Outline in white of North Central
Milwaukee; 17 Catholic churches
in 1963 3, in green,
Black=85% plus African
Americans; grey= 85% white;
red=integrated blocks
green= predominately Hispanic;
white= nonresidential blocks
When we returned from Philadelphia, celebrating the 4th of July and my grandson playing the drum with his high school band there was a letter waiting for us from the pastor of the church the people and money were transferred when our North Central Catholic Church was closed. When I had interviewed him, about a year ago, for the essays The Catholic Church in North Central Milwaukee he told me that there was about 1.2 million dollars in three accounts resulting from closing and sale of our Church and the two Catholic Churches that had merged with it. In this letter he says there is about $649, 000 left of the $733, 000 from the sale of one the Churches. He does not talk about the other two funds of $221,000 and $250, 000 inherited by his Catholic church when our church was transferred to his church.
During the year the pastor has avoided talking with me or responding to my emails of inquiry. However, once I was able to sit down with him and two other members of the Corporation Board of the Church and all three agreed in principle with the Cry of the Poor petition which states the million plus dollars realized from the closing and sale of three Catholic Churches in North Central Milwaukee be used to support “the intent of the donors” by establishing a fund for use of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in North Central Milwaukee. In this letter he now says this part of the funds, 649, 000 “will be used both for outreach needs and capital improvements.”
He talks about a year long process that some members of a secretive ‘task force’ considered the proposals and suggestion for the money. Yet the Cry of the Poor petition and the Sustainable Fund proposal of ‘what could be’ was not even acknowledged by the ‘task force’ as existing and were were not part of any open dialog or public meeting by the task force or Parish Council.
Today in mass, at another Church, my heart was heavy about how the poor, segregated and marginalized were discarded and ignored once again by church people considering the fate of the million plus dollars that was clearly intended for the mission of these three Churches in North Central Milwaukee.
The pastor who wrote this letter is considered a good and holy person, compassionate with the poor and marginalized. However, all I could think about how the fate of the one million was probably pre-decided, by the Archdiocese, as was the closing the Catholic Church that generated the money and all that was happening was just pretending that people in the Church had something to say about it.
Living in a hierarchical Church where the cover up of the sexual abuse scandal was so great I should not be surprised by this abuse of the poor and marginalized. But it is sad and depressing and raises the question once again of why stay in the formal Catholic Church that stigmatizes the poor, ill, imprisoned and marginalized. Marquette University, a Catholic Jesuit university, teaches killing and our Archdiocese ones again practices the sin of segregation and neglect of God’s blessed ones. God, have mercy on us and forgive us, especially for our sins of racism and neglect of those most in need.
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