Seeking Mercy for St. Stan's
by Suzanne Strempek Shea
AUGUST 31, 2009 TAGS:
Wakes typically take place in funeral homes, not churches. But a wake is being held at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Adams, Mass., which the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield closed on Dec. 28. Since that day, St. Stan’s has been occupied round-the-clock by parishioners who refuse to lay to rest the building that is their spiritual home.
For a little more than eight months, approximately 200 church members – many descended from the Polish immigrants who built the church in 1905 and named it for a 16th-century Polish Jesuit novice - have been part of a vigil, praying, meditating, their presence speaking their dissent.
St. Stan’s was closed as part of a consolidation effort that is becoming all the more common throughout the world as the Roman Catholic Church deals with decreased attendance, a shortage of seminarians and enormous legal payments to victims of clergy sexual abuse. Then St. Stan’s parish was joined with that of Notre Dame-St. Thomas (a church that had already been “yoked” from two parishes) to form the Parish of Pope John Paul the Great. Services for the new entity are held at the former Notre Dame Church, a few blocks from St. Stan’s impressive brick twin spires.
For St. Stan’s approximately 800 parishioners, the closing first announced during Masses last Aug. 9 and 10 in a letter from Bishop Timothy McDonnell was greeted by audible gasps: The church’s coffers were healthy, its adjacent school still in operation, its congregation vibrant, its design and décor rivaling any on a European tour, and its historical aspects many. In the 1940s, for example, it became the first church in the Western Hemisphere to include an image of The Divine Mercy, an international devotional movement based on the revelations of God’s mercy recorded in a diary by an uneducated Polish nun, Saint Faustina Kowalska. Two days before St. Stan’s closing, church members began a vigil similar to those being held across the state in Boston, where five parishes were marking their fourth and fifth years of refusing to leave church property marked as closed.
The 200 participants say they’ll end their vigil only when the Vatican hears their appeal, or when they are physically removed by the Diocese. Monsignor John Bonzagni, director of pastoral planning for the diocese, told Time magazine earlier this year that “Suffering the closing of your parish is like watching a parent die. If the parishioners at St. Stan’s need to mourn this way, we will do nothing to interfere.”
As one church member who did not want to be identified said, “Who’d take us out anyhow? The police either know us well or are related.”
The death of St. Stan’s is as jarring to some in the community as the closing was 50 years ago of the Berkshire-Hathaway textile mill, the town’s largest employer for more than six decades. The industry that had provided livelihoods for so many locals over 150 years – 1,000 at its end - never had a successor, a palpable fact on the too-quiet streets of this Berkshires town of 8,800.
But winds of change have blown on occasion from the top of nearby Mt. Greylock, the state’s highest point. One of the town’s first major groups of settlers were Quakers, who arrived in the late 1700s and provided safe houses to runaway slaves from New York, which abolished slavery in 1826, 36 years after Massachusetts ended the practice. And Susan B. Anthony, the 19-century suffragist, was born in this town in 1820. A church vigil is another addition to the history books.
The story isn’t over, notes Laurie Haas, a spokesperson for the vigilers, who has attended St. Stan’s since she moved to town in the mid-1990s. Haas, 49, previously lived in the Albany area, where six churches were affected by closing and reconfiguring. She was well versed in what lay ahead for St. Stan’s, and since last August has been involved in regular communications with the diocese, and part of an appeal to the Vatican. In April, church members joined 30 similar groups in eight parishes asking that the Vatican overturn closures and assign a mediator to work for better solutions.
Haas participates in the vigil one hour each week – the minimum asked of all vigilers. She bundled herself against the winter cold that filled the building earlier this year. She participated in a priest-less Easter Sunday service, entering the closed church each time by knocking on the locked side door. Inside, she can spend the 60 minutes focusing on a variety of visual wonders: the 30-foot-tall main altar; the dramatic crucified Jesus suspended before it; a painting of St. Stanislaus on his deathbed; a mosaic of two eagles that denote parish loyalty to both the United States and Poland; a statue of St. Dominic and his dog (the animal painted brown in homage to a former pastor’s canine); that historic painting of the Divine Mercy, and a small statue of St. Faustina Kowalska.
There’s also a choir rose window that shows Polish-born Archbishop Jan Cieplak, leader of Russia’s Catholics, confronting Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin on behalf of his fellow faithful. Released from a death sentence after international pressure, including a letter-writing campaign by Poles in America, Cieplak visited St. Stan's in 1926. His presence was many years ago, but he was a walking example that the doomed can be saved - something the vigilers, including Haas, believe.
“We really have a strong case,” she says. “And I believe in miracles.”
First Photo by Monika Sosnowski
For a little more than eight months, approximately 200 church members – many descended from the Polish immigrants who built the church in 1905 and named it for a 16th-century Polish Jesuit novice - have been part of a vigil, praying, meditating, their presence speaking their dissent.St. Stan’s was closed as part of a consolidation effort that is becoming all the more common throughout the world as the Roman Catholic Church deals with decreased attendance, a shortage of seminarians and enormous legal payments to victims of clergy sexual abuse. Then St. Stan’s parish was joined with that of Notre Dame-St. Thomas (a church that had already been “yoked” from two parishes) to form the Parish of Pope John Paul the Great. Services for the new entity are held at the former Notre Dame Church, a few blocks from St. Stan’s impressive brick twin spires.
For St. Stan’s approximately 800 parishioners, the closing first announced during Masses last Aug. 9 and 10 in a letter from Bishop Timothy McDonnell was greeted by audible gasps: The church’s coffers were healthy, its adjacent school still in operation, its congregation vibrant, its design and décor rivaling any on a European tour, and its historical aspects many. In the 1940s, for example, it became the first church in the Western Hemisphere to include an image of The Divine Mercy, an international devotional movement based on the revelations of God’s mercy recorded in a diary by an uneducated Polish nun, Saint Faustina Kowalska. Two days before St. Stan’s closing, church members began a vigil similar to those being held across the state in Boston, where five parishes were marking their fourth and fifth years of refusing to leave church property marked as closed.
The 200 participants say they’ll end their vigil only when the Vatican hears their appeal, or when they are physically removed by the Diocese. Monsignor John Bonzagni, director of pastoral planning for the diocese, told Time magazine earlier this year that “Suffering the closing of your parish is like watching a parent die. If the parishioners at St. Stan’s need to mourn this way, we will do nothing to interfere.”
As one church member who did not want to be identified said, “Who’d take us out anyhow? The police either know us well or are related.”
The death of St. Stan’s is as jarring to some in the community as the closing was 50 years ago of the Berkshire-Hathaway textile mill, the town’s largest employer for more than six decades. The industry that had provided livelihoods for so many locals over 150 years – 1,000 at its end - never had a successor, a palpable fact on the too-quiet streets of this Berkshires town of 8,800.But winds of change have blown on occasion from the top of nearby Mt. Greylock, the state’s highest point. One of the town’s first major groups of settlers were Quakers, who arrived in the late 1700s and provided safe houses to runaway slaves from New York, which abolished slavery in 1826, 36 years after Massachusetts ended the practice. And Susan B. Anthony, the 19-century suffragist, was born in this town in 1820. A church vigil is another addition to the history books.
The story isn’t over, notes Laurie Haas, a spokesperson for the vigilers, who has attended St. Stan’s since she moved to town in the mid-1990s. Haas, 49, previously lived in the Albany area, where six churches were affected by closing and reconfiguring. She was well versed in what lay ahead for St. Stan’s, and since last August has been involved in regular communications with the diocese, and part of an appeal to the Vatican. In April, church members joined 30 similar groups in eight parishes asking that the Vatican overturn closures and assign a mediator to work for better solutions.
Haas participates in the vigil one hour each week – the minimum asked of all vigilers. She bundled herself against the winter cold that filled the building earlier this year. She participated in a priest-less Easter Sunday service, entering the closed church each time by knocking on the locked side door. Inside, she can spend the 60 minutes focusing on a variety of visual wonders: the 30-foot-tall main altar; the dramatic crucified Jesus suspended before it; a painting of St. Stanislaus on his deathbed; a mosaic of two eagles that denote parish loyalty to both the United States and Poland; a statue of St. Dominic and his dog (the animal painted brown in homage to a former pastor’s canine); that historic painting of the Divine Mercy, and a small statue of St. Faustina Kowalska.
There’s also a choir rose window that shows Polish-born Archbishop Jan Cieplak, leader of Russia’s Catholics, confronting Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin on behalf of his fellow faithful. Released from a death sentence after international pressure, including a letter-writing campaign by Poles in America, Cieplak visited St. Stan's in 1926. His presence was many years ago, but he was a walking example that the doomed can be saved - something the vigilers, including Haas, believe.
“We really have a strong case,” she says. “And I believe in miracles.”
First Photo by Monika Sosnowski
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