Listed churches must compete to stay open

`We cannot afford all these buildings,' says bishop
BY MARK GREAVES
HISTORIC CHURCHES will have to compete to stay open under a year-long review into every parish in the Lancaster diocese.
Each parish will be asked to submit a "CV" that includes details such as number of churchgoers, nearness to main roads and efforts to promote Catholic teaching.
Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue of Lancaster said the review aimed to "galvanise" the Lancashire Catholic heartland and would focus on parishes that spend "more on buildings than on people".
The announcement comes as the diocese struggles to deal with declining congregations and a debt of more than £10 million.
Bishop O'Donoghue admitted that the diocese would not be able to keep the five listed churches in Preston open. "We cannot afford these five large buildings," he said. "The total congregation for that area is less than a 1,000 — you can draw your own conclusions."
According to Bishop O'Donoghue, the review is not so much about cutting costs in response to diocesan debt, as about "how best to communicate the faith".
He said: "There's a certain deadness in many of our communities — the spirit has gone out of the belly of the Church. The review will focus on what impedes our mission today."
The bishop announced the project in a pastoral letter. "History may well focus on this letter as the most important in the whole of my ministry in Lancaster," he wrote.
He hinted that beautiful churches were likely to be sacrificed for churches with buoyant congregations.
"There can be no breakthrough without much sacrifice on our part. Preserving structures/buildings (beautiful though many of them are) is one thing; preserving and passing on the faith is an altogether different matter," the letter said.
A spokeswoman for English Heritage said she hoped the diocese would not overlook the value of its listed buildings, which, she said, could bring considerable financial benefits in the form of public funding and VAT relief on repairs.
One church braced for closure is St Walburge's, a grandiose gothic structure in Preston whose spire dominates the skyline of the town.
In April Bishop O'Donoghue told the Blackpool Evening Gazette that the building carried "half a million pounds of debt" and that it could "bankrupt us".
Fr Mark Elvins, a university chaplain based in St Walburge's, said he would be disappointed if the church closed but admitted closures were inevitable given the decline of the faith in the area.
He explained that Lancaster, unlike the south-east of England and some parts of Scotland, had not benefited from an influx of Polish Mimi
grants. "There are enough Catholics in Preston to fill the churches again but we have to reach them," he said. "In the 19705 6.000 Catholics came to Mass. But these days the stuffing has been knocked out of the Catholic heartland."
Earlier this year the Diocese of Lancaster made five lay workers redundant after it emerged that a debt of more than £10 million had built up.
More recently, the diocese has been accused of forcing the editor of the diocesan Catholic newspaper The Voice to resign for being critical of the Church hierarchy.
Fr Val Farrell said he felt he bad no choice but to quit after a high-ranking priest criticised his editorial style. He was allegedly "bundled out of office". He suffered a heart attack a few days after his resignation.
Fr Farrell, 66, said he had expressed an intention to resign during an argument at a management committee meeting. He then received a letter from Bishop O'Donoghue accepting his resignation — even though he was no longer planning to quit. When he did meet the bishop — to clarify his position rather than to resign — he felt he did not have the support to continue as editor.
Bishop O'Donoghue denied the resignation had been forced. "Fr Farrell has done a fantastic job as editor," he said. "I must add that the resignation was Val's decision —perhaps he felt it was now time to go."