Good Stewardship

Means Smart Planning

I was impressed by the article written by Dolan in the New York equivalent to the Catholic Standard on the need for good planning throughout the whole archdiocese. He is dealing obviously with some of the serious challenges of the economy tanking as a lot of New York and various whole sectors were ravaged.

Good Planning- makes sense. It also follows the biblical command to be a good steward.
Does the Archdiocese of DC need a house for students-like a dorm for seminarians going to Catholic U in some new program to line the pockets of whatever developer got that sweet deal whose wife is in the Serra Club? No. The Dominican House has enough square footage to accommodate more 'dorms' or 'cells' or whatver you want to call them, as do a number of other religious houses already in existence in "little vatican" looking for inhabitants. Cut a deal with the Dominicans.
What the Archdiocese needs is to build another church-and it should be a huge basillica sized one in the area between Baltimore and DC in that never never "Hood in the Wood" land that is totally unserviced by any Catholic church as it falls in between two Archdioceses. The new Maryland inter-county connector has stops planned that link PG country with Montgomery county-- and the area by the AutoPark off Briggs-Chaney has a lot of huge vacant land that will be easily accessible to the inter-county connector stop/exit.
Why there? Because there is nothing there. It's Dollar Store heaven. It's mini-mall -nail- spa -Safeway- Ross -Dress- For- Less country. People ride buses out there and it takes them even on an express bus almost forty five minutes to get to a metro. So they don't have time to go to church if they need to get to work on time in the morning (who wants to get up at 4:30 am)- and those are basic workin folks out there. They need a church they can easily walk or drive to quickly or is on a bus stop off the inter-county connector exit.

That's where an enormous basillica with a parking lot sized church should be built. -If you really must line the pockets of whatever developer got that sweet deal. Don't laugh- ten years ago you thought Gaithersburg was the God forsaken hinterland pineys. That area is going to develop quicker than you can say "Hail Mary."


Postscript: Take a drive around Brookland and look at all the potential to buy an existing place to put seminarians in-or renovate one- I bet there are even several nice foreclosure properties around. The JPII Center was just put under contract to the Dominican Sisters of Ann Arbor and we need something brand new? At what cost? Who audits the Archdiocese anyway for these sorts of things? What a waste.