Editor: As predicted, none of the parishes closed were the parishes which host a spirit of rebellion against Catholic teaching. This reorganization was purely logistical and "honored" the integrity of the childless but wealthy homosexual-friendly communities and their deplorable counterparts in the suburbs.
For the most part, the parishes which were closed were part of dying parishes peopled by the descendants of the good people of eastern European descent.
We think it's safe to say that this Archdiocese is increasingly and inexorably moving toward an attempt at the liquidation of whatever remains of its sensus catholicus. This, really, is another sign of the fruits of Vatican II. Perhaps there will come a time when most people don't know about it, don't refer to it and don't care about it. Until then, we have the Catholic Faith, unspoiled, which we have a duty to learn, even if our Shepherds are bedazzled by large, ugly modern facilities and have consigned the spiritual welfare of their flocks to Godless academic professionals and impenitent homosexuals.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, remote and not so remote, real Catholics continue to pray their rosaries, make salutary sacrifices and encourage their children to vocations in the religious life or to foster large, wholesome, fruitful families.
Here's a link, here. Here's the story from the local neo-Marxist newspaper, here.
2 comments:
Tancred: It's true that the receiving parish, in the Archdiocese list, is often the more modern of the two but strictly from a numbers standpoint, it takes more $$$$/month to heat and light the older buildings. I know, it's sad but I think the financial case beat the sacred architecture argument.
In any event, the dissident parishes should not feel too smug. In the not too distant future, their new priests are going to be more conservative and more traditional than they are used to.
If it comes to architecture versus actual authentic Catholic teaching, preaching and liturgy in these parishes, regardless of architecture, I'll vote for the authentic Catholicism.
It's hard to believe their cost analysis. Understanding your own informed position in all of this, there are alternatives to make ancient edifices more cost-effective. No one's asked us, but we don't feel that this is what interests them.
The thing that motivates them is an animus delendi. One wonders what would happen if the planning committee in Vienna decided to bulldoze the Stepensdom to move the Cathedral into a more modern and up-to-date building.
The fact of the matter is that all of these reorganizations have taken place under the auspices of liturgically and theologically heterodox individuals like the defrocked James Moodry or the aesthetically challenged Father Notebaart.
No one, at least not a the Archdiocese, is concerned for the spiritual good of the laity, and that has characterized all of the parish wreckovations in this area so far, whether it was Father O'Gara, Bishop Pates or Father Bauer who's run these things. It's been the same lack of concern for continuity all along, and a very nasty and deliberate attack on church architecture. Even if the buildings are no longer Catholic, or recognizable as churches, talking about efficiency is cold comfort indeed, and their mania for efficiency demonstrated in the architecture these vandals usually raise up to the skies surely must be intended as an offense to God which all their smug self-satisfaction and contempt will vanish in ashes when death comes for their souls.
Aesthetics matters, and if people are falling away from the Church, it's because there are too many smug, latte sippers from the Chancery in charge of advertising.
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