Last November, I received a copy of the bulletin from a church called Spiritus Christi. It’s a schismatic parish of heterodox Catholics that broke off on their own after the bishop of Rochester, New York, told them they couldn’t have a women concelebrating Mass (among other things). At the time, I noted that the bulletin said that Boston priests Fr. Walter Cuenin and Fr. Bob Bowers had come to visit them and that the people of the church had encouraged them to return to Boston and to start “a new and inclusive Catholic church.”
Recall that at the time, Cuenin’s resignation from his parish for financial misconduct was still fresh. A few months later the Boston archdiocese would have to order Bowers to report to his new assignment after refusing to leave the parish where he’d been saying Masses in Weymouth.
Fast forward to this week’s bulletin from Spiritus Christi and the following announcement in it:
Father Ed Cachia, 57, was thrown out of the priesthood in his Peterborough, Ontario diocese last year for celebrating Mass with a woman priest and for calling for women’s ordination. He and his community are starting a ‘Spiritus Christi-like’ new community called Christ the Servant. Their first Mass will be this Sunday, April 2, at 10:00 AM in Coldsprings, Ontario. Mary and I were featured on a half-hour broadcast from Toronto a while back, indicating that Spiritus might be a model for Father Ed and his people. We wish them all well. The Boston priests are still planning to go ahead with a new community this year, too. Things are really starting to change, thank God.
Oh really? Apparently, those Boston priests would be the same ones who came to visit last year. Are Cuenin and Bowers still planning to set up housekeeping and start their own schismatic church? Stay tuned. And if you happen to run into Cardinal Sean O’Malley this weekend, perhaps you’d like to let him know about this little plan. Maybe he could pre-empt it somewhat and save a lot of people from endangering their souls.
