Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

alwaysboopthesnoot t1_j4776lu wrote

It needs 1M in improvements, to keep the doors open? That’s easily fixed: Sell some gold or icons or land or shopping malls or first editions or diamonds or whatever the church leadership invests in, hoards, or profits from. Earthly treasures aren’t equal to heavenly ones; they don’t need to be stored up and archived or saved or savored because that never ensures that living, breathing human beings are given the succor, care or assistance they truly need.

The church is the people, not the money, trappings, treasures, gold chasubles, red hats, silver crosses, or extravagant buildings. “Wherever three or more are gathered in His name, He is there”.

Somebody in charge literally needs a Jesus moment of their own, to figure out their true calling and motivation in life.

27

dxlsm t1_j47zuke wrote

I live in an area where there are three RC parishes within blocks of one another, each with a church and school building (only one of which is in use for one part of a regional RC elementary school). There used to be four parishes, but maybe 15 years ago or so, one that was already combined with a neighboring parish was finally closed and the church sold.

In 2020, a tornado came through and tore half of the roof off of one church and damaged the structure of one of the steeples. The church and (unused) school were the smallest of the three. I am a member of the parish, and have been since we moved here when I was a kid. I have a lot of memories there (most good; serving with a weird priest who we later found out was into young boys, not so much). I haven’t been able to figure out why we were keeping all of these churches and buildings. Well, tornado causes a massive amount of damage, ok, this will be the thing to push the diocese to do something.

They did something alright. They decided to spend millions of dollars to restore and repair the damage. You know, so the local parishioners can continue to be saddled with maintaining three large physical plants that all have large utility bills and maintenance needs. And then we get pestered every month or so with notices saying, “Look what we did for you! Now you need to donate more money to us because we lost members and things are expensive! And we need to maintain these buildings!”

Imagine what a couple of million dollars could have done for local folks in need? Imagine how much better the available income could support the physical buildings if there were fewer buildings?

After this massive waste of resources, I can’t help but see even more clearly that we’ve lost our way. We care more about buildings and things and prestige than we do about people. I know that has been an ongoing theme among church leadership for a long time, but when it makes it all the way down to the local parishes, it is really pretty sad.

1

Snoo-35041 t1_j486hfq wrote

And didn’t St. Joseph’s sell the land behind it, because the Diocese/Parish couldn’t figure out how to make money on a parking lot in Bloomfield. Like WTF. And what did they do with the land, make it a paid parking lot.

2

bremw01 t1_j4chfxj wrote

Hell they could also reach out to the other thriving church communities in pgh who do local fellowship and have helped rebuild churches and homes in the past but i dont think they ever would. Too much of a hatred for liberal protestants

1