All the material goods that go into making a parish church are being redistributed from closed parishes to ones that are staying open. This has a couple of good effects. For one thing, it keeps sacred objects being used as sacred object. It also keeps historic artwork and gifts in memory of the dead in a place where all can see it.
Some of the objects aren’t going to other Boston-area parishes. A priest, who is a friend of my pastor and stays at our parish when he’s in town once per year, serves the St. James Society in South America. The society is not a religious order, but is a diocesan-run group that sends diocesan priests to serve in poor Catholic countries. Fr. Tom Oates is currently serving the barrios in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he is building a couple of churches. Seeing all these church goods free for the taking, he arranged to pick up several truckloads of pews, altars, tabernacles, chalices, vestments, candlesticks, and what not, loaded them into two shipping containers (donated), and had them shipped via freighter (donated) to South America.
I like to think of it as a nice gift from their Catholic Norte Americano brothers and sisters. In the midst of pain and tears and anger, some good comes out of it. As the old saying goes, God makes straight with crooked paths.
