I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again: The Boston Globe has a vested interest in playing up the so-called parishioner revolts against the archdiocese because (a) it makes their coverage of the Scandal seem so much more important and (b) it provides a basis for people to then challenge the Church’s teachings.
Thus, today we have yet another report full of biased reporting. For one thing, Michael Paulson gets his facts just plain wrong through a failure to provide all the details:
The Christmas morning arrest of two parishioners who refused to leave Sacred Heart Church in South Natick capped a two-month period in which the archdiocese has prevented any new parish vigils by delaying and altering closings plans and, in Natick and Winchester, through the arrest of parishioners.
The archdiocese did not ask for the man in Winchester to be arrested. He was arrested by police after he started fighting with them as they escorted him out of the church. The charge stemmed from his actions against the cops, not from the Church. And the Natick arrests were also not instigated by the archdiocese. The pastor asked the police to assist in removing trespassers and when they resisted, the cops arrested them. And in both cases, the archdiocese asked for charges to be dropped.
“The pastor asked the police to assist in removing trespassers…”
I would guess that after people have belonged to a particular parish for a while, and have donated time and money and volunteer work to that parish, they begin to feel like they are part of the parish family and they don’t feel like they are trespassing if they stay in Church to say a rosary or to pray that the Church can somehow be saved from demolition. They hope that their prayers may be heard and that the local priest and bishop will change their minds about bombing the Church. And then again it is just like a family member who is about to be taken away from you by death, you love that person and want to be with him and pray up to the very last moment. It would be sad if someone at the nursing home were to call the police to forcibly take you away from the person you love and are praying for, just before he is about to die.
Except a church is not a person. it’s a building and thinking about material things like they are people is part of what’s wrong with our society.
And they weren’t just staying to pray a rosary, they were moving in with sleeping bags and food to protest the bishop’s authority and legitimate decision to close the church, a protest not shared by 99 percent of the parish.