You can add my neighbor to the East, the Diocese of Rockville Centre, on Long Island, to the growing list of dioceses facing tough times — and taking some drastic steps to deal with its economic challenges:
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre plans to offer buyouts to 1,500 of its 6,000 employees next month as part of a cost-cutting plan to save its schools and parishes amid stagnant revenue and rising demand for charitable services, church officials said Tuesday.Officials would not say how many jobs they ultimately planned to eliminate in the sprawling Long Island diocese, which has 1.3 million Catholics in 133 parishes across Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
They said that many of the jobs cut would be parish-level positions like outreach workers, maintenance staff, nonunionized elementary school teachers and parish administrators, while about 50 jobs would be created at diocesan headquarters in Rockville Centre for a new Office of Parish Administrative Services.
The office will consolidate many of the purchasing, accounting and other management functions now handled separately by each parish, officials said. News of the buyouts and reorganization was first reported Tuesday in Newsday.
In a letter to parishioners posted Jan. 13 on the diocesan newspaper’s Web site, Bishop William F. Murphy seemed to prepare parishioners for the announcement.
“Generous as you have been and continue to be, today the expenses associated with the ministries and services we provide,” exceed the donations that “you, as good stewards, make,” the bishop wrote.
Along with rising expenses for personnel benefits and building maintenance, he wrote, the diocese has “seen a steady increase in demand for many of the church’s services” while donations have remained level.
There’s more at the link.
posted January 27, 2010 at 8:12 am
This sounds a lot like age and gender discrimination to me. If Bishop Murphy sold his residence, could all the single women that the church exploits, ahh, I mean employs, keep their jobs?
How does it feel, Bishop Murphy, to put an entire group of people, predominately women, out on the street in the highest period of unemployment Long Island has seen in decades? Is that ministry? Or is it creating a bigger market of poor to whom Bishop Murphy can then bestow his “largesse, (i.e., “requests for the diocese’s services”)?
In this economy a bishop should be sleeping in a trailer or a tent or on a park bench before he even considers letting go of staff “who dedicated their lives to the church,” especially older staff who may find it near impossible to find a new job and have little savings because of the paltry salaries church workers are paid to begin with.
In another reporting of the same story, it says that performance evaluations will begin for all staff, too. Does this mean that the people of God on Long Island, too, can give performance evaluations to Bishop Murphy and to our pastor, too, and give these two a package if we don’t feel that they have performed adequately?
posted January 27, 2010 at 2:06 pm
The great statement that came out of the news conference was that after you voluntarily separate yourself from paid employment, please feel free to come back and volunteer because we will be a church of volunteers.
These former employees will certainly come back to the parish where they work but this time it will be to the food pantry.
The radical dependence on God that our faith calls us to has been well lived by the workers in the vineyard. “Something beautiful for God” would be to be able to see the same faith response from the hierarchy. If only they could trust Providence.
posted February 3, 2010 at 9:33 pm
These teachers have worked for decades and are now basically being shown the door so the diocese can save a few bucks and hire new young teachers who work much cheaper. I hope the people who are going to pay more money to send their kids to a diocese school know that they are not going to get their money’s worth. What a shame/sham! Let these teachers work! Let them keep their jobs!
posted February 5, 2010 at 9:54 am
We are losing our 2 CCD coordinators – and our beloved Music Director – do you think that volunteers could do what these dedicated people do? I doubt it. Let’s see if the person who was hired by the diocese is a volunteer in his church- or is he just a spoiler – this is another sign that people are using the church for their own means – and that is to destroy it. We must really stand together in this and fight!.
posted February 18, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I am one of the teachers being offered the buyout and I am only in my mid 40′s. It AMAZES me that I am expected to “retire” at such a young age and STILL with a salary that is not livable on Long Island. To the poster who says that they want new teachers that they can pay 20K instead of 40 k, YOU are absolutely correct. With all young, inexperienced teachers, your children will NOT be getting the education they need. It takes a LONG time to actually learn to be a “good teacher”. They want the schools filled with these low paid, inexperienced teachers. The schools will fall apart.
posted March 2, 2010 at 12:53 pm
As the son of a woman who was a shop steward long before women in the workplace became shop stewards and as the father of a young woman who is a substitute teacher on Long Island I can’t imagine why the teachers of parochial schools are NOT RIGHT NOW forming a union.
I hope that the majority of these parochial school teachers see this as a great opportunity to form a union.
As a volunteer for a Hospice on Long Island one of my first questions to the Director of Volunteers when asked to assist at an in-patient center was, “Will I be putting someone out of a job or will I be eliminating the possibility of someone having a job? If I am or will put someone out of a job my mother will turn over in her grave”.
The emphasis in any institution including the church is preservation and not transformation. Change is too creative and difficult.
posted January 26, 2011 at 9:36 am
This blog tend to express one’s ideas and thoughts
posted February 8, 2011 at 6:02 am
For some teachers it might turn out to be unfair for them to retire earlier than the usual age, and whatever it is the cause of the action, they should also consider the involved teachers..
posted February 23, 2011 at 1:09 am
great work of helping other people.