The media are continuing to portray small protests by a few people as evidence that there is a general uprising of Catholics against the Archdiocese of Boston. The latest article in the Boston Globe illustrates this well. This is the pattern that has emerged with the majority of parishioners accepting the necessity of what is happening, whether with anger or grief or some other emotion, while a very small group takes it one step further, staging a sit-in.
In the latest one at St. James the Great in Wellesley, one of the wealthier suburbs by the way, about 40 people are sitting in. According to those most parish statistics, about 560 people attended Mass there every weekend. That’s less than a third than the other two parishes in town. Even then, less than 10 percent of those parishioners are staging a sit-in. At what point do we stop calling this a revolt by a parish and we begin to call it what it is: trespassing? Like Abraham’s bargaining with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen. 18:20-33, at what point do we say that there is no good reason to call these parishes in revolt?
At this point, the archdiocese is getting itself into a serious bind here, where a few people at each parish can impede the necessary work of re-organizing the archdiocese in order to best carry out the Church’s mission.
