Posted on 04/27/2013 12:35:27 PM PDT by Lonely Bull
The heart-wrenching photographs taken in the moments after the Boston Marathon bombings show the blue-and-yellow jackets of volunteers, police officers, fire fighters, emergency medical technicians, even a three-foot-high blue M&M. Conspicuously absent are any clerical collars or images of pastoral care.
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When the priests at St. Clement's, three blocks away, heard the explosions, they gathered sacramental oils and hurried to the scene in hopes of anointing the injured and, if necessary, administering last rites, the final of seven Catholic sacraments. But the priests, who belong to the order Oblates of the Virgin Mary, weren't allowed at the scene.
The Rev. John Wykes, director of the St. Francis Chapel at Boston's soaring Prudential Center, and the Rev. Tom Carzon, rector of Our Lady of Grace Seminary, were among the priests who were turned away right after the bombings
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In light of the devastation in Boston, the denial of access to clergy is a trifling thing, and it might even have been an individual's error. (The Boston Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on its policy regarding clergy at the scenes of emergencies.)
But it is a poignant irony that Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died on Boylston Street, was a Catholic who had received his first Communion just last year. As Martin lay dying, priests were only yards away, beyond the police tape, unable to reach him to administer last rites—a sacrament that, to Catholics, bears enormous significance.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yes, I do. And if you think priests administering last rites for the terminally injured cause "all kinds of problems," you need to have your head examined.
You are completely wrong claiming these priests lack faith.
Perhaps not lacking faith, but certainly lacking the courage to act on their convictions.
“—— being upset because someone has a different viewpoint than you.”
.
I’m not appalled over a difference of a viewpoint,it’s the questioning of the strength of someone’s faith that bothers me.
.
Boston and New York are two entirely different situations. In New York, the police and firemen were concentrating on getting the people out of the buildings. Priests weren't trying to climb the stairs with them, but they were allowed to be on the ground, near the staging areas. That's how Fr. Judge died; one of the people jumping from the upper floors landed on him.
Yes, in Boston there was concern about other possible bombs, but there were plenty of civilians helping the wounded. There is no reason that the priests should have been denied the ability to comfort the dying, and the severely wounded. It wasn't like there were thrity or forty of them. One or two more people inside the cordon weren't going to contaminate the scene any more than the folks already there had done, and the priests would have been willing to take the risk of additional bombs.
But all that being said, the priests understood that getting into some sort of altercation with the police wasn’tgoing to help anyone, and would have taken the police’s focus off the matter at hand; looking for who had perpetrated this heinous act. That doesn’t mean the faith of those priests was weak, nor were they shirking their duties as priests, they were simply being logical about the situation. Nothing at all wrong with that. The little boy may have died without benefit of the Last Rites, but I believe he was received warmly by his His Father in Heaven.
Sorry SuziQ, but you’re wrong. The priests forcing their way into the scene would most definitely hoep someone—the dying who as it was were denied the last rites. Yes, they were shirking their priestly duties. Those duties include defying the civil authorities when they are preventing the priests from performing their fundamental sacraments. It wouldn’t have taken the police’s focus off the matter at hand at all to let the priests give last rites to the dying, that’s a silly argument. As to being logical about the situation, that’s also a silly argument. If a government edict can determine when you can or can’t perform one of the most fundamental sacraments of the church, then you are no longer working for the church, you’re working for the government. Your “logic” is in fact a total cession to civil authorities of their responsibility to God and the church. That’s shirking their priestly duties, there’s no other way to see it.
Yes, there IS another way to see it. We just disagree on that way.
Catholic priests were turned away. God will get His say later on!
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