Posted on 02/24/2005 12:43:27 PM PST by NYer
In a letter to parishioners, the chairman of the six-member lay board of St. Stanislaus Kostka church said its relationship with the archdiocese "is finished" and that the board had voted to "seek interim religious guidance...from an order of priests or an individual priest outside the authority of the Archbishop of St. Louis" for the Easter season.
Archbishop Raymond Burke removed the St. Stanislaus pastors in August, but the parishioners disobeyed Burke in December when they brought an unidentified priest in from Poland to celebrate Christmas Mass.
"The BOD, with advice from many, has agreed that it is time to grasp the obvious that there is no hope for a timely mutual resolution," wrote William Bialczak, 55, of Town and Country. He said the negotiations with the archdiocese would resume "only as you direct...If in the near future, a permanent move outside the Archdiocese is decided in the best interests of the parish, a parishioner vote will be required."
In a separate statement, the board said Wednesday it would not appeal to the Vatican the penalty imposed on them by Burke that denies them access to the Roman Catholic sacraments, saying the board members "pray that a Man of God steps forward and rights this wrong."
The board said today it reached its decision after consulting with a canon law expert and the board's attorney.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Video tape wouldn't satisfy some. Good luck.
How embarrassing. Don't they know they're supposed to do it at noon? ;-)
Speaks to their quality;)
...so naturally they'll favor Burke.
As they should. He's the Archbishop. He is doing what he is supposed to be doing.
But, in fairness, I'm not one who appreciates Burke's style of leadership.
Forget about style for a minute. The fact that he is showing leadership is all important here. The Church in America really, really needs this out of her Bishops at this time (well, at all times).
This is a situation which is a time bomb. The attitude of the board proves it. Better to correct the situation now, rather than let much worse problems occur in the future.
But Burke didn't correct anything. His action precipitated the parish bolting from the Church.
The fact that he is showing leadership is all important here. The Church in America really, really needs this out of her Bishops at this time (well, at all times).
Attempting to keep people away from the sacraments over a property dispute isn't leadership; it's bullying.
Curious you should neglect Archbishop Rigali since he is the person who actually began the response to the lay board's actions.
And my opinion, from the appearance of the original documents, is still that the lay board violated the corporate articles by the series of by-law revisions they engaged in. Those revisions were not legal.
They really are personally financially liable for their actions.
The diocese could drop the legal hammer any time they are in the mood and every judge in the state of Missouri would rule against the lay board.
So, instead of doing that, he decides to keep Catholics away from the sacraments?
If it's such a slam dunk, let him do it.
Here's the entire post from Dom's blog....
Ignoring the interdict
The board members of the independent Polish church in St. Louis have said they won’t appeal Archbishop Raymond Burke’s interdict against them. (He said that because of their intransigence and flouting of his authority, they will be denied the sacraments.) Instead, they said they are seeking help from other Church officials.
Rather than file a formal appeal, the board wants “other individuals to take up our fight, cardinals and bishops in the U.S. and Europe as well as the Vatican, and they have agreed to,” spokesman Richard Bach said. He declined to name prelates who have sided with the parish.
I highly doubt that. For one thing, Burke has sovereignty in this matter. No other bishop has the authority to tell Burke he can’t do this, especially since the parish corporation itself is in violation of canon law. (Short version: For 100 years the archdiocese allowed the mainly Polish parish to be run by an independent corporation, not as a parish directly under the control and authority of the archbishop.)
Meanwhile, I have received interesting information from a friend in St. Louis about the parish:
St. Stanislaus is not a Polish parish in any real sense. There are Polish immigrants, but they have sided with the archbishop and are attending what amounts to “St. Stanislaus in Exile” at another church. St. Stanislaus has no resident parishioners. It is located in an abandoned urban area—near the notorious old Pruett-Igoe public housing that you may have heard of. The parishioners come from all over the metropolitan area.
The church is most famous for its occasional “polka masses,” and I have the impression that its nucleus is people who want to celebrate their Polish heritage while going light on religion, like the kind of Irish Catholics who define themselves in terms of folk dancing and St. Patrick’s Day parades, with religion the thing they have emancipated themselves from as they moved up the social ladder. (St. Stanislaus’s chief spokesman is a corporate lawyer.). Altogether a textbook instance of Greeley’s communal Catholics.
The polka Mass gives an insight into the spiritual state of the parish. The archdiocese has also revealed that, over the objections of the pastor whom the trustees drove out, the board got a liquor license and now sells drinks in the school building after Mass on Sunday, while CCD classes are being held nearby! This seems to me bizarre and an indication of the degree to which, for the hard core, this is primarily a social club.
The pastor whom they drove out was told that he could not even buy groceries without approval from the board. He is young and orthodox. Burke has now imported a priest from Poland to minister to the parish in exile. On Christmas the rebel group imported their own priest, whose identity they refused to divulge but who was almost certainly some kind of schismatic.
He adds that it is telling that on their web site, the corporation’s board members compare themselves to Martin Luther, that they are thinking of “affiliating with some other Christian denomination,” and that they “answerable to God, not to any bishop.” Does this show any evidence of an understanding of what it means to be Catholic?
My friend also has another interesting observation that could be applied to church closing protests here in Boston:
But I don’t think all of the dissidents are liberals—one of the leaders formerly attended the local Tridentine parish. I have the impression that most of them are sub-ideological, which means that in practice they become liberals without knowing it. They are simply products of the culture, reflexively anti-authority when authority treads on their turf.
That would explain how not everybody involved in sit-ins in Boston are identifiably liberal. Some in fact are very active in pro-life causes and other areas of faith which liberals generally are not. Still, they are products of the culture around them.
Another interesting question surrounding this Polish parish is that apparently the corporation controlling it has never had an independent audit. They often claim to have $9 million in assets. Undoubtedly a lot of that is the value of the real estate (although my friend says that the church sits in abandoned slums and the value is probably overestimated). Yet, just before this crisis broke out, some parishioners said they were being told by the board that there was no money for certain important needs. So which is it? Perhaps the desire to avoid losing control has more to do with avoiding an audit than it does with some principle of independence.
It’s also interesting that as people call for more accountability and transparency, we have an unsupervised, self-perpetuating board supposedly controlling vast sums of parishioner money with no checks and balances. Where is Voice of the Faithful on this? Or is accountability and transparency just for bishops?
Anyway, canon law is clear. The laity donate money to our parishes and the diocese and it ceases being our money and we have no control over it. Why should this one parish be any different?
Actually, I thought that their corporate structure was in some ways similar to that of an Episcopal church: the parish is a seperate corporation, with a lay board. The parish corporation defines itself as Catholic (or Episcopalian in my example), and affiliates with the local diocese as a member parish (accepting the tenets of the faith, etc., and the authority of the Diocesan bishop), yet retains control of its property & assets.
You and those like you - who support the type of uneccesarliy heavy handed leadership of Burke (which is both uneccesary, and stupid in light of the universal apostacy & homosexuality flourishing in the clergy everywhere)do so because he has given you a tiny tidbit of verbalized "orthodoxy".
Uh-huh. Keep up your support........send him and his ilk all of your cash. You will willingly support a "bishop" like this.......
........until it is YOUR parish which is to have its assets seized/closed/merged/suppressed.
Then you will sing a different song. Or.......maybe, out of misplaced loyalty, you will rejoice as the bishops seizes your parish's assets, and the wrecking ball smashes the church your forebears sweated to build and fund.
What is "Town and Country"?
Agree. In the Episcopal Church the set up which I described was indeed the case.......originally. However, both ECUSA and some local diocese have made legal moves - voted upon in their conventions - to place the vestry (parish board) under diocesan control, and to comtrol the appointment of and limit the terms of the Wardens (corporate trustees) of each parish.
Some parishes have found out to their dismay exactly what you have hinted at.....that thye were essentially hoodwinked out of control of their assets.
Some orthodox Episcopalians i have tlkaed to think this was done on purpose, to keep the assets under diocesan control, and to make it harder to whole congregations to cede from the local diocese.
This is all part of the diabolical disorientation where even good people will be confused.
Over the past forty years a new ideology has been introduced - blind obedience. This has never been a part of Catholic doctrine. Obedience itself is subordinate to the Faith. It is a human virtue and as such, lesser than the theological virtues. Obedience is a servant to the Faith, not the Faith itself. Of course, I shouldn't have to say blind obedience is due to God alone, never mortal men.
It's a new ideology. Most under 40-45 know nothing else. The corrupt hierarchy planned it and now take advantage of it.
Yes - most folks under 40-45 know nothing else. And the modernist clergy use this to their advantage. They refer to Traditionalist Catholics (or anybody who presumes to oppose them) as being "disobedient".
Of course - they themselves are disobedient, to Christ!
But that does not matter......the whole "obedience concept" is a hot button word which sets off alarm bells in peoples minds.
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