On a wing and a prayer: Parishioners vow to fight to end for churches

Boston Herald ^ | 11-26-12 | Richard Greim

[afraidfortherepublic]

Defiant parishioners waging tireless vigils for the churches they love — now eight years and running — are being warned by their archdiocese that the end is near, but they still vow to fight on.

“We paid for this church,” said Maryellen Rogers, a parishioner at St. Francis X. Cabrini in Scituate. “We built it. The archdiocese took out a mortgage in the 1970s we paid off. And we believe we are the rightful owners of this church.”

But the Archdiocese of Boston has signaled the rogue worshippers are testing the goodwill of the hierarchy.

“The cardinal’s been patient,” archdiocese spokesman Terry Donilon said of Cardinal Sean O’Malley. “We’ve tried to work with them over the years. We’re not looking for conflict, but these are going to end. I can’t predict how, but they will end.”

The final appeals are now before the Vatican Supreme Court in Rome with a ruling expected within months. Still, these faithful few refuse to abandon their houses of worship.

~snip~

Today, we begin a three-part video and print series chronicling their stories of passion and perseverance, with St. Frances X. Cabrini.

• • •

“If they come in and arrest us, I’m ready. I’m ready to go,” said Nancy Shilts, 79, rolling up her sleeves while standing vigil at the South Shore church.

“There’s one thing in my life, I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been to jail. I’m willing to go,” she added, saying churchgoers are “dedicated, determined, and dug-in.”

Shilts is part of a core group of 100 fellow parishioners and 300 volunteers who have been occupying the church 24/7 since 2004.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Video at source

[afraidfortherepublic]

Parish closing ping

[ALPAPilot]

Why don’t they just buy it from the Archdioces?

[afraidfortherepublic]

The Archdiocese won’t sell it to them. Besides— they’ve already bought it once. This kind of battle rages all over the country.

[rockabyebaby]

Why don’t they just buy it from the Archdioces?

“We paid for this church,” said Maryellen Rogers, a parishioner at St. Francis X. Cabrini in Scituate. “We built it. The archdiocese took out a mortgage in the 1970s we paid off. And we believe we are the rightful owners of this church.”

[Mercat]

In our archdiocese, the Archbishop has personal title to all the land. He owns it outright. If he decides to sell it to a third party, it is no longer a church. There was no mention in the article about the population of the parish. If its a thriving parish, supporting their own obligations and paying the regular tithe to the diocese, then they would probably be left alone or only some of the land sold off. Why do they need 30 acres? There’s more to this story. But basically, to answer your question, they cannot buy it.

[icwhatudo]

They let the homosexuals and leftists take over the seminaries, now they are selling valuable Church properties to pay the settlements from sex abuse victims. What a shame.

[ALPAPilot]

OKAY. Why don’t they pay the Arcdiocese for the title. Is the Archdiocese keeping the property?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I can’t speak to all denominations, but I am familiar with the organization, if that is the word, of Baptists. When Baptists in a local area form a congregation, they incorporate the church which they create. That corporation has a constitution defining its organization and assigning authority to individuals, office holders and bodies such as trustees and deacons. Although Baptist churches may associate in, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the convention itself will have officers, they are in no sense a hierarchy above the local churches. If the head of a local association tried to assert authority over a local church, that church could just withdraw fellowship from the association - and that would be that.

The Catholic Church is different than a Baptist Church. It does have a hierarchy which has authority. As such, when the faithful of a Catholic parish raise the money to buy land and erect a church building, they are doing so in the name of the hierarchy of the church, not in their own right; the local congregation is not an independent corporation owning its own facilities. If the local congregation tries to assert authority over itself, it has a legal problem because the property is in the name of the hierarchy, not that of the local congregation. But if you are a Catholic, I suppose that you believe that that is as it should be.

And it has to be said that the Baptist organization is naturally prone to splits in congregations - which they try to turn into a virtue by creating two churches where there had been only one. Sometimes that even works.

[surrey]

St. Francis sits on a beautiful parcel of land near the ocean. it must be worth a fortune. i don’t know how large this parish might be as there is another Catholic Church in Scituate Harbor which appears to have a huge congregation.

[NYer]

Truly sad! Here in the RC Diocese of Albany, there were 6 churches in Watervliet, some of them totally solvent and in the black. That did not stop the bishop from closing 5 of them! BTW, the bishop never appeared at any of the meetings held to discuss the number of churches to close. Today, 5 years later, many of those catholics have either stopped attending church (too crippled to drive to the sole, remaining church) while others have joined a large, evangelical church (the shopping mall church has now doubled in size to accommodate the influx of these catholics). There are workable solutions that should be explored.

[SuziQ]

St. Francis sits on a beautiful parcel of land near the ocean. it must be worth a fortune. i don’t know how large this parish might be as there is another Catholic Church in Scituate Harbor which appears to have a huge congregation.

If there are only 100 regular parishoners at St. Francis, they could easily blend into the other Parish. We had a situation like this in Worcester. It was an older building, and the neighborhood had changed around it, and there were only a few families left. Of course, when the Diocese announced they were closing it, folks came from miles around, because they'd had some sort of connection to it in the past, even though they hadn't been in it in years. They 'occupied' the Church for a while, too. At first, I felt sorry for them, until one day I happened to be driving in that area of town, and saw the Church. I rolled on about 500 yards, and there was another Catholic Church on the next block!

I mentioned to a friend that I didn't understand why those folks couldn't just go to the other Church, and she said that the Church that was closing was the old 'French' Church, and the other one was the 'Irish' Church, so the folks didn't want to go to that one. At that point, my opinion was that they needed to get over themselves. If the French church hadn't been doing the necessary repairs, because there weren't enough families to keep it up, and the Irish parish was more active, and keeping up their property, then the French church should close. There was another huge 'French' church about a mile away, anyway, and that's where those folks were gonna go.

When folks talked about how sad it was that the folks there couldn't have their own Church, I reminded them that there were areas of the country, including where my husband grew up in the Mississippi Delta, where Catholics had to drive 30 mins. EACH WAY every Sunday to get to the closest Church. I wasn't going to feel sorry for the folks who had to drive an extra block. Uncharitable, maybe, but much more logical.