{"id":3198,"date":"2008-04-07T08:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T08:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html"},"modified":"2008-04-07T08:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T08:28:00","slug":"hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html","title":{"rendered":"Hard times ahead for the Big Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hot on the heels of the news out of Camden<\/a>, another diocese — in fact, an archdiocese — is bracing for massive “restructuring,” i.e., parish closings and mergers. <\/p>\n

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Saturday began asking Catholics across metropolitan New Orleans, including those far from the flood zone, to prepare for a reorganization of Catholic life befitting a deeply damaged regional church.<\/p>\n

In a letter being read from nearly 140 pulpits at weekend Masses, Hughes characterized the 215-year-old Archdiocese of New Orleans, the second-oldest archdiocese in the country, as a “missionary diocese” after Hurricane Katrina. He said “all sectors will share in some of the sacrifices involved” in a massive restructuring plan to be unveiled Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Hughes offered no hint of what churches might be affected. But he said one new parish will be created, some will be merged, some closed and others reduced to mission status.<\/p>\n

No more Catholic schools will reopen “at this time,” he stated.<\/p>\n

In a foreshadowing of the post-Katrina reality, a representative of the Holy Cross fathers told parishioners of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish during a somber meeting Saturday that his religious order must leave the Mid-City parish it founded 129 years ago because it no longer has the priests to staff it.<\/p>\n

“We do not have the vocations we used to have,” the Rev. Tom Chambers told about 75 older parishioners called to an extraordinary meeting at neighboring St. Anthony of Padua Church. “If we could have stayed, we would have stayed.”<\/p>\n

Without staffing from the Holy Cross congregation, Sacred Heart would have to be supported by a dwindling number of diocesan priests. Parishioners took the news as a strong sign that a second blow is about to fall — that Sacred Heart, where jazz legend Louis Armstrong was baptized in 1901, might be closed in the archdiocesan reorganization.<\/p>\n

“It’s like a death in the family,” said Mary Joe Decareaux. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more details at the link<\/a>. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot on the heels of the news out of Camden, another diocese — in fact, an archdiocese — is bracing for massive “restructuring,” i.e., parish closings and mergers. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune: Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Saturday began asking Catholics across metropolitan New Orleans, including those far from the flood zone, to prepare for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nHard times ahead for the Big Easy - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hard times ahead for the Big Easy - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hot on the heels of the news out of Camden, another diocese — in fact, an archdiocese — is bracing for massive “restructuring,” i.e., parish closings and mergers. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune: Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Saturday began asking Catholics across metropolitan New Orleans, including those far from the flood zone, to prepare for…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-07T08:28:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hard times ahead for the Big Easy - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hard times ahead for the Big Easy - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Hot on the heels of the news out of Camden, another diocese — in fact, an archdiocese — is bracing for massive “restructuring,” i.e., parish closings and mergers. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune: Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Saturday began asking Catholics across metropolitan New Orleans, including those far from the flood zone, to prepare for…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2008-04-07T08:28:00+00:00","author":"Deacon Greg Kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html","name":"Hard times ahead for the Big Easy - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-04-07T08:28:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-07T08:28:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/hard-times-ahead-for-the-big-easy.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hard times ahead for the Big Easy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee","name":"Deacon Greg Kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","caption":"Deacon Greg Kandra"},"description":"A Roman Catholic deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, Greg Kandra is News Director for the diocese's cable channel, NET (New Evangelization Television.) Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}