Let us simulate that love's around,
That we live and let live,
Where only one thing leads to Hell,
that's to not be progressive.
We pretend there's no division
among people in God's grace.
As we narrow down our field of vision
Fewer will come, fewer will come, fewer will come to this place.
I might be a bit off on that lyric, since I wasn't taking notes.
Our new pastor had decided against concelebrating, but came in to give the homily. He pulled out a Bible, and told us the number of Post-It notes on it will be a good basis to estimate how long he will be speaking.
I suspect he doesn't realize how apparently innocuous things he says will connect to issues in his new parish. For example, one of the things he suggested we take home from this Sunday's gospel was the need to be countercultural. And to give a small example of how we fail in this, he gave his own "road rage" even on his short commute from his apartment to the church. Which recalls the controversy, I assume unknown to him, over closing our parish's rectory. Our former pastor pushed for this, and the preliminary plans for our building project of a couple years ago called for its demolition. Apparently due to parishioner resistance, it was allowed to remain, though converted to offices.
If we want an example of how hard it is even for our priests to be countercultural, we need only look at how obsessed some of them are to have a house or condo and a daily commute to work. Our former pastor might have realized this conflict. Perhaps that's why he tried to convince us he was compelled by archdiocesan policy to close the rectory. That avoided the question of why he felt compelled to move across town. The saddest part was his evicting another priest who lived in our rectory and that our current associate would have lived in the rectory if it had still been a residence. For all we know, our new pastor would have moved in, too.
Maybe when we're looking for something to name for our former pastor, we should consider the former rectory.
Did Father ever DOCUMENT the "archdiocesan policy" which required closing the rectory?
ReplyDeleteLater I noted that Canon Law appeared to require the bishop's permission for a priest to live off-site. In a meeting with our pastor, I said this seemed inconsistent with his assertion about archdiocesan policy. His response was that this provision of the Code was "a dead letter."
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