Posted on 02/12/2005 10:01:13 AM PST by 7thOF7th
Burke formally denies sacraments to defiant board By Tim Townsend Of the Post-Dispatch 02/11/2005 St. Stanislaus Church (KEVIN MANNING /P-D) John Baras' first grandson arrived in the world Thursday just five hours after a decree of interdict, written on St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke's own stationery and sealed with a rubber stamp, arrived at Baras' home, delivered by a courier. The interdict means Baras and the other five members of the church's board have fallen out of communion with the Roman Catholic Church and will no longer be able to participate in the sacraments of the church. p>
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
I really don't understand the urgency to getting control of this parish.
Cardinal Rigali was talking nicely, and getting next to nowhere, as I understand it. Apparently Archbishop Burke preferred the direct approach.
These people were not going to give an inch to anybody. The board had relegated their pastor to having no say in any decisions. That's not the way any other parish is run, and that's when Archbishop Burke pulled their priests. They have their precious assets, but they can't be called Catholic when what they are running is a corporation.
BTTT!
No bishop can excommunicate lay persons without just cause. The board has done nothing wrong. It is not disobedience to refuse to surrender property that is already theirs, since the command to do so is illegitimate. The board is simply refusing to allow the Archbishop to steal their church.
The reason why the laity will disobey bishops is because the bishops themselves disobey the Pope and the Pope disobeys Catholic Tradition. The breakdown is universal.
Reality sucks.
UR doesn't have a legal leg to stand on, as you observed.
But UR wants into the fight because the Schizzies are desperately seeking "justification" for their anti-nomianism.
IOW, UR's attempting to bring MarcelMouse back into the Church.
Ummmnnnhhh....
You may have missed the point. Burke is trying to tell these people that their stiff-necked resistance to the rule of Canon Law will (WILL!!!) endanger their salvation.
You may characterize this as a 'temporalities' issue, and it is--but that's not the important part of the story.
There's a great deal more written on this issue than what appears in the thread-head article.
Suffice it to say that the rebels in the parish have actually 'stolen' the parish from the Diocese (quite a while ago...) and that Burke is not acting from spite.
He's acting based on rulings from Rome, strictly on Canon Law grounds, well-adjudicated.
The rebels do have their adherents on this thread--but that's because the miserable love company.
Good thought, and I will gleefully steal that...
As to UR--he's more likely to ask for a change of venue at his Partic.Judgment.
IIRC, a priest has NO rights to do anything within a Diocese (no preaching, no public celebration of Mass, no Confessions) without a specific permission from the Bishop.
The Confessions prohibition may be waived in case of emergency.
Your take is correct. Your interlocutor is a schismatic, and damn proud of it.
Until the Particular Judgment of the individuals in question rolls around, which it will inevitably do...
This is serious stuff, if one is concerned about one's salvation.
If Burke has the legal right, then why doesn't he simply sue? Because he'd lose. The board has the legal right and he knows it. What makes this a case of abuse of authority is the Archbishop's use of the sacraments as a club to force the lay board to accede to his demands. That is not responsible spiritual leadership, it is tyrannous and should be resisted. If the problem were a matter of faith and morals in some way, then the bishop would have a leg to stand on. But it involves money and taking what doesn't belong to him legally.
The issue is similar to the clash between Archbishop Lefebvre and the Pope only insofar as both cases deal with abuse of power on the part of the higher Church authority. But Archbishop Lefebvre resisted in order to preserve the faith, not to preserve property. But it is nevertheless true that no cleric has unlimited power, not even a pope, nor does anybody owe another person blind obedience, not even if that person is a pope. All authority is limited from above in that it is obliged to behave with justice in its dealings with subordinates. Subordinates, for their part, may legitimately resist unjust aggressions.
Over a piece of property? I doubt a dispute over a piece of property is jeopardizing anybody's immortal soul. Besides, they can receive the sacraments at another parish where they are not known.
Archbishop Burke won't take their precious money. He's telling them they can't be Catholic. They will have to join some other schismatic group.
Every parish in this archdiocese of StL has a pastor who is the final authority on just about everything. For some reason (money?) the board of St. Stanislaus believes they are above having this model of parish governance. Their corporate board was telling the pastor what to do.
But so will his heavy handedness. This type of thing is the sort of thing that really went away after Vatican II and I for one am glad we don't see it anymore. Don't we all know plenty of people who left the Church in the 50's and 60's because of some tyrannical act or comment by a priest?
Let me say I like Burke. I admire the way he's dealt with the baby killing politicians. However, I think he's acting like a petulant child in this instance. Where has he been when it comes time to read the homosexual clergy or his brother bishops the riot act? Why isn't he concerning himself with the huge plank in his own Church's eye before trying to remove the speck from a small parish?
This sort of heavy handed micro management will preclude him from consideration of a Cardinal's hat.
If he doesn't want their money, why is he strong-arming them? If it's a matter of how they treat their pastor, then how is it a solution to steal their church? Is this your idea of justice? If the Archbishop doesn't like the way you treat your husband, does he have the right to take over your house?
Who says he's stealing their church?
He has offered to let them have legally binding (in civil courts) assurances that their assets will remain theirs.
I think you are making inflammatory statements without complete knowledge of what's going on.
You misunderstand the nature of the dispute. Materialist considerations are not the paramount issue. Disobedience and denial of Church structures is the issue.The Catholic Chutrch is not like Presbyterians who dispute and split and resplit over what body has title to property. The individual congregations own the property in PCUSA. The Presbytery owns the property in PCA.(Forgive me if I reversed that, my wife is the Presbyterian and she is not here right now).
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