Charges have been dropped against a man arrested when he wouldn’t leave a closed parish in the Boston archdiocese. Eugene Sweeney, 69, was the only person inside his parish after the last Mass when it closed. He refused to leave the empty church for several hours so the pastor called police to remove him. When he begin fighting with the police, they arrested him.
Of course, the media portrayed it as the Church having a protester arrested and the recusant dissidents made him a poster boy for their cause. Never mind the reality that the Church never asked for Sweeney to be arrested, only to be escorted out of the church and that the arrest was made by the cops Sweeney began fighting with. The Boston Globe doesn’t bother to tell us all that, but only leaves the impression that the big, bad Church is now backing down under pressure from the brave, upstart souls who just won’t knuckle under to oppression.
