Parish to appeal to higher power

By Chris Parker

The Morning Call

July 09, 2008

Five days before the final services in 47 churches the Allentown Catholic Diocese has set for closing or consolidation, a Schuylkill County parish said Monday that Bishop Thomas Cullen has rejected its plea to stay open.

Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Tower City -- at the western edge of the county, the farthest edge of the diocese -- learned Saturday by letter that Cullen rejected the appeal, parishioner Tessa Stauffer said. Her church had been the first to appeal its closure.

The diocese announced May 31 that 47 of its 151 churches will be merged or closed as of July 15, part of the diocesan response to a growing shortage of priests.

The churches had until June 16 to appeal and 22 did, diocese spokesman Matt Kerr had said. He said Tuesday he didn't immediately know how many had been rejected, and 'there will be nothing official until all appeals have been acted upon.'

'They go by the date the appeal was received, and the results are going out to them in that order,' Kerr said.

Stauffer said her father, church caretaker Paul Whelski, got Cullen's rejection letter. When her father called to tell her, she said, she was 'oh, furious, upset. We were just trying to hang on the least little bit of hope, which he squashed like a bug. For now. But we're going to change that.'

Stauffer said parishioners, who had gathered 119 signatures on a petition to appeal the closing, gathered 122 on a new one to continue the fight.

She said she sent a letter by overnight delivery to the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi in Washington, D.C., who will forward it to the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome.

Kerr said that the Congregation for the Clergy would have 90 days to decide. If the petition is again turned down, petitioners can go to Apostolic Signatura -- the Vatican's Supreme Court and 'the court of last appeal,' Kerr said.

Ss. Peter and Paul, spiritual home to about 150 families, on June 3 appealed the diocese's decision to close it and send parishioners to Immaculate Conception Church in Tremont, at least 10 miles of winding road and two mountains away.

Petitioners said the advanced age of most parishioners, the distance to Tremont, and the fact that the highway is not plowed or cindered regularly in winter were grounds for keeping Ss. Peter and Paul open. The priest who serves both churches, the Rev. Michael Ahrensfield, often isn't able to make the trek, they said.

But Stauffer said Cullen's rejection letter 'stated our petition does not provide for the overall good of the Diocese of Allentown. I have to question Bishop Cullen's spiritual healthiness. Why Bishop Cullen thinks he is superior more than God himself?'

Stauffer said she and others plan to attend a meeting of the Coalition of Churches, which represents churches that have appealed the closings, at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Best Western Conference Center off the Route 512 exit of Route 22.

'We want our church,' Stauffer said.

The agenda will feature Peter Borre of Boston, 'who has a national reputation [of] educating churches who are under appeal as to their legal rights and procedures for filing further appeals, even up to the Vatican Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican Supreme Court,' said group founders Stephen C. Antalics Jr. of Bethlehem and Joseph Fuisz of Washington, D.C.

chris.parker@mcall.com 610-379-3224

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