Anger Anew Over Church Closure

Already angry over the closing of St. Isidore Catholic Church, some parishioners are furious after a meeting with diocesan officials who offered the services of a psychologist to help them get over their loss.

According to Rebecca Cagle, one of seven parishioners who attended the Thursday night meeting, Bishop Tod D. Brown told the parishioners of the 77-year-old Los Alamitos church that it would remain closed but that psychological counseling would be available for “those of us who will not accept it.”

“How dare he think that we need it?” said Cagle, who received her First Communion and was married at St. Isidore. “We’re not crazy.”

But Msgr. Lawrence J. Baird, spokesman for the Diocese of Orange, said Brown did not offer church members psychological counseling. Rather, he offered the services of a psychologist acting as a “professional facilitator to help them with the transition.”

The diocese closed St. Isidore on Sept. 1. The building, like many in Orange County, would be unsafe in an earthquake, officials say, and repairs would cost nearly $300,000.

The church’s closing follows a national trend to consolidate small neighborhood churches, such as St. Isidore, with larger ones nearby. Parishioners of the closed church, which offered a single Sunday Mass in Spanish and none in English, have been encouraged to attend St. Hedwig’s. The larger church offers five Masses on Sundays and a Spanish-language Mass was added at 1:30 p.m. for the Spanish-speaking parishioners of St. Isidore’s.

In a statement issued by the diocese Friday, Brown “further expressed his ardent hope that the Hispanic community will continue to grow with the available larger facilities at St. Hedwig’s Parish.”

But Cagle, a member of Comite del Amor, or Committee of Love, which has been working to save St. Isidore since May, says she will attend Mass elsewhere. Committee members met outside St. Isidore on Friday night to express outrage over the meeting and inform other parishioners. Cagle said she cannot foresee any church members taking advantage of the bishop’s offer.

“None of us were shocked by his decision,” Cagle said. “But I thought maybe there would be another meeting. He gave us 30 minutes to give our side and then he just says it’s going to stay closed and that there’s a psychologist for those of us who won’t accept his instructions. We were up in arms.”