My wife and I moved from the Archdiocese of Boston to the Diocese of Austin about 18 months ago. The Archdiocese of Boston might well be called “The Church of Benign Neglect”.
The two years before we move to Texas, the Archdiocese of Boston had a class of one and a class of three seminarians. That’s pretty bad for an Archdiocese with over a million people who claim to be Catholics.
This past Sunday we received an insert in our parish bulletin that had the seminarians of the Diocese of Austin, a diocese with maybe 100,000 Catholics, listed with their pictures and a month of March prayer listing to pray for them, the Pope, Bishop Joe, our parish priests, etc. There were 43(!!) seminarians so the first 21 days have two seminarians for which we should pray!
The Catholic Church is alive an well here in Austin. In Boston, the Catholic Church is a walking corpse and may be snuffed out when those in their sixties and seventies go on to their eternal rewards.
I hope Pope Benedict XVI’s successor looks to where the Catholic Church in America is dying out and where it is flourishing and downgrade some of the current Archdiocese and upgrade some of the current Dioceses. And I also home the See of Peter has the wisdom NOT to move any of the jokers wearing red hats from places like Boston to places like Austin.
**their sixties and seventies go on to their eternal rewards.**
Or something else! <sarc off/