Posted on 05/25/2004 11:13:01 AM PDT by tridentine
Domenico Bettinelli, made some interesting observations about this situation, at his blogspot.
"The first news of closing parishes is coming out. Among the closed, it is interesting to note that the parishes of about 90 percent of the 58 priests who demanded Cardinal Law’s resignation are there. My guess is that these guys had been identified as troublemakers long ago and were put in dead or dying parishes where they could do little harm.
More news on this topic here.
Eagerly awaiting your thoughts on this. Thanks.
wow - something good seems to be happening amongst numerous bishops.
He will do for America what liberalism has done for Boston...
Interesting jargon.
The church has been gang-raped...
Well, it has been a process. First, they coupled neighboring parishes together to share resources, staggering Mass times so that both wouldn't have a Mass at the same hour. They started last year (before O'Malley even started) working toward consolidating schools; they closed the school attached to the one parish in Southie that was just closed (St. Augustine's). (I was in that parish for over 20 years.) The current church was built in 1882. It's brick; the rectory is attached to the back, the convent and the old school about a block away, also brick. They're lovely buildings, but have been far gone in disrepair for a while. Part of the problem is that a big chunk of the parish is a low-income housing project. (The really poor don't seem to go to church the way they used to -- my impression only; I have no figures.) The yuppification of the blocks outside the project doesn't seem to involve church-goers.
I don't know what they'll do with St. Augustine's chapel -- the original church in the middle of the old graveyard. It's a lovely little gem of a church and a National Historical Monument, so it won't be torn down.
St. Augustine's was paired with St. Monica's, a much newer building (the old St. Monica's was sold back in the 50s, when the new one was built; for a long time, it was a St. Paul's Bookstore, but now it's condos). St. Monica's is between two low-income housing projects.
The recently retired pastor of St. Augustine's-St. Monica's had fought for the last few years he was there to keep St. Monica's open. He's been in poor health for at least 10 years, but he didn't want to leave all the old people in the project who still went to St. Monica's to be left without a church.
They've been talking about closing parishes for several years now. One was actually closed several years ago; the church building is being made into condos. It's not an especially pretty church, but it's an old, uncompromising building -- large blocks of rough gray stone form the walls, probably at least a foot deep, a blunt steeple of the same stone, stained-glass window shaped windows. You really can't disguise that it was built as a church.
This is way too long -- I'm rambling. It's all very sad, though. Back in the early 70s (?), I saw in the paper that they were tearing down the lovely little church I had gone to for four years in childhood -- was confirmed there and graduated from its grammar school. My heart still weeps over that one. (And they didn't even close the parish then -- they bought a nearby -- rather ugly -- Baptist church.)
This homosexual thing is a social engineering experiment to gutt the church and integrate Catholics into the gay agenda. Fight back. Sue the homosexuals, sue the diocese, sue NAMBLA. Get your own buildings back. Heterosexual Catholic people donated the money for these treasures. What has happened in American Catholicism is that some of the worst elements in the Catholic community have managed to get control of the church - liberals, sodomites, and catered-buffet-fed careerists only interested in fine dining and vacation resorts.
Are you serious???? Our own regional vicar has already plotted out the order in which parishes should be closed, down to the last one. One more lawsuit and they can just close down the Boston archdiocese and have done with it.
Someone like Paul Shanley, almost certainly engaged in sacrilege. The debate on sodomy among clergy needs to be shifted from the PC word games with "sodomy" and "sexual abuse of children" to sacrilege and fraud.
Fine. Medeiros was in while Shanley was in bloom. We can sue him. Oh, wait -- he died in 1984; the process server's going to have a tough time of it.
However, that "fraud" in the legal sense was involved in these scandals seems pretty clear. At least hal the Catholic colleges and universities in this country are engaged in fraud. They claim to be "Catholic" while delivering a very non-Catholic, liberal product. I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if a judge decided Catholic officials could be held responsible for engaging in fraud. And what about all those millionaire trustees showing up for the black-tie galas with the college presidents and bishops???
The administrative apparatus of the diocese has already been held responsible for the molestations, even though the former bishop has passed on.
At this point, I am very tired of it all -- and especially of lawyers, and I'm more inclined to retire to the desert and spend my remaining years in prayer and penance for the world. (Not much available desert in Southie, though; the beach would be ok in the winter, but it's not really conducive to prayer and/or penance in warmer weather.)
There was talk regarding closing parishes going back way before the scandals. The scandals didn't help but the problem is that most Catholics do not go to Mass and most Catholics do not send their kids to Catholic school for a Catholic religious education.
A couple of local studies have shown that only about 20% of Boston Archdiocese Catholics attend Mass once a week.
The sad part is the diocese would most likely be more responsive to such a suit more than it would to the pleas of the orthodox faithful. I thought the new bishop was touted as more catholic than the Pope?
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