{"id":7214,"date":"2004-05-26T08:07:20","date_gmt":"2004-05-26T08:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/boston_roundup.html"},"modified":"2004-05-26T08:07:20","modified_gmt":"2004-05-26T08:07:20","slug":"boston_roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/boston_roundup.html","title":{"rendered":"Boston Roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Globe, beginning with this article on the socio-economic distribution of the closed parishes<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The rate of closings is higher in nonwhite neighborhoods. The typical parish being closed or merged is in a neighborhood that is 16 percent nonwhite, while the typical parish being spared is 9 percent nonwhite. And parishes with a non-English Mass had a 27 percent chance of being affected, compared to 19 percent for the rest.<\/p>\n

Churches that serve immigrant populations and offer non-English Masses set to be closed include the only parish with German and Latin Masses (Holy Trinity in Boston). Spared are all the churches with a Mass specifically for the Cambodian, Cantonese, Cape Verdean, Creole, Korean, Mandarin, Nigerian, or Vietnamese communities.<\/p>\n

The neighborhoods losing churches are no poorer than those keeping theirs. The typical household income in the neighborhoods around the parishes being closed or merged ($52,900) is nearly identical to the income in the neighborhoods of parishes remaining open ($53,300). The Globe’s measurement is imprecise, using the 2000 Census income for residents of the census tract containing the parish address, not the actual parish boundaries.<\/p>\n

The economic fairness was achieved through O’Malley’s cluster system, in which groups of neighboring parishes were forced to offer up at least one parish for possible closure. The most affluent parish in the cluster was targeted just as often as the poorest, the Globe found. O’Malley generally followed those recommendations.<\/p>\n

What most distinguishes the closing churches is poor attendance, as judged by a census taken at Mass on several Sundays last October. The closing and merged churches had an average attendance of 559 that month, compared with 1,068 at the churches remaining open. In most clusters, the least-attended church was closed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And continuing with more articles linked on the sidebar.<\/p>\n

Boston Herald coverage here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Globe, beginning with this article on the socio-economic distribution of the closed parishes The rate of closings is higher in nonwhite neighborhoods. The typical parish being closed or merged is in a neighborhood that is 16 percent nonwhite, while the typical parish being spared is 9 percent nonwhite. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}