A second group of Catholics in the Archdiocese of Boston is occupying their former church to force the archbishop to reverse his decision to close it. This group is in Sudbury at the former St. Anselm’s parish. Actually, it’s not “former” yet since it’s slated for closing on Wednesday. Like the people at St. Albert’s, these people claim they own the church, not the archdiocese. Like I’ve said before, even if they’re right and a court gives them ownership of the property, it changes nothing. A parish is not the building, it is an entity under the control of the archbishop and if he suppresses it, it is suppressed. Nobody can force him to set up a parish or assign a priest to it. In the end, these people either decide to remain Catholic or end up in schism; there’s no middle ground.
It looks like they’re headed for schism. Just look at these excerpts from the article.
They have switched the church utilities over to the name of one of the parishioners to avoid having them shut off by the archdiocese.
... “The end will be our choice, not the archdiocese,” said Fiona Keating of Sudbury, a preschool teacher with three children, who plans to take part in the vigil. “We’re not done with the building yet. I don’t feel that was our last service.”
I would encourage all to pray for the end of these stupid vigils. And for Bishop O’Malley. It’s easy to criticize him for not responding to Kerry and other situations that affect Catholics in the diocese, and he may indeed be guilty (God only knows), but nevertheless he must be under huge amounts of pressure and stress right now. May God give him the strength and courage to carry out his ministry faithfully in all ways!
Note to Fiona, “service” is what you get at a restaurant. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass takes place in a Catholich church.
ABC and CBS (I think) have done article about it-lamely it’s sympathetic to the former parishoners.
I didn’t have time to read the whole “analysis” so I jumped to the conclusions. They claim that parishes with Voice of the Faithful chapters were more likely to be closed, which I had already shown months ago to not be true.
Very quickly, 18 percent of parishes in the Archdiocese have VOTF chapters. And wouldn’t you know it, 17 percent of parishes slated for closing have VOTF chapters. It does not lead me to believe that the rest of the “analysis” is any going to be any better.