Whenever columnists in the Boston newspapers write about sit-ins at parishes slated to be closed, they always write about the brave and wonderfully brave people standing up to the big, bad Church that’s only interested in money. And I’m sure that many of those people keeping round-the-clock vigil are in fact well-meaning and sincere if often misguided.
Margery Eagan’s column in the Boston Herald this week on St. Frances Cabrini in Scituate, Mass., is a prime example. A more slanted piece of opinion journalism would be hard to write. For one thing, not once is there an attempt at objective reporting. All of the worst claims as to the motivation of the archdiocese in closing the parish are treated as if they are indisputable. Not once is another rationale for the closing given.
Instead we’re treated to the same cliched descriptions of grandmas with rosaries and little kids in sleeping bags on the pews. It’s all there, including Eagan’s own amazement—being a dissenting Catholic herself—that these people still hold to the Church’s teachings.
Yet a more unlikely group of rebels you’ll never meet. Most are gray-haired, pious and, until now, obedient. Some still follow even the toughest church teachings on touchy topics like divorce and birth control.
Shocking! It couldn’t be that these people believe that it’s true. After all, the sophisticated Eagan knows that the Church is all about power and money and that the “rules” aren’t about what is good for us and what is the will of God, but is only about oppression and domination. Eagan seems surprised that having “thrown off the shackles” at the attempt to close the parish, they haven’t “thrown off” the teachings on divorce and birth control.
Contraband ashes and Eucharist
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