PORTAGE – Although the Rev. Andrew Draper hasn’t preached a specific sermon on Mary, Joseph and Jesus, there’s been “a lot of talk” of the holy family on Sundays recently.

“We’re using scripture and sermons to say we’re not alone,” he said. “And we’re praying each Sunday that this merger may be a smooth merger. … In every Mass, it’s touched on.”

Portage, like many communities across the country, is facing a problem in having too many Roman Catholic churches and too few Catholics.

Faced with difficult financial decisions, in the coming months the St. Joseph’s and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parishes will merge, closing the doors on two buildings that contain decades of shared memories.

This move is the latest of what the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese has deemed practical and forward-thinking measures, saving resources while trying to hold onto the best traditions of each church’s community.

The adage is that buildings are just that, and the parish is its people.

Diocese officials said in the long-term, they think Portage’s Catholics will see that the move is for the best. But that doesn’t mean that closing the doors won’t hurt.

The people will decide

As with many Cambria County communities, there used to be more parishes in Portage of varying ethnic backgrounds.

According to diocese documents, St. Joseph’s parish was the first to be established in town, with its church built along hilly Caldwell Avenue in 1898. The Sacred Heart of Jesus parish, which catered to the town’s Polish, organized in 1908 with a building completed by 1922.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Slovak parish, was established in 1910, and St. John the Baptist followed in 1928 to serve the town’s Hungarians.

The town’s first church merger took place in fall 1999, with Sacred Heart of Jesus’ and Assumption’s parishes forming Our Lady of the Sacred Heart while keeping both churches.

A few years later, St. John the Baptist’s closed, its building was sold and the congregation was brought into the fold of Our Lady.

Although there were three active worship sites and two parishes – St. Joseph and Our Lady, there was only one pastor to oversee both: the Rev. Draper, a Third Order Regular Franciscan priest, along with parochial vicar Joseph Janiszeski, also a Franciscan.

“It was a very different experience,” said Draper, who was initially tasked with overseeing Our Lady’s churches before being asked to take on St. Joseph’s a few years ago.

Draper said it was at times difficult juggling the names, councils, parishes and buildings.

Diocese spokesman Tony DeGol said sharing a pastor across worship sites, a process called clustering or twinning, has happened across the diocese in Ashville and Frugality, in Chest Springs and St. Augustine and in South Fork and Wilmore.

The churches keep their own parishes, buildings or schools, which helps them keep their identity, but they share a pastor.

Catholic Answers Magazine has written about parish mergers and church closures, and said clustering is sometimes a good long-term solution.

But often, it puts a strain on the pastor and delays answering the harder question: Does the parish have the money and attendance to survive?

“As mundane and un-spiritual it may sound, we must be good stewards of the church’s resources. It is difficult to determine at what point a parish in decline should end its mission and join with another,” the magazine said.

It was a hard question to answer, “But as time went on, we realized we have three worship sites that … people in Portage couldn’t support,” Draper said.

In addressing church closures and mergers, dioceses across the country have pointed to a dwindling number of priests and decreased attendance.

According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, there are about 75 million American Catholics. Using more rigorous standards from the Catholic Research Forum, which defines Catholics as people baptized into the church and arrange for a Catholic funeral, there are 68 million.

But many of them aren’t going to Mass.

According to the General Social Survey, the number of U.S. Catholics who report attending Mass fell to almost 24 percent by 2012, with other dioceses reporting attendance as low as 12 percent in places like New York.

The Catholic population locally is also slipping. There were more than 122,000 Catholics within the Altoona-Johnstown diocese in 1994; that number dipped to just over 108,000 by 2004 and as of last year was down to shy of 88,000 – about a 30 percent drop in 20 years.

Even so, Draper said the decision to close one or more of the sites weighed on him.

Finally, he said, Bishop Mark Bartchak told him the people will decide.

Draper said Bartchak told him, “They’ll come to you.”

A sad reality

There are mixed feelings as to whether the diocese made the right choice.

DeGol said St. Joseph’s was chosen because it was in the best shape and could hold the most people, but parking had some worried.

Longtime St. Joseph’s parish member Faye Zock said while she plans to welcome people into the church, she knows it will be a tight fit to get there on Sundays.

“It’s going to be hard, because there’s not a lot of parking up there,” she said.

The move has some neighbors upset, as well.

Mike Ruddeck lives across from St. Joseph’s and said he’s dealt with parking issues for years.

People park illegally, park too close to fire hydrants and have blocked him in. He predicts the problem will get much worse once the merger is complete.

“They (the diocese) never asked people in the neighborhood” how they felt about the merger, Ruddeck said.

Many, of course, don’t want to see the merger happen at all but understand the decision.

George Yusko, who lives near the Sacred Heart church along Hammers Street, said the church closures are a sad reality. He isn’t Catholic, but said he doesn’t like the see the churches shut down.

Several non-Catholics spoke to the Mirror and said the mergers make sense, although it’s sad for those who were baptized or married in one that’s closing.

Parishioners letting go

DeGol said Portage’s situation is not that different from Johnstown’s, where it was announced in 2009 that three of the five Catholic churches in Cambria City – all located within a stone’s throw of each other – would close and its parishes would merge.

“There was a church to serve each ethnic group … but as the population dwindled, it became apparent pews weren’t being filled,” DeGol said. “It was a sad time for a lot of people.”

The diocese dealt with a lot of backlash then, with sad and angry church members lobbying for their worship sites to remain open and for their pastors to stay.

But DeGol said looking back, many in the community have seen the value in the merger.

The three closed buildings: Immaculate Conception, SS. Casimir & Emerich and St. Columba were deteriorating fast without the resources to repair them.

St. Rochus was able to be retained as office space, and the former St. Stephen’s was adopted as the worship site for the renamed Resurrection Parish.

The new name was no accident, DeGol said.

“In the end, what you end up getting is a stronger church community,” he said. “They can see the gifts being shared, and I think they adjust a lot quicker.”

Barbara Dryzal of Johnstown, who attended St. Casimir for decades before the merger, said she and her husband were hesitant about joining Resurrection.

After attending one or two Masses elsewhere, Dryzal said she returned to Cambria City, and it felt like coming home.

“I’m so very glad that I got to meet so many of the new people, people that I just wouldn’t have had any contact with without the merger. And we’ve become good friends with many of them,” she said.

Dryzal also serves on the parish council and said there’s a camaraderie and shared spiritual experience with the group, although she knows some have still resisted embracing the new congregation.

“I personally have let go of the St. Casimir building because that’s what it is. It’s a building. It has many fond memories, but it’s not that I can’t make new memories here.”

This year, on Pentecost Sunday, Portage’s parish council voted on their own new name: Holy Family parish.

Draper said with a Joseph, a sacred heart and a former church in town named for St. John the Baptist, it’s clear the community has a Holy Family and a connection with each other.

“Some diehards who will say they always are one or the other, but that’s to be understood,” he said. “When you join and keep one building and sell the other two, it’s sort of sad for them.”

But Draper said some of his critics have become supporters, and the more the parishes come together for turkey dinners and Lenten fish frys – and realize that some of the best traditions, like the Polish Wigilia dinner during Holy Saturday, will be coming with them to Caldwell Avenue – the more everyone realizes they are one group of people and a truly close-knit church community.

‘I know that God can’

While Portage parishioners await the physical move, they already have a joint parish and finance council in place, along with a joint religious education program.

Father Draper said he’s finalizing a timeline to be sent to the diocese for approval.

The next step will be deciding on the last day of Mass for Our Lady’s churches.

Draper had proposed closing St. Joseph’s for repairs Aug. 15 for renovations and the installation of handicapped-accessible amenities with a planned October reopening date, but DeGol said it likely will be later than that, as there is a long process the diocese must complete before it closes

a church.

But he said the process is moving forward.

And as with Johnstown’s church “resurrection,” the diocese is hoping there can be a sign of new life in Portage through the economic development of the soon-to-be-closed churches.

In Johnstown, the three churches were purchased in 2011 by a Jennerstown, Somerset County-based nonprofit called 1901 Church Inc. to find other uses for the buildings.

Officials said they hope the same happens in Portage.

“The plan is to put them on the market for sale,” DeGol said. “We hope an individual or individuals will put them to the best use that serves the community.”

And through a tax-abatement program, pushed for years by Portage Borough officials, whoever buys the churches will be able to make repairs in the coming years without taking a massive tax hit.

Dryzal, of Johnstown, said she’s still waiting to see her former St. Casimir church given new purpose.

She had attended Mass at Immaculate Conception before it was transformed into an event venue called The Grand Halle, and said the acoustics in the former church make it a perfect space for concerts and weddings.

“I’m so glad,” she said. “And it also glorifies God.”

She said while she can’t think of how her old church could be reused, “I know that God can.”

People in Johnstown who haven’t been able to move past the merger are holding onto bitterness, she said, and she hopes they will eventually be led back to the church and that people in Portage can move on as well.

“My whole feeling was, what if I were one of the apostles … at the Ascension. Everything was changing. Everything was going to be so different. How was I going to go on? And it worked out,” she said.

Mirror Staff Writer Kelly Cernetich is at 946-7520.