When did they change the name of St Agnes Church in Bond Hill (Cincinnati: home)

[mike1003]

MrsM and I had to cut across Bond Hill yesterday and I wanted to see the new Bond Hill School. They kept the main entrance facade and rebuilt the rest.

I noticed that The church across the street was something redemption or redeemer (what do I know, I'm Jewish??)

But I do know it was St Agnes 60 years ago

[23145tp]

mike1003, the name was changed about 4 yrs ago due to combining I believe four catholic parishes.

[goyguy]

St Agnes is now known as The Church of the Resurrection.

Cincinnati got a taste of what's caused great controversy in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, where congregation shrinkage combined with a very expensive scandal (no need to elaborate) have led to the consolidation of many Catholic parishes. Some churches have been relegated to subsidiary roles (Pope Ebenezer Parish, St Urkel's Church as opposed to simply St Urkel's, for example.) Others have been shut down completely, though congregants of a few around Boston defy orders and keep theirs operating.

23145tp got the chronology - roughly - and the quantity of parishes correct. This non-Catholic goyim doesn't have all the facts handy. But each of the parishes had long ago undergone a change in constituencies and a consequent drop in members. In bygone days Bond Hill was an ecumenical community, with WASP and Catholic and Jewish residents living side by side. (A "historically White" Presbyterian church is still, improbably, in existence on Paddock Rd.) Evanston was similarly diverse in terms of faith communities although not ethnically - there's still a large Jewish cemetery there, because why bother moving dead bodies? Its Catholic church was St Mark's, one of the ones merged into The Church of the Resurrection.

As for the other two affected parishes, I plead ignorance beyond thinking that one of them was in Madisonville. Cincinnati is at a disadvantage in keeping its Catholic churches in "changing" and "changed" neighborhoods viable because few West Indian immigrants have made their way inland. Its Hispanic community is also a great deal smaller, though the changeover from St Charles Borromeo - to San Carlos - in Carthage has apparently been successful. St Aloysius in neighboring Elmwood Place (known in the goyguy family as the "phone dial" church for its arrangement of stained-glass windows in front) is also hanging on with services in Spanish.

[Ohiogirl81]

That particular parish merger was striking just because of the distances between the merged parishes - Bond Hill, Evanston, Avondale and Lincoln Heights. It wasn't like your neighborhood parish was merging and you could just go a few blocks to the next church up the road.

My former parish, St. John Vianney in Madison Place, merged with St. Margaret of Cortona in Madisonville about five or six years ago, but Mass was celebrated in both buildings until this summer. Kind of surprising it took that long to close St. John for good, since the buildings are not that far apart.

[goyguy]

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

That particular parish merger was striking just because of the distances between the merged parishes - Bond Hill, Evanston, Avondale and Lincoln Heights. It wasn't like your neighborhood parish was merging and you could just go a few blocks to the next church up the road.

My former parish, St. John Vianney in Madison Place, merged with St. Margaret of Cortona in Madisonville about five or six years ago, but Mass was celebrated in both buildings until this summer. Kind of surprising it took that long to close St. John for good, since the buildings are not that far apart.

My memory has been successfully jogged thanks to this post!
St Andrew's was the Catholic parish in Avondale. Its building still stands, on the west side of Reading Rd just north of what was Forest Ave - before Forest was reconfigured to merge into Rockdale to make way for the mostly vacant Avondale Town Center. Lincoln Heights' church was St Martin de Porres.
I think the merger was done that way to create an "Afro-centric" parish.
The Madisonville consolidation must have been what I was thinking of when I made that wrong assumption in my earlier post. My bad!
Another church which has shut down in recent times is Our Mother of Sorrows, in Roselawn. The last Mass there was said in 2009. Its elementary school was closed a couple of years prior, and is now a charter school called the Cincinnati Leadership Academy. (Judging from its tepid academic ranking it's debatable how many leaders it will produce. ) In this instance it doesn't seem like the church was folded into any other. The surrounding "gaslight district" neighborhood retains a few White residents whose names "don't sound Jewish" and who may have been parishioners. Chances are they travel to services in a nearby area like Norwood, just as the Jews who haven't left presumably attend one of the synagogues in adjacent Amberley Village. Probably the households that did depart are now too widely dispersed to have made a parish merger feasible.
What's interesting to see is how Catholic high schools in the city stay popular even as their students' families bail out for suburbia or forsake one 'burb for another one more distant. Not all that many kids can walk to Seton or Elder any more, what with the significant demographic changes in Price Hill. Our Lady of the Angels, and Marian, may have called it quits but the boys' schools that absorbed them are very much alive. The diocese seems to move very slowly when it comes to locating secondary schools near where many of the families they serve are. Witness how long it took to establish St Xavier in Finneytown and close the original school on Sycamore St downtown.

[Ohiogirl81]

Originally Posted by goyguy

I think the merger was done that way to create an "Afro-centric" parish.

Oh, definitely. I wonder, though, how many people in Evanston just didn't transfer their membership to St. Francis de Sales, for instance. Bond Hill is a bit of a hike. And while I know that Cincinnati parishioners are willing to drive great distances to go to their home parish, closing three parishes in low-income neighborhoods, where people may not have cars, is a move that would give one pause, at the very least.

The Madisonville consolidation must have been what I was thinking of when I made that wrong assumption in my earlier post. My bad!

Maybe you were thinking of St. Anthony in Madisonville, another parish with a sizeable African-American membership.

What's interesting to see is how Catholic high schools in the city stay popular even as their students' families bail out for suburbia or forsake one 'burb for another one more distant.

There just aren't that many high schools in the 'burbs, and parents who are on the fence about a Catholic education anyway may be more likely to send their kids to the public schools, so the demand is less. I think, too, with the high schools in the city vs. the suburban Catholic schools legacy comes into play: not only do school like Purcell and Elder have a more established reputation than those "upstarts" like McNicholas, but Dad went to Elder and Mom went to Seton, and even though they don't live in the neighborhood anymore, the kids are going to Elder and Seton, too. I have friends who've moved out to Delhi etc. who do this.

Some suburban schools are following the population - Fenwick moved from Middletown to Franklin to attract more students from Warren County (a Catholic high school in Warren County! LOL, I never thought I'd live to see the day), and McNicholas, while technically in the city, pulls its students from all over Clermont County as well as eastern Hamilton County.