Brrrrrr!
Shock at increased heating bill
leaves some parishes cold

Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published January 6, 2006

DETROIT — The surprise that came in the mail for St. Cecilia parish, school and activity center wasn't exactly tidings of joy.

Administrators were surprised – and then worried – when they received a heating bill last month for $10,000. They were able to scrape together most of the funds, partly through the generosity of parish members, but Fr. Theodore K. Parker, pastor, isn't looking forward to the rest of the cold winter months.

With the cost of gas rising, St. Cecilia is by no means alone in this challenge, as churches all over the region make appeals and adjustments to try to keep their heating bills under control.

St. Cecilia's large and tall worship space was one reason the most recent heating bill for the church, school and activity center was $10,000.

St. Cecilia was able to pull together $3,000 from both the church and the school funds, $987 from a special collection when Fr. Parker appealed to the congregation. He's expecting some insurance money from a claim when a church van was stolen earlier this year, and will likely use that to pay the difference of last month's bill and some of this month's bill.

"The people are just wonderful and generous, even when it hurts them," he said. "I'm thankful that people responded as much as they did."

He said last year's bill for this time of year was about half what it was this year. He's hoping the bill that comes this month will be a bit lower, as it will reflect when the school was closed for a week and a half over Christmas break.

The church, completed in December of 1930, is 228 feet by 46 feet with ceilings that Fr. Parker estimated at 80 feet high. Since it was built during the depression, it doesn't have a basement, and even the windows in the rectory are single-pane and inefficient. The school, church and activity center, which had been the original church, are heated through one heating source, attached to the school. Fr. Parker estimated that system to be about 70 years old and with its own set of problems.

He plans on having a special envelope for heating costs available to the congregation every week during winter. However, he knows families and other churches are having the same problem.

"All the churches in the Archdiocese are experiencing this," he said. "We're all making adjustments."

Michael Gorman, the Archdiocese of Detroit's finance and administration director, said he'd only heard from St. Cecilia as far as expensive energy bills as of before Christmas. He estimated rising heating costs would account for a 30-percent jump in churches' bills, which would likely hurt a lot of budgets, he said.

The archdiocese doesn't have the funds to help parishes with their heating bills, he said, adding that they're advising churches to turn down their thermostats a few degrees.