[Siobhan]

What Archbishop O'Malley is doing is proof that each Catholic parish should be locally incorporated with title held jointly by bishop and local community so these unilateral decisions against self-supporting congregations cannot take place.

Archbishop O'Malley always makes me think of Marie-Julie Jahenny.

[noste paire]

Joint ownership of parishes is a terrible idea. For better or worse, the Church is not a democracy. It is not right for laymen and non-episcopal clergy, who do not have a complete understanding of the diocese's political/economic/spiritual situation, to have power over the bishop. I am not at all liberal, I adore the Latin Mass, and I respectfully question many policies of the bishops. But obedience is a principle that goes back the apostolic fathers and the apostles themselves.

From the epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in 108 AD:

"He who acts in anything apart from the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons is not pure in conscience." (To the Trallians)

"Do nothing without the bishop. Keep your flesh as a shrine of God. Love union. Flee divisions. Become followers of Jesus Christ as He also was of the Father." (To the Romans)

"Avoid divisions as the beginning of evil. Follow, all of you, the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father; and follow the presbytery as the Apostles. [..] Let no man do aught pertaining to the Church apart from the bishop." (To the Smyrnaeans)

(et cetera)

John

[Robert Drobot]

What Archbishop O'Malley is doing is proof that each Catholic parish should be locally incorporated with title held jointly by bishop and local community so these unilateral decisions against self-supporting congregations cannot take place.

.....I couldn't agree more.