| Some in shock over deep L.A. cuts
By ARTHUR JONES
Los Angeles
Callers to the Los Angeles archdiocesan ministries offices were
mainly talking to message tapes by Sept. 24, two weeks after the archdiocese
told employees of huge staff cuts ahead.
The axe falls mid-October on more than 60 employees when
departments serving college students, African-American Catholics, Asian and
Pacific Catholics and Hispanic Catholics, and gay and lesbian Catholics,
Catholics with disabilities and the pro-life office are shuttered.
The education department is being cut back, but some services,
such as those to adolescents, continue.
In other departments, such as Detention Ministries, staffs have
been decreased by 50 percent. For example, one priest will now serve Los
Angeles’ “Twin Towers” downtown jails that hold 11,000 inmates.
Detention Ministries previously offered 21 Masses and Communion services each
Sunday in each tower.
To protest the cutbacks, two veteran department heads have
resigned, though their jobs were not in jeopardy. Tom Chabolla, head of the
Secretariat for Pastoral and Community Services, and St. Joseph Sr. Suzanne
Jabro, director of Detention Ministries, submitted their resignations after
meeting with their staffs.
The archdiocese, the nation’s largest, is pleading an income
shortfall from declining Wall Street investments. An NCR check of other
archdioceses nationwide showed that, while other regions are facing tight
budgets, few other archdioceses are cutting ministries entirely.
San Francisco cut its 2002-03 fiscal year budget by 7 percent,
said a spokesperson, but no employees were laid off.
New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan inherited a financial mess
plus a $20 million annual operating deficit from his predecessor, Cardinal John
O’Connor. Consequently, 23 New York employees were laid off earlier this
year and 11 ministerial offices closed.
New York’s 2002-03 budget projects no operating deficit. Said
spokesperson Joe Zwilling, “The archdiocese is affected like anyone else
by the stock market, but not to the point that had an impact on
ministries.”
When New York closed ministry offices, the services provided were
simultaneously restructured, he said. The Italian apostolate, for example, that
previously had its own office, is now handled by two priests who are also
pastors.
Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who refused to talk to
NCR, told the Los Angeles Times that the ministries will be
picked up by local deaneries or parishes. There was some uncertainty as to
whether Mahony had informed his regional bishops of the cutbacks in
advance.
Spokesperson Tod Tamberg said it was his understanding they were
notified. Two employees who called their regional bishops for help with the
curtailed ministries said they were told by those bishops this was the first
they’d heard of it. There was no advance parish planning for taking up the
ministerial slack.
The Boston archdiocese, faced with massive clerical sexual abuse
case settlements, earlier this year cut 15 jobs. The archdioceses of Chicago,
Atlanta, Portland, Ore., Milwaukee and Santa Fe, N.M., report no ministry
cutbacks or layoffs.
There have been no cuts in the Washington archdiocese, and none
anticipated; Cincinnati says, “the collapse of the stock market is a
concern” but they don’t anticipate cutbacks.
In Miami, 16 jobs were cut, though at least four of the staffers
were hired at the parish level. In a May 30, 2002, column, Miami Archbishop
John Favalora said he faced a choice between cutting subsidies to poor parishes
or cutting pastoral center services.
Nationwide, rank-and-file Catholics may be cutting back on their
giving anyway. Manchester, N.H., Bishop John B. McCormack told his local paper
he blamed the sex abuse crisis and the sagging economy for “lighter
collection baskets” and unsuccessful fundraising campaigns.
In Los Angeles, departing employees attribute the financial
shortfall to a combination of factors: payouts to-date for the sex abuse
settlements, anticipation of more sex abuse settlements ahead as cases are
prepared, costs allied to the new $190 million cathedral, and declining income
from investments.
Departing employees still on the L.A. archdiocesan payroll
appeared reluctant to take calls. It is not yet known what the various
ministries are saying to their constituencies about planning for the future.
But one employee commented that psychologically “the hardest hit was
ethnic ministries [to blacks, Hispanics and Asians]. They are in
shock.”
In Los Angeles, minorities constitute the majority.
National Catholic Reporter, October 4,
2002
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