Sometimes you have to wonder who’s running things in the Boston archdiocese. Why do I say this, you ask. Consider the following: The Archdiocese closed St. Mary’s parish in Salem more than a year ago, and this year sold it to a local Congregational church that runs the city’s largest homeless shelter. So far so good. But now we learn that that church allowed the former St. Mary’s to be used by a schismatic Catholic group for the illicit ordination of a priest, a direct slap in the face of the Catholic Church.
Meanwhile, former St. Mary’s parishioners who’ve been protesting in front of the church for the past year in defiance of reality went to the just-closed St. Joseph’s parish and took some of the statuary and other goods to use at the former St. Mary’s for the schismatic Mass taking place there.
Now we move to another parish elsewhere in the archdiocese. I don’t have independent verification of this so the details will remain anonymous. This is NOT about a parish in Salem. The pastor of a parish in one of the major neighborhoods of Boston died some time ago and the curate has been administrator. Well, a few weeks ago the administrator was named as pastor. Just one week later, he sent a letter to all his parishioners saying that he was resigning because he’d had an illicit relationship with a CCD teacher who was now pregnant. I can’t imagine that he only found out about the pregnancy after he was appointed as pastor, but maybe he had a crisis of conscience after his appointment. In any case, no one at the archdiocese was the wiser before the pastor’s admission. Oh yeah, and there are big questions about the now-closed parish school’s finances.
These are just two stories of many I’m hearing about the archdiocese. I’m just getting the sense that there isn’t a firm hand on the tiller at the top. I hope I’m wrong.
