A hot-headed Rad-trad acquaintance suggested that since our parish is closing, maybe the congregation should do what had been done in another part of the country: buy the property from the Archdiocese through a non-Catholic front man, and get our own priest. My reply was admittedly a little huffy:
Hi, D--
I understand you believe that it's OK to "go independent", but that is absolutely foreign to me.
I converted to the Catholic Faith and was baptized in 1980, and endured all the stupidities going on in the Church at the time -- in a particularly liberal place -- in order to do so, offering it up as an act of faith.
I stayed for those months and put up with their nonsense in order to provide a little witness of reverence and faith to other people who were entering the Church there at the same time -- people who didn't know any better, and otherwise might never see anyone kneel at the Consecration or (once I was baptized) receive the Sacrament on the tongue.
The goal always before my eyes was simple: to receive the Sacraments, have my sins remitted, and to enter into communion with the Church of St. Peter. In spite of all the faults and errors of the people running that RCIA program, I knew that the priest in charge there would indeed confer the sacraments validly -- if barely so -- and at his hands I would become a Catholic, a member of Christ's one true Church.
I have no interest in becoming a Congregationalist.
---
(So, yeah, the tone of that is not too nice, but sometimes it seems these angry types don't take you seriously unless you sound a little cranky. That's today apologetics tip, folks.)
Not cranky, RC. But humble.
Thank you for your witness - coming from someone who has an 11 year old son who needs reverent male role models (Dad's an agnostic, doesn't attend Church). We attend a 'parish' (priest is the local hosp. chaplain and the Mass is in the hosp) and each week the priest has the rosary and Benediction before Mass. Of the maybe six people who go to the rosary & Benediction, all are women except my son. Each week, 'bout halfway through the rosary , a middle aged man comes in and kneels on the floor (no kneelers there) and says the rosary. I see my son's back go a little straighter and I know he is impressed that another guy is there.
If, somehow, the property could be made to work financially but the archdiocese doesn't want to maintain it, I would suggest an alternative, petition to join another diocese in a different rite. It has all the benefit of staying in the Church (same sacraments, same Pope) but would get you out from under the thumb of a cruel and insensitive bishop who's willy nilly closing down contributing parishes who not only are self-sufficient but contribute to diocesan finances.
This would all work if such a bishop actually exists. I suspect that the reality is probably more that the parish is running a deficit and the subsidy was unaffordable. In that case the exercise of trying to make the budget balance might bring some good, common sense to these parishioners.
Communio is one of the most beautiful gifts the Lord has given us. Thank you for witnessing to the Lord's own desire, that they may be one.
Name-calling against the bishop ("cruel and insensitive") is not going to solve the Church's problems, TM, so please don't do that here. If, God forbid, I were bishop, I'd be doing about the same thing: parishes with under 300 people are unjustifiable when parishes of 3000 don't have enough priests.
RC, you mistake me. I was pointing out that if there was such a bishop, there are alternatives to remove a parish he has foolishly discarded while remaining part of the Catholic Church. Certainly, that's got to be better than fraudulently buying up the place (buy a church with the use of a "front man"? Please) and conducting a mini-schism.
The exercise of demonstrating to an Eastern Rite Bishop that the parish *was* foolishly discarded would, I am 99.99% certain, show the Roman Rite bishop did no such thing and that there were very good and wise reasons for the parish to close.
Sometimes, Thomas has to stick his hands in Christ's wounds. Setting such a teaching moment up is not an insult to Christ nor should it be to his apostles or their successors. I meant no insult to any bishop, nor do I think I provided one unintentionally. In my own experience in Chicago, Cardinal George works very hard to keep churches in use as churches, to the point of being willing to provide Eastern communities with highly advantageous financial terms to keep a building running.
The proper relationship between bishops is always collegial, including in cases across rite boundaries. If it were ever to cease to be so, I know who would be the windshield and who would be the bug. In no way would I ever want to contribute in the slightest to the creation of such a situation.
It does seem to me, though, that the US Church is not using all of its resources and in the case of a threatened schism of a community or the falling away of an individual Catholic, it would be a positive thing to explore the alternative rites, canon, and hierarchies that have always existed to see whether an internal shift, rather than an exit, can be managed.
The ultimate risk is a descent into "poaching" where the different rites become competitive instead of collegial. I think that the risk is overblown in cases of people exiting the faith and that anybody seriously thinking about exiting the Church should be challenged to consider whether what they want might be available in another rite. After all, that's why different rites were created all those centuries ago.
Thanks for the note, TML; sorry I didn't get your point.
In some places, it makes sense to transfer a parish building to an Eastern church; I hear the bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire, is probably going to let the Melkite parish there take over a church that's closing.
Would it be impossible for the parish, bought out by parishioners, to apply to a religious order for pastoring? It would still be Latin, but it wouldn't cause the ordinary any financial headaches.
Disclaimer: I'm a convert, and not very well-informed, so please take it as read that I don't know what I'm talking about. :)