Shuttered Uptown Catholic church reopens as charismatic community center
Published: Sunday, December 11, 2011, 6:15 AM
Nearly three years after New Orleans police broke into Our Lady of Good Counsel Church to handcuff and evict parishioners trying to save it from closure, the 117-year-old church is being reopened.
The move means that Good Counsel, located Uptown on Louisiana Avenue, will host several Masses a week and perhaps occasional weddings and funerals as well, Aymond said last week. It does not, however, restore the surrounding parish of the same name.
The decision is a milestone on a long road toward reconciliation after the bitter public rift over parish closings that embroiled the local Catholic community after Hurricane Katrina. Aymond’s predecessor, Archbishop Alfred Hughes, shuttered Good Counsel and nearly three dozen other parishes in a post-Katrina reorganization of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
In the case of Good Counsel, Aymond, shortly after his arrival in 2009, joined a key pastor, Monsignor Christopher Nalty, in working with the protesting parishioners to restore some trust and find some way to accommodate at least some of their wishes.
New life sought for St. Henry, also
Quiet talks also have been under way to find a second life for another closed Uptown church, St. Henry, located about a mile from Good Counsel.
A solution there is not yet in sight, but Aymond has told friends of St. Henry that he is committed to keeping that church available for sacred use in some form, even if part of the 86-year-old building is converted one day to a community center.
Alden Hagardorn, a former St. Henry resistance leader, said the climate has so improved that people who bitterly fought the archdiocese in 2009 went caroling outside Aymond’s residence last Christmas and were invited inside for drinks.
They will do it again this week, Hagardorn said.
The decision about Good Counsel also means that two very different communities must forge a new relationship at the church: members of the Center of Jesus the Lord — Catholics who occasionally worship in tongues and manifest Pentecostal traits — and the more traditional friends of Good Counsel who fought to stay in their church.
People who worship at Jesus the Lord, faced with building maintenance problems on North Rampart, have discussed and assented to the move, said the Rev. Lance Campo, the center’s director.
And the friends of Good Counsel are elated.
“I am happy — truly happy — about this,” said Barbara Fortier, a leader of former Good Counsel parishioners who, in 2008 and 2009, sued in church and secular courts and locked themselves inside the church for 72 days to resist Hughes’ closure order.
“This is a classic win-win,” she said.
Campo said a timetable for the move hasn’t been set yet, nor has it been decided whether he will live in the old parish rectory. Some renovations at Good Counsel will be part of the move, Aymond said.
A rocky past
Three years ago, relations between the archdiocese and friends of Good Counsel and St. Henry hardly could have been worse. Both churches were closed and their parishes merged with nearby St. Stephen Parish, later renamed Good Shepherd.
After weeks of protest, parishioners occupied Good Counsel and St. Henry around the clock. In January 2009, the archdiocese finally resorted to police action to forcibly evict occupiers and take possession of the properties.
Eight months later, Aymond, a native of New Orleans, returned to the city as its new archbishop. .
In the meantime, as pastor of the merged parish, Nalty worked to build a new community and foster a sense of unity. Many families adopted Good Shepherd, but others couldn’t sever their emotional ties to the closed churches.
For months, then years, those parishioners met regularly outside the buildings to pray the rosary, kept up their holiday traditions of giving to the poor and maintained regular newsletters with names of the sick in need of prayers.
It was in that environment that the newly installed archbishop asked to meet with them, in the autumn of 2009.
“I was guided by three principles,” Aymond said last week. “One, to listen and understand where they came from. Two, there could not be a change to the pastoral plan. They had to understand that their churches could not reopen as parish churches. And three, to work toward some reconciliation and communication — to use those churches for some good purpose without reversing anything in the pastoral plan.”
Fortier, Hagardorn and Aymond agreed that the early meetings were difficult. Parishioners were still furious and showed it.
“When the conversations started there was necessary and healthy tension. And some hurt,” Aymond said. “With conversation and with God’s grace we were able to work past that to see how we could work together.”
Small steps on both sides
At first there were small reciprocal gestures.
Early in 2009, Aymond led a public procession of parishioners to visit and pray briefly at the two closed churches before ending at St. Stephen.
When he asked parishioners to reschedule weekly rosaries away from Sundays because they conflicted with Mass times and looked too much like an outdoor protest, they agreed. And when parishioners asked Aymond and Nalty for keys to the churches to pray inside, they agreed.
In time, Aymond began to allow sacred rites at both churches, like funerals of former parishioners, on a case-by-case basis. He opened the churches to pilgrims on Good Friday. He allowed annual Masses on the feasts of St. Henry and Our Lady of Good Counsel. He allowed Christmas concerts at Good Counsel last year and this year.
Former parishioners responded by regularly cleaning the churches.
A few months ago, Aymond said he approached the community at the Center of Jesus the Lord and suggested a solution to their building problems: Move to the underused Good Counsel.
Fortier said friends of Good Counsel want to welcome them to their new home.
“We understand there may be some mixed emotions on their side. We’ve kind of been in their shoes,” Fortier said. “We also had to leave a place we called home.”
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