Sacred Heart Parish in Morton Closes After Nearly a Century

After nearly 100 years of Masses, weddings and funerals, the Sacred Heart Parish in Morton held its final service Jan. 20, marking the end of a church that sprung up to serve the loggers and settlers who made  some of the first forays into East Lewis County, and ministered to generations of residents from Mossyrock to Mineral to Packwood.

“It was bittersweet,” said Father Jacob Maurer, the congregation’s leader for the past three and a half years. “Looking out at the congregation, there were some tears welling up.”

The church formed in Morton in 1921, according to an online history published by Sacred Heart. Chancery officials in Seattle first set the church’s boundaries as the triangle between the summits of Mount Rainier, Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens. 

For nearly a century, residents of that mountain country came to Sacred Heart, and later to the other churches that formed in that part of the Cascades. Sacred Heart remained the hub for Catholics in East Lewis County, said Father Roger Smith, who led the parish for 30 years and still lives in the church’s rectory.

“It’s been a presence in this community forever,” he said. “Some of the families, the grandparents came out here when it was pretty rugged.”

For all the church’s history, current realities made it difficult to sustain. The decline of the logging industry hurt the church as it did the rest of the region, leaving it with a dwindling congregation that was largely elderly. With many parishioners living on a fixed income, the church was facing financial struggles, and necessary roof repairs running into the six figures provided a final blow. Those issues combined with a shortage of priests led the Archdiocese of Seattle to make the decision to close the church.

“I told the the folks I’m not happy either, but I understand,” Smith said. “It was a little bit smaller every year since they closed the woods (to logging). … You’ve got a situation where there’s hardly any jobs for young people. We got down to the point where we were mainly older adults. We’d been struggling for awhile, but we managed to get through.”

The decision was made this summer by the Archdiocese to close the church, and Archbishop Peter Sartain made the trip from Seattle to be at the final service, Maurer said, preaching a homily about how God can use difficult moments for good. 

“I was very, very grateful for the Archbishop to come out,” he said. “We had a lot of community members who showed up. It was a pretty full church that Sunday, which was lovely.”

Parishioners brought food and stayed after the service to visit one last time.

“Folks stuck around for an hour and traded memories and shared stories,” Maurer said. 

Rhonda Krolczyk, a Mineral resident who has been attending Sacred Heart for 44 years, said the congregation meant a lot to the residents of East Lewis County.

“It was a church community that became a church family,” she said. “Some people had their sacraments there, had their children there, and their children had their sacraments there. … For me, it was a feeling of, ‘OK I’m home.’ It felt really good to walk in.”

Krolczyk isn’t sure where she’s going to go next, and many Sacred Heart parishioners are facing the same dilemma. Some will go to St. Francis Xavier in Toledo, others to St. Yves in Harmony, others to Our Lady of Good Counsel in Eatonville. 

“I grieve for losing my church, but it’s more than just that,” she said. “I’m feeling like I’ll never see some of these people again, and that really hurts my heart a lot.”

Maurer said the other parishes in the area are working to accommodate the influx of new members from Sacred Heart, knowing it will be a difficult adjustment for some. Sacred Heart averaged about 50 to 55 members at its services, he said. Maurer will continue to serve at the rest of Lewis County’s parishes. 

“Even as we’re saying goodbye to the building, hopefully we’re building new bonds and new community,” he said. “We’re just looking to offer as best we can a home for our fellow parishioners.”

Smith noted that the closure will be especially hard on parishioners from Packwood, who already had to drive a long way to attend services in Morton. 

Despite the closure, the Pastor’s Pantry food bank that operates at the parish will continue, Maurer said.

“The community has really rallied around it,” he said. “It has its own finances and support system. … It’s healthy, it’s doing well and it will continue in operation.”