c. 2007 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ When home is closed, where is there to go?

I don’t mean the home with the kitchen table and the front porch swing. I mean the one with the exquisitely carved wooden altarpiece.

I mean the one with the just-perfect statues that came all the way from the Old Country and the stained-glass windows that bear not only beautiful depictions of the saints, but also the names of the long-dead parishioners who donated them.

I mean the home where soot from the quiet work of 100-plus years of wax candles has stained the ceiling of the sanctuary. The one where the whole neighborhood would turn out for baptisms and first Communions and confirmations. The one where you could attend Mass in Polish. The one Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa were buried from.

I mean the one where thousands of souls _ and soles _ embarked on tens of thousands of processions have worn furrows in the center aisle. The one whose kneelers have been so long in place that generations of worshippers have left indelible impressions.

This city’s Catholic diocese is going to render some of the faithful “homeless” over the next couple of years, and it’s going to be rough. Because not only have the faithful left indelible impressions on their houses of worship; those venerable churches have left indelible impressions on the faithful.

There was a time when some of the city’s oldest and grandest Catholic churches were not only thriving centers of faith, but central pillars of thriving neighborhoods full of Catholics.

But that time has gone. The Catholics have mostly gone, too, to the suburbs. The neighborhoods have passed into the hands of others, who look at those grand, old churches more as landmarks than anything else.

Since the church isn’t in the landmarks business, it has two choices: Go where its “customers” have gone, or try to rebuild its urban “customer base.” (Doing the latter would require more than offering an elementary school and some social services. It would mean going out and evangelizing and building up new church membership _ a lesson the churches that remain in the city should learn.)

But what the church can no longer do is nothing.

Church closures and parish consolidations are long overdue. Cleveland’s new bishop, Richard Lennon, is setting about the task of reorganizing the church’s resources to match the demographic map. It’s a job his predecessor couldn’t bring himself to do.

Some people say the bishop is trying to pass the buck _ or in this case, the ax _ to the faithful, with his request that “parish clusters” figure out which churches to close and which ones to keep. But let’s not pretend that there’s a way Lennon can win. If he’d issued the best imaginable plan from the chancery, he’d get clobbered for not listening to the people.

This has to be done _ and it will be painful for people who are deeply invested, emotionally, in the 23 to 48 parishes that aren’t going to make it.

The rest of us _ those who will be learning to live with far less drastic changes than our churches closing _ will need to give them more than room in the pew. We’ll need to give them room to mourn.

Pastors and other church leaders remind us that the church is the people, not the building. And that’s true. For most of us, whether the pastor can preach, whether the choir can sing, whether the congregation is friendly and whether we feel welcome _ whether we feel at home _ matters a great deal more than the configuration of the walls and the height of the ceiling.

But no one should try to pretend that the building doesn’t matter.

Sacred spaces are designed to grab us by the emotions, whether they’re the newer, light and airy places meant to impart a feeling of fellowship around God’s table, or the stately, old ones alive with grandeur and gloom and long, long memories.

But the key word is “alive.” The church has been carrying too much dead weight for too long.

Right now, uncertainty is generating anxiety. As decisions are made, some changes will be uncomfortable and the losses will be painful. But the Catholic Church has survived persecutions, heresies, schisms, a Reformation and plenty of messes of its own making. Putting the church’s resources where they make the most sense should make it stronger.

(Kevin O’Brien is deputy editorial director for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)

KRE/PH END OBRIEN