Dixwell Avenue is a major thoroughfare running northwest from downtown. Gerrity persuaded a bunch of parishioners (and probably non-parishioner black militants) that they were being persecuted by city, state and national government and he led them in stringing folding chairs across Dixwell Avenue, and two other major thoroughfares (Goffe Street ad Whalley Avenue) to totally disrupt late afternoon rush hour traffic in a shameless attempt at attention grabbing.
Nonetheless, the Vatican promoted him to be consecrated as Bishop of Portland, Maine, and then to be Archbishop of Newark. His authority as archbishop was challenged by a long-time traditionally Catholic pastor, Fr. Peter Wickens, who refused Gerrity's orders to install a very objectionable Planned Barrenhood or SIECUS sex education curriculum in the parish school. Fr. Wickens, after reviewing the currculum, refused to obey on the basis that the curriculum would harm the parish children for whom he was responsible and that even his archbishop lacked the authority to require him to sin. It took Gerrity years to use court process to evict Fr. Wickens from his rectory.
Fr. Wickens thereafter practiced his priesthood as an independent priest, travelling the Northeast to say Tridentine Masses at motel function rooms and established a chapel of his own in Nrthern New Jersey where he said only Tridentine Masses. He left the chapel to one of the Tridentine orders of priests (FSSP?) in communion with Rome. Fr. Wickens died some years ago of cancer. I attended two of his Masses in Connecticut. He was a hero and a saint.
Pray also for the repose of he soul of Fr. Wickens. If those prayers are not necessary because he is already in heaven, God will apply those prayers to others in need of them.
God bless you and yours.
Thanks for your more detailed comments.
in other words, a flaming, left-wing liberal democrat.