On the Weekly Standard's site, Jonathan V. Last reports from Boston's Paulist Center, which proudly gave Senator John Kerry (D-Moloch) the Eucharist after promising to work for the holy good of abortion on demand. I don't have much to add to Mr. Last's observations -- read his article, shake your head, and pray for God to have mercy on the clergy, staff, and supporters of the Center.
Their mission statement did catch my eye, though. Last says:
The ideology which brings people to the Paulist Center is best explained by the Center's Mission Statement which declares, "Attentive to the Holy Spirit, we are a Catholic community that welcomes all, liberates the voice of each and goes forth to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ." (Before Mass, this Mission Statement is projected, in large type, onto the wall above the alter, on either side of the statue of Christ.) In their Vision Statement, the Center goes on to explain that they aspire to serve "those persons searching for a spiritual home and those who have been alienated from the Catholic Church."The subtext here--with talk of liberating voices and welcoming those alienated from those other mean Catholic churches--is that the Paulist Center is Catholic, but not really: more Episcopal lite; or orthodox Unitarian.
This appears to violate Eric's Fifth General Observation ("an organization formulates a mission statement because it doesn't know what the hell it's doing.") The Center knows precisely what it is doing: conducting an openly subversive campaign against the teaching of the Catholic Church, her faithful priests and bishops, and (by implication) the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I ask again: how many times will the bishops allow the Body of Christ to be betrayed and flogged? If not for the sake of your offices, won't they intervene to defend the honor of God?
Jesus told us to pray for our enemies. He didn't say that Christians didn't have any enemies, or that the Church's enemies would never arise from within her.
Many years ago in the twilight of my unitarian days in Boston I attended a sunday liturgy at the Paulist Center in between trailway busses.....I didn't like the bouncing ball hymnody and the atmosphere of relevance: it all seemed so superficial. Converts know the real thing when they see it lived...this definitely isn't and wasn't and never will be...the real thing. I could find a similar service done better in an orthodox unitarian church...with Saints emerson and thoreau and a bible verse thrown in for good measure. It would have made more sense to me back then....and even now.
I treasure your phrase "atmosphere of relevance," and I will steal it for use at cocktail parties.
Well, where is Archbishop O'Malley? I can understand that sorting out the public position of every culture-of-death CINO politician in MA might be an "impossible" task for the bishop, but this cancer could be excised at the stroke of a pen.
Archbishop O'Malley did warn pro-abortion Catholic politicians against receiving the Eucharist, but did not mention Kerry by name.
Perhaps this falls under a subcategory of General Observation Five: "An organization may create a mission statement to attract people who don't know what the hell they're doing."
The Paulist Center actually sounds kind of pathetic. Last noted that there were a hundred people at Mass recently when he attended. Even the smallest suburban parishes I have attended in various metropolitan areas have at least a couple hundred people at one of several Sunday Masses. Surely a raging liberal "parish of relavance" can do better than that in the middle of Boston!
If it weren't Christ himself being crucified on the altar of such a place, if the Catholic Church weren't by nature sacramental, the Paulist Center is the kind of place that could almost be ignored as irrelevant.
But it is Christ Himself, Immanuel, God with us, Really Present, being defiled at this place on a regular basis. So the Successor of the Apostles for that area, the one who acts in Christ's Person, exercising His teaching, sanctifying, and governing Office, who has a responsibility and a familial obligation to tell this place to shape up or be shut down.
It probably wouldn't be wise to hold one's breath waiting for Abp. O'Malley to exercise that clear and certain responsibility. But we can always pray, and those in Boston can ask their shepherd to act.
Jenny, that's a good corollary -- although many of the people who attend the Paulist Center are probably fully aware of what they're doing....
I realize that Abp. O'Malley has a lot of fish to fry right now up in Boston. But I really wish he could find a space in his skillet for this one -- it's starting to stink to high heaven.
A clarification: the diocesan bishop doesn't typically have title to the property or direct authority in the management of a religious congregation, as Last noted. The Paulist organization by whatever legal means no doubt owns the property.
However, what the bishop *can* do is to yank the faculties of every priest operating there, and declare the Paulist center to be in schism, and any Mass or other sacraments celebrated there to be illicit. Ostensibly he would try first to meet with them and instruct them, as he no doubt is assiduously doing (cough, hack, wheeze) with John Kerry.
But if the place continued in sin, he would then excommunicate them. If they continued to call themselves Catholic, the Archdiocese would have made clear by the proper means available to the Successor of the Apostles for that area that the Paulist Center is out of communion. O'Malley would have fulfilled his fatherly responsibility to the faithful and to the public of Boston.
It would be more accurate then, for O'Malley to say, shape up or be excommunicated.
Let's hear about the priests who give Holy Communion to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani!
Please, tell us about them. If they're like the Paulist Center, I'll say the same thing.
(And their bishops have considerably fewer fish in their respective pans than Abp. O'Malley).
O'Malley may have more fish, but are they bigger than Kerry?
c matt,
No "fish" is bigger than Kerry. I do, however, have a great deal of sympather for O'Malley. He's in a really tough position, since most of the politicians in his diocese are pro-abortion Catholic democrats. If he were to give an order for priests not to give them communion, that would be nothing less than earth-shaking.
I agree that he should do it, but for him even to have said that a pro-abortion Catholic pol like Kerry shouldn't dare receive communion takes more Episcopal spine in Boston than actually barring pro-abortion pols from communion in, say, Lincoln Nebraska, or for that matter St. Louis, MO, IMHO.