Catholics lost both churches in Frankford on June 30th as a result of the Archdiocese decision to close Mater Dolorosa and St. Joachim. The reasons given for closing both churches are feeble at best and false at worst.
You might take a look at the other 30 plus churches in Frankford that have remained open. They are large, small and everything in between. I took a tour this past Sunday to take some pictures. They are active and looks like they will remain so. And still the Archdiocese of Philadelphia walks away from Frankford.
This is a very good point. If having churches with attendance like St Joachim and Mater Dolorosa was a financial disaster for a diocese then the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania would have been in bankruptcy a long time ago. Obviously, unless the archdiocese sends money to a parish, the parish is not costing the archdiocese money. A parish that sends money to the archdiocese, no matter how little the amount may be, does not cost the diocese money.
The archdiocese now has a real accountant as CFO. (BTW, he’s a graduate of North.) He had to redo everything because the previous bookkeeping system did not reveal the financial state of the archdiocese, but concealed it. The archbishop will come to understand, I hope, that the archdiocesan employees in charge of accounting were not glaringly worse at their jobs than the other policy-making employees. The problem, and the resulting damage, was not limited to that one office.