By Frank Doyle, Jr.

Over the course of the last few years, the Catholic Church in Boston has endured some trying times, beginning with the sexual abuse scandal and now, church closings. This new obstacle facing Boston Catholics has the potential to be even more scandalous and life-altering than the first. While the first obstacle shook Catholics' faith in their priests, this new adversity of parish closings directly affects the daily lives of all Boston parishioners.

I live at the top of Saint Brendan Road, next to Saint Brendan's Church and school. The potential loss of the spiritual center of my community, the symbol of my neighborhood, is incomprehensible. However, being a 17-year-old, it is not the same situation for me as it is with many of the adult parishioners, who have been living in this parish for the last 25 years or more and cannot stand the thought of their neighborhood taking such a prodigious hit as having their church close.

For me, it is a life-altering matter. I attended Saint Brendan's school for grades one through four, before I transferred to the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School in Cambridge. My sister spent seven years at the school (kindergarten through sixth grade), and my younger brother is now in his fifth year there (kindergarten through fourth grade). If our Saint Brendan's does indeed close this summer, my brother would not be able to continue his great education there. The same education that prepared me well for so many academic challenges both over at the Choir School, and now at Boston College High School. He already plays in our long-time-arch-rival Saint Ann's basketball league, an event I thought for certain I would never live to see, and now there is the possibility he could be attending school there. Unthinkable!

In addition to affecting my family, the possibility of Saint Brendan's closing directly affects me in so many ways, it is difficult to fathom. I work at the rectory, I lector at Mass, and I am a member of the Parish Pastoral Council. I am still trying to come to terms with the possibility that my church may be closed this summer. Imagine finding yourself, in the middle of the strenuous college search, stripped of your job, your leadership position, and your community service all at the same time. There would be no more fun memories from Saturday mornings with Fathers Fratus and Thuma, or with the Finance Council counting collections after Masses on Sundays. All the work the Parish Council has done over the last two years to improve our parish community, without any help from the archdiocese, will have been for nothing. My hope to revive CYO dances and my work towards that goal will be for naught. Also, the extensive repairs and renovations the church has made over the past few years will have been redundant, especially the one and a half million dollar tower repairs for which many parishioners pledged sizeable amounts of money that they are still paying today.

However, the most grievous loss that I will endure should my parish be selected for closing is that I will lose my sense of community. No longer will Saint Brendan Church represent my neighborhood as a landmark and herald the kind of neighborhood I live in. When people ask me where I live, I would no longer be able to use the church as a point of reference. In a word, Saint Brendan's is my home. To have it closed would be like coming home from college to find that your house has been sold and a condominium put in its place. The very thought of such a sacrilegious atrocity heats most people's blood to a boil. Another blow to our community would be the sudden collapse of activities. No longer would there be any Saint Brendan's color guard leaving on trips every weekend via the coach bus parked on Gallivan Boulevard. No longer would my sister be playing in the softball championships, with my mother blazoning fight songs over her portable boom box. No longer would my brother be competing on the Saint Brendan's track team over at Saint John's Seminary with all our rivals (and winning, of course). The CYO basketball team would also be no more. While the team does not necessarily breed NBA material, it is an enjoyable way to spend the winter months (even if we don't win a single game.) It is not the success of these teams that matters, it is the fact that they bring us together as a community under a common banner of sportsmanship.

Everyone is feeling the pangs of terror over church closings. Will it be my parish? Will my kids have a place to go to school next year? Will there still be a softball team? While the Church is indeed trying to alleviate these concerns by promising schools will remain a top priority and that most parishes can be easily absorbed by its neighbors, the fact is a parish and church closing presages the end of a community, the "integration" with other neighborhoods and communities. The parish community will have collapsed, and its former parishioners will, not purposefully, become the "second-rate citizens" of their new parish. They will be viewed just a little differently than everyone else.

So, as a teenage high school student, the threat of my parish closing is very real and very frightening. It emblematizes the end of an era. No more sports, no more parties, no more Hospitality Sunday brunches in the lower church hall. No matter which parishes close, we need to pray that our church leaders take all potential repercussions into account as they make these life-altering decisions.