true love

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 29, 2005

Bishop McManus of the Worcester Diocese has leaned into a journalistic thrashing that we can hope he will survive. The press is giving decidedly unsympathetic description of his sermons at a Westborough MA parish last weekend, that stated in no uncertain terms that he was not about to flee with tail between legs, when priests of his dioceses were preaching against the heterosexual marriage referendum--an initiative that the MA bishops are supporting.

This response by the Bishop McManus, who has only been the Ordinary for a little over a year, has a different style than his predecessor; Bishop Daniel Reilly was confronted by concerned laymen nearly two years ago about an unsigned essay supporting gay marriage distributed at St. Francis Parish in Bolton MA. But this dog didn't hunt. The Bolton affair now seems to have been the test case that Reilly flubbed and so McManus is left to repair the damage.

Bishop McManus' assertiveness is certainly encouraging, but it raises a larger question on whether we would be witnessing the open defiance of the Worcester Diocese priests to a bishop's initiative on a matter of homosexuality, if there were only a token presence of homosexual clergy in the diocese. The behavior of these priests also suggests that their ultimate sympathies reside with their downtrodden brothers in Boston's Back Bay.