ARTICLES
December 2002 ARTICLES
Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
He's Blinded By It
Archdiocese May Close College Seminary
By Christopher Zehnder
The bitter news came in the wake of the festivities that opened the cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The archdiocese of Los Angeles was millions of dollars in the red (which Cardinal Mahony blamed on a bad stock market). Constrained by his budget committee, the cardinal had to lay off 60 archdiocesan employees and close several archdiocesan ministries. Then came the resignations of five top archdiocesan officials: vicar general Monsignor Thomas Fleming; Monsignor Richard Loomis, director of the secretariat for administrative services; Sister Bernadette Murphy, who heads the secretariat for educational and formational services; Sister Cecilia Louise Moore, who directs charitable foundations; and Thomas Chabolla, a layman, who oversees the secretariat for pastoral and community services. Though the archdiocese and Loomis and Chabolla have denied that the resignations are over budget cuts, the timing of the resignations are a bit too coincidental for many observers.
But the biggest post-cathedral news may yet be coming. According to an archdiocesan source, the Cardinal Mahony may be looking to close St. John's Seminary College in Camarillo. The "official word," said the source, is that the archdiocese is studying the possibility of closing the seminary college, which is "running in the red to the tune of something like four million a year." St. John's theologate, said the source, will remain open.
According to the archdiocesan source, the college is currently only "about one-third occupied, if even that," while the theologate is in better shape, chiefly because it draws seminarians from other dioceses. Still, said the source, there was a time when the theologate was mostly filled by seminarians from the archdiocese of Los Angeles itself. Those days are long gone.
The archdiocese, claimed our source, is contemplating several options for the seminary college. One would be simply to close it and sell the property, which is very valuable. Another would be to make it a northern campus for Loyola Marymount University. As such, the campus would still admit seminarians, but would serve, as well, as a training center for a new lay ecclesial ministers, pastoral associates program.
Though our source described the closing of the seminary college as an imminent possibility, James Haninck, professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University, said that professors at St. John's have been talking about the archdiocese closing the seminary college for at least the last ten to twelve years. Haninck said he has heard nothing about the possibility of the college becoming a campus of Loyola Marymount.
If the archdiocese closes St. John's college seminary, "this would be the second seminary the cardinal closed during his time," said the archdiocesan source. "He said, early on, that he would never close the minor seminary, and he did. And he said he would never close the college, and, apparently, he is going to do that." (The archdiocese closed Queen of Angels minor seminary, San Fernando, in the late 1990s.)
The archdiocesan source said that the archdiocese is also doing a study of all Catholic elementary and secondary schools it subsidizes to determine which can be closed.
If the seminary college and Catholic schools close, more questions will doubtless be raised as to Cardinal Mahony's priorities. "We built and paid for this ugly monstrosity of a cathedral downtown," said our source, "and yet, now we cannot even fund a seminary?" Our source complained that "there was zero consultation" with priests and laity on the new cathedral. "From beginning to end it was the cardinal's idea and his creature. He's blinded by it, to the point where he can't see anything else right now."
Archdiocesan spokesman, Tod Tamberg, did not return my requests for comment on this story.