He objected to the homily, to the form of the Eucharistic Prayer that was used, to the absence of kneelers in the church, to the pastor's invitation to the whole congregation to join in the proclaiming of the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, and to the fact that the pastor left the altar at the "Our Father" to join hands in prayer with those in the first row.
Fr. McBrien apparently cannot refute the substance of these complaints, so goes on to criticize their form.
Not surprisingly, the letter's language was redolent of another era in U.S. Catholic history.
So what, you might think.
Its sanctimonious and self-righteous tone was exceeded only by its obvious determination to "do in" the pastor.
Here Fr. McBrien tries to make it sound like the letter writer has some ulterior motive.
The writer assured the bishop, whom he always addressed as "Your Excellency," that he was a member "in good standing" of his home parish. How many Catholics nowadays would have felt the need to add that superfluous phrase?
How many Catholic priests would feel the need to go to these lengths to avoid the real liturgical issues?
He also insisted that he was writing only "after deep prayer and reflection." He made this point again toward the end of the letter, adding the phrase, "for several weeks."
What next, he failed to start each paragraph with a new thought?
I would guess that more than half the priests in the diocese would roll their eyes over those lines.
No doubt reserving their charity and tolerance for worthier challenges. But back to Strunk and White and McBrien.
The writer consistently referred to the Eucharist as the "sacred" Mass, as if the Mass were anything but sacred. The Church was not simply "the Church" but "our universal Mother Church."
He assured the bishop that he would "continue to pray" for the pastor and his parishioners (more rolling of eyes from the pastor's brother priests)...
Just in case there was anyone left who wondered why people would much rather a son went to law school than the seminary.
This letter would ordinarily not merit even a mention here.
Going into the Beneath Contempt file, perhaps.
However, only two weeks later a diocesan official wrote to the pastor, at the bishops's request, seeking a formal response to the accusations.
The pastor answered each item in the complaint. Five days later, he met with the bishop, and three days after that was informed that he was being removed as pastor-only a month after this whole process had begun.
The lay person's vocabulary errors didn't offset the priest's liturgical abuses?
Needless to say, his many hundreds of parishioners have been shocked and upset by the bishop's decision.
Many may have been shocked by a bishop making a decision at all.
For all of his unconventional behavior, this pastor is genuinely loved by the great majority of his people.
You can love the pastor but hate the mispastoring.
It is an unusually active and vibrant parish, where every member is expected to engage in a ministry of one kind or another. No Sunday-only Catholics there.
Now my eyes are rolling. They not only had one hundred percent Mass attendance but every parishioner was also involved in some other parish ministry? Strange as that fiction is, the truth is stranger.
Seven years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the pastor's ordination, the previous bishop composed an Ode to him, referring to the pastor as "the Blue Angel."
Was the Ode the the tune of "You're the cream in my coffee"?
In that Ode, the bishop remarked on the priest's "tireless care of the poor, the sick, the old, and the lame."
For 40 years, he said, the pastor "had preached and labored...to make Jesus, the Gospel, and our faith take on new life for us."
He even compared him to St. Peter, who was praised, but also mocked. "But just like Simon Peter, [his] love for all God's people is solid as a rock."
The bishop called him a "faithful, ageless, and glorious priest."
Sort of like St. John Vianney, only better?
This kind of crapola is why I don't subscribe. I wish Archbishop Dolan would unload Mc Brien and soon.
ReplyDeleteIs it uncharitable of me to think, "Hurry up and die old man?"
I wondered why I subscribe when I realized that I could fold up a typical issue of the Catholic Herald and fit it in a standard business size envelope. A half page by Fr. McBrien is a pretty big part of a week's content.
ReplyDeleteA sincere "Drop dead" I'd call uncharitable. On the other hand, if Fr. McBrien is right and most of our priests laugh at parishioners behind their backs, then one of these same priests might well give you a pass in the confessional.