Harvesting churches

As old city churches close, what becomes of the fixtures and sacred objects?

The altar was old. It was ornate. And it was on the gambling floor of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

James Lang was startled when he saw it there. Lang, vicar of parishes for the Roman Catholic diocese in Syracuse, N.Y., had a chat with the manager about desecration. The altar eventually was removed.

"They thought it looked cool," Lang remembers.

It also looked like part of a growing phenomenon: Religious artifacts are migrating as America's shifting population leaves empty churches across the Midwest and Northeast. This March, New York City's archdiocese recommended shutting 31 metro parishes, and Boston has closed almost 60 in three years.

So, chalices appear in antique shop windows. A confessional turns up in an Italian cafe. A stained-glass window of St. Patrick lands in a pub. And don't even start with eBay.

People who deal in such artifacts say interest in them is growing.

And while some are troubled by secular re-uses of religious items, they're encouraged about a different set of collectors: New churches in booming suburbs and in the South and West that are reaching for the relics of an older generation.

From 1952 to 2000, hundreds of thousands of Catholics left the inner cities, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Philadelphia, for example, lost 198,000, but nearby Bucks County picked up 234,000. Detroit, Baltimore and Boston saw similar urban-suburban shifts.

Meanwhile, the South and West boomed. Los Angeles County added 3.4 million Catholics, and the counties that are home to Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami and San Antonio grew by more than 400,000 each.

In Lubbock, Texas, Holy Spirit parish is building a new church for a congregation that's grown from 30 families to about 700 in seven years. Its pastor, the Rev. Eugene Driscoll, grew up in Philadelphia, where his old parish closed in 2004. He asked the diocese if he could rescue some pieces of his past. Now, among other items, a statue of Our Lady of Fatima from his old school stands in his Texas prayer garden.

Every month, a downtown Philadelphia warehouse is unlocked to reveal about 2,000 items from closed area churches. Those in the religious community can browse tables of marble statues, altar pieces, candlesticks and tabernacles, or thumb through racks of vestments.

"We try to have it as tastefully arranged as possible," says Ed Rafferty, who handles the warehouse for the diocese. Private individuals are not allowed.

Some dioceses use dealers to help place objects in other religious locations. Some don't specify where items should go and let the dealers decide.

"We're an equal-opportunity seller," says Stuart Grannen, owner of the Chicago-based Architectural Artifacts, whose Web site boasts religious artifacts as its newest category. Recently listed were a carved oak bench from a Minneapolis church for $12,000 and a marble Ten Commandments from a Milwaukee synagogue for $3,800.

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