Not having much knowledge of the above-mentioned projects I cannot vouchsafe their efficacy but they appear to be worthy organizations (though I note the Sheen Center, which consists of "two state of the art theater spaces, four studios, and an art gallery" is located at 18 Bleecker Street in the heart of lower Manhattan, where his Eminence especially complains there are too many parishes. Maybe Catholics who don't go to mass down there will instead go to play and gallery openings at the Center). Still and all though, I wonder, rather than create a hit list of churches and schools to be liquidated, the cardinal might consider offering these expensive claims on the diocesan fisc that make him so unhappy to traditional religious orders (the only ones that seem to be enjoying solid growth these days), theirs for the taking if they'll only take them of his episcopal hands.
Here are two reasons the cardinal will not consider my excellent (if I say so myself) suggestion. One, he would be deprived the considerable funds obtained selling church properties and great fun showering new-found largess on pet "projects." Two, and much more unattractive I'm sure, the real possibility traditional religious taking over a dying church might do something way over the top like offer traditional liturgy (N.O. or even worse, T.L.M!), decent music and other such horrors that scare the bejesus out of the cardinal and with-it, up-to-date post-Conciliar fossils who run the archdiocese. "Sure," they'll say, "reactionaries (so what if they're young!) will flock to traditional Latin masses in Chinatown and the Lower East Side and church attendance will rise, but those people will go to mass anywhere, no matter how crappy it is; they seem to have the weird notion they have to. We don't have to do anything for them.
Now this is how to strengthen parish life.
5 comments:
+Timo the archbishop of Gotham doesn't take suggestions. For all his horsing around, he's an old-time boss (and that's why he wears the cross).
I'f like a nearby bishop to comment on +Tim's writings and public statements like he seems to need to interpret the new pope for the rest of us. I don't need no Timmy as my mediator between the pope and me nor between my savior and me.
His eminence seems to be providing the answer to a different question altogether, that question being: "What's the easiest and fastest way for your friendly cardinal to scare up cash?"
Been saying that for years, since the small, young conservative counter-revolution got under way under JP2 and Ratz: give the dying city parishes and schools to the new conservative and trad orders. Here in Philadelphia the archdiocese has run out of its capital from before the council, which it's been living on for the past 40 years. So parishes and schools are closing/merging. But of course the old liberals aren't giving up control yet, as perhaps the reigning Pope shows. But eventually as the I-like-Vatican II generation dies off (already happening), the church will have no choice because conservatives, trads, and a few charismatics (orthodox but low-church) will be all that's left to work with. 50 years from now the American church will be almost as sound as 50 years ago - but a lot smaller.
Terence Cardinal Dolan? Now that's a Freudian slip!
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