felt either unwelcome or very unwelcome at St. John the Evangelist.

By contrast, he said, about three-quarters of the Our Lady of Peace’s 443 registered parishioners attended Mass at the East 62nd Street church when it was open, a number he said was double the average attendance of a typical U.S. parish.

“There’s a real need for this to be appealed,” Dinneen said of the Congregation for the Clergy’s decree. “I’m still waiting for the real reason why Our Lady of Peace was closed.”