BishopAccountability.org
	He's Feeling Betrayed by School Ax New York Daily News [New York] March 29, 2005 "Then one of the 12, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests and said unto them, 'What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you?' And they covenanted with him for 30 pieces of silver." Matthew 26:14-15. And so the high priests of Brooklyn and Queens waited until the Wednesday before Holy Thursday, the same day Judas struck his treacherous bargain to betray Jesus, to announce that St. Thomas Aquinas Elementary School was getting the kiss of death. A guilt-ridden Judas hung himself. The Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens should at least hang its head in lasting shame. This all started on Feb. 8 when Msgr. Michael Hardiman, the vicar of education for the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, first listed St. Thomas Aquinas, on Fourth Ave. and Eighth St. in Park Slope, as one of the 26 schools to be shuttered in June. A changing demographic and the grotesque priest sexual-abuse scandals had helped crumble the once-rock-solid Catholic school system. It certainly didn't help that the former bishop, Thomas Daily, who came from Boston, was so busy covering his dirty tracks in the pedophile coverups up there that he let the Brooklyn and Queens parochial school system go into decline. When Daily got his marching papers, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio stormed in wielding a sharpened corporate ax on a crusade to stop losing money on the failing parochial schools. Didn't matter that the people who would suffer most were those loyal Catholics who remained faithful during those scandal-plagued years, paying hard-earned money to educate their kids as soldiers of Christ. The bottom line was the bottom line. "I told Msgr. Hardiman last week that they were more interested in the word of the bookkeeper than the word of Christ," says Chris Conroy, a spokesman for the parents and alumni of St. Thomas who helped devise a five-year St. Thomas financial plan delivered on March 7. "He went nuts when I said that. But it's true. We're learning now that the school was being shopped around for the last two years. We believe the diocese knew they could make a fortune renting the property to the Board of Ed in overcrowded District 15. It's about the money, man, not the kids, not the faith. The money. And it makes me sick because it means that all I was ever taught as a Roman Catholic - all my core beliefs - are BS!" A spokesman for the diocese vehemently denied the allegation. "There's been no shopping around of any schools," says the spokesman, Frank DeRosa. "Msgr. Hardiman is a standup guy who worked openly and equitably with everyone who came with proposals and agonized over every one of them." Unlike many of the other schools cited for closing that had been getting financial supplements from the diocese formany years, last year was the first time St. Thomas ever asked for help - a paltry $70,000. Conroy says that immediately upon notification of closing, St. Thomas appealed for and was granted a 30-day reprieve to devise a five-year fiscal plan to save the school. He says the PTA, alumni association and various businesspeople - including St. Thomas Aquinas Alumni Association Vice President Phil Cimino, a professional financial planner formerly of Astoria Federal Savings - sat down and constructed a plan that would give the school a $500,000 surplus after five years. On March 7, Conroy says, Hardiman promised they would have an answer in a couple of days. The couple of days stretched into 2-1/2 weeks, as frantic St. Thomas parents scrambled to enroll their kids in other secure Catholic schools, which further weakened the prospects of St. Thomas. Creepy. "When I finally sat down with Hardiman and went over our plan line by line, his only complaint was that our numbers were too conservative," Conroy says. "He basically wanted me to lie and say we could recruit 100 new students. We said we could raise $10,000 on a church bazaar and he wanted us to say $25,000. We presented conservative numbers and were still a half-mil in the black after five years." Then on Wednesday, the day Judas took his silver, the diocese rejected the St. Thomas plan and scheduled it for closing in June. "St. Finbar's was in the hole for 10 years, getting diocese subsidies, and all of a sudden they have a miracle plan and they'll stay open?" says Conroy. "But St.Thomas is closing after a one-year subsidy. C'mon, the fix was already in the works." I received many E-mails from St. Thomas parents and alumni who feel betrayed, some shaken to the very foundations of their faith. The day after Easter, I asked Conroy, a graduate of St. Thomas and Bishop Ford, and a tough sandhog, how this made him feel as a Catholic. "It makes me feel like I'm not one anymore," he said. Bottom line: That's very bad for business.
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