Tearing down churches-- more ways than one

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 15, 2004

Boston's Archbishop Sean O'Malley admits that he is being torn to pieces by the painful process of closing 80+ parishes; one sentence is more than enough to convey his anguish

At times I ask God to call me home and let someone else finish this job, but I keep waking up in the morning to face another day of reconfiguration.

And the Boston Globe is doing its best to increase the centrifugal pressure. After months of leading the cheers for Voice of the Faithful, the Globe is now waving pom-poms for another dissident group, the Council of Parishes, which is fighting the archbishop's plans. In the latest go-round, the Globe reports,

The leaders of the Council of Parishes, an alliance of parishes that have closed or are slated to close, issued a statement yesterday calling for a six-month pause to the closings process and asked O'Malley to allow the celebration of Sunday Mass at the closed parishes still occupied by parishioners. Currently, those churches hold prayer services that are not considered Mass because there is no priest; at some services, wafers that have been consecrated by sympathetic priests are distributed as Communion.

"Wafers?" I think they mean the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

And the group's "prayer services" are "not considered Mass because there is no priest?" OK, and you might say that what I'm doing right now-- pecking out this message on my keyboard-- "is not considered" Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, because there is no piano. It's true, but it's not exactly the whole story.