My colleague Phil Lawler has a new column looking at the parish closings and examining the reasons why it happened. one thing he recognizes is that the archdiocese’s leaders have repeatedly said that reconfiguration, in itself, is not a defeat, and that may be technically true. However, the loss of Boston’s Catholic identity is a defeat. Just look at the reality that parishes built and paid for by mainly poor immigrants cannot be maintained by their affluent descendants. Why? For one thing, those descendants are now, in general, only nominally Catholic. And that’s for a variety of reasons, not just the Scandal, since the decline started decades ago.
The Church in Boston, in my mind, is something like a shiny and beautiful apple which has been gnawed away on the outside by voracious animals, and eaten away on the inside by putrid worms – to the point where the tree has trouble sustaining it, and even the cells of the apple are falling away and giving up. The worms need to be extracted and discarded, the tree vigorously defended by those who are brave enough to confront the beasts, and the cells have to be encouraged to hold on. Fortunately, the tree has very, very deep roots and will sustain it and give it the nourishment it needs – and not all the cells will give up. But the ravages are great, and there are many rotten apples on the struggling tree. The shiny apple, for now, will have to remain a dream.