Recap of #bigDiocesan Meeting
There was a meeting by #bigdiocese last Thursday night at McCartyville. After a week to reflect, here are my observations and some level of “fact-checking”:
Pastors are saying out of obedience they must Canonically change, while the diocese is claiming it up to the Pastor. Who is lying? This is not an accident two YEARS into this process. I would expect no less from my Republican and Democratic politicians to point fingers at each other.
GREAT CROWD - Standing room only with 450 attendees. We have heard previous meetings averaged 40 people. With this crowd, there was no possible way for even the diocese to position this as the people disengaged or comfortable with the process.
False narratives - Standard narratives around the motivations for Beacons of Light, wavering between two mutually exclusive viewpoints: (These both can’t be true.)
This program is unfortunate, but necessary, because of the shortage of priests.
This is a GREAT improvement to the church that we should do regardless of priests. Somehow, the church utterly failed in the past 40 years, and now trust that this is a huge improvement in operations, regardless of your area!
One size fits all - There was absolutely no acknowledgment that the north area is different, or WHY this area is different. Fr. Jan would admit our attendance was really high especially compared to other areas, with no explanation WHY! This was especially misrepresented when using COVID thresholds across the diocese.
Does the church admit it was foolish to shut down the mass one of the few times in a 2000-year existence? In hindsight, do we stand behind that decision?
It was too much effort to use local data for such a critical meeting?
(BTW, our attendance is holding BECAUSE of our small churches, not despite the small churches. Also, the Diocese states there will be fewer Catholics. While we do not everyone, do you think St. John or St. Augustine will have more or fewer parishioners in 5 years? Here’s a hint, Maria Stein is building a new school.)
No explanation of why clusters do not work - There was NO explanation of what is gained by Canonical change beyond Clusters. There is no discussion of how they would operate more efficiently. In fact, despite asking that question being asked six times in six different ways, it was only political dodging.
Fr. Jan looked at the parishioners and stated they weren’t doing “extinctions” while suggesting that the term refers to the situation in the Middle East where Islam has swept through the Christian church. While it is true there, it is ABSOLUTELY occurring here too, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. For example:
Here’s the verbiage from the St. Henry decrees filed late last year where it discusses extinctive unions. (The St. Henry parishes become extinct, and only one parish is re-created.). For obvious reasons, the St. Henry parishioners present at the meeting made vocal objections to his comments.
By the way, this is not new to the area - Here is the decree around St. Patrick and their extinction into St. Michael of Ft Loramie.
This St. Patrick was torn down 6 years later despite promising above to be retained in good working order. When they do an “extinction union” on your small parish (hello - St. Joseph, Nativity, St. Sebastian, St. Rose), and Fr. Ken moves on, will your church be torn down 6 years later?
BTW - Other great summaries are provided at Facebook by saveourparishes.org.
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For those willing the daily prayer to St. Gaspar for intervention and Beacons.
Prayer to St. Gaspar for the Church
Saint Gaspar, you loved the persecuted Church, and in the name of God you accepted disgrace and exile. We beg your intercession for the Church today; help us discern how we are to live and promote the message of the Gospel. United with you, may our hearts have compassion for the poor and abandoned. Increase our love for the Blood of Christ, so that we also may be prepared to risk our lives.
We thank God for your good works and example. Strengthen our union with you that we may not weaken, but grow stronger in our vocation to the honor of God and the salvation of souls. Amen.