Portland parish protests new priest’s policies

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jack63 said:
Why didn’t the parishioners just simply talk to the priest about their concerns? It’s Portland, it’s not like there is only one Catholic church in the city. They could always go to another Parish. This is a powerful way lay people can express their concerns.

Were there no Deacons that the parishioners could quietly talk to?
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This situation unfortunately isn’t that unprecedented in US cities, although usually it doesn’t reach the point of the parishioners actually disrupting the Mass and making the national news.

It’s highly likely that these parishioners have tried to talk to the priest in the past about changes he has been making and the priest has either politely put them off or told them that he is not going to change it back to the old way. I don’t know if you’ve ever had discussions with an African priest or with any priest who feels strongly about how he is doing something, but the priest very often will just say, “We’re doing it this way and that’s final” and refuse to discuss it any more. And he is generally within his rights to do so - his parish, his rules.

I think finding the vestments and photos in the trash was just the last straw for a conflict that looks to have been building up over time. I’m also guessing that given the age of these people, the demographic of the parish has been changing and the new people coming in are not all hopping on board with the aging boomers’ ideas of what a parish should be. The guy in the video who stands up and tells them off for dissing a “holy priest” looks like he is 35 years old at the most. For all we know, some of these younger, newer people have been privately complaining about the boomers’ practices, maybe for years, maybe even to the Bishop, who sent a new pastor to clean house.

These people probably don’t want to just go to another parish because they don’t WANT another parish. They want their own social-justice gay-friendly parish where things were done in the way they like it. It’s possible that some of them don’t even live in the parish and were just attending there because they liked the emphasis on social justice and community and standing rather than kneeling and all these other things that are so dear to the hearts of some modern Catholics. They saw themselves as a “progressive” parish and now they are being made into a traditional parish, and it’s likely that other parishes in the area, if available, are not “progressive” and are not going to welcome a bunch of folks who want to implement ideas that they’ve been doing for 15 years at another parish that seems to have had some questionable leadership in the past.

Regarding talking to a deacon, the website for this parish doesn’t mention any deacon. It’s a small parish and I’m guessing there probably isn’t a deacon. There are many parishes that don’t have any deacons; other large parishes might have several deacons.
 
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adamhovey1988 said:
hate to play up on stereotypes, but why are a bunch of Unitarian Universalist angry at what happens at a Catholic church?
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Often times people at the UU Church were once Catholics who suffered abuse at the hands of those within the Catholic Church, representing the Catholic Church. Although they have left, they continue to keep tabs on what is going on. At least, that has been what I have observed.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
They saw themselves as a “progressive” parish and now they are being made into a traditional parish, and it’s likely that other parishes in the area, if available, are not “progressive” and are not going to welcome a bunch of folks who want to implement ideas that they’ve been doing for 15 years at another parish that seems to have had some questionable leadership in the past.
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In a certain way, I can empathize with what they are going through. To have your entire worldview challenged is disorienting to say the least. However, the way in which they are dealing with this “sudden” change is not OK.
 
Entitlement and losing the way. I don’t think it has much to do with age, or being a 60s person, etc as it has with people’s idea of entitlement, where it starts and where it ends.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
The attitude of “give us what we want or we’ll have a protest” is very much a 1960s/ 1970s Vietnam-era thing.
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I have found its expression in increased entitlement to be cutting across the generations. Perhaps that is an indication of the direction society is travelling.
This act also indicates these parishioners have no concept what is going on during the Consecration. Its also a bit scary considering how disruptive it was and compared to recent violence within various churches.
I wonder if parishioners and the priest had been informed this was going to happen.
 
At many churches, this sort of demonstration would have been stopped by security. I know in a lot of cathedrals, if you do so much as yell out during the Mass, an off-duty cop will quickly remove you from the premises.
 
This is a salient point. These people are yelling abuse at a priest from Nigeria. Where Catholics have been slain at Mass. I understand people’s admonishment to not criticize too heavily, but I have to say I find their action reprehensible.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
There’s a church across the street from my work and the current slogan is something like “Where thinking people worship”. I’m sure the church doesn’t realize how offensive it sounds – since it implies that all the other churches are for stupid brain-washed people. But aren’t the church-goers smart for having found the one church in town that’s for thinking people…
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I wouldn’t take it that way at all. To say that your church is a church for “thinking people” describes only your church and none other. It would say to me “if you are a person who reflects, analyzes, and even disagrees or has difficulty with matters of faith, we could be the place for you”.

It is possible to read too much into some things that might be better just taken at face value. At least that’s my slant on it. But then again I don’t offend easily, and nothing much shocks me anymore. Other people’s mileage may vary.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
It is possible to read too much into some things that might be better just taken at face value.
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I don’t think it’s reading “too much into some things” to recognize that the church is drawing a distinction between themselves as a church for thinkers vs. some other church (real or imaginary) where people aren’t thinkers.

Clearly, they think this distinction is necessary and of value otherwise they would not have erected the sign.
 
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Disgusting behaviour by those people.

All the priest is doing is bringing the mass back in line to how it is supposed to be done.

God bless him
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
I don’t think it’s reading “too much into some things” to recognize that the church is drawing a distinction between themselves as a church for thinkers vs. some other church (real or imaginary) where people aren’t thinkers.

Clearly, they think this distinction is necessary and of value otherwise they would not have erected the sign.
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I suppose you and I just think differently where matters such as this are concerned.

To use a secular analogy, Ace Hardware bills itself as “The Helpful Place”. (It used to be “the place with the helpful hardware men”, which of course was intolerable in the current PC climate — horrors! — so it became “the place with the helpful hardware folks”, then finally “the helpful place”.) Does this imply that other hardware stores are not helpful? I don’t think so. No, it just says Ace Hardware is helpful. No harm, no foul.

I could provide other examples, but this should be sufficient.
 
They seem to be more concerned with being a help club than a parish. I’ve read comments by one parishioner complaining that all this priest wants to do is hear confessions and celebrate Mass. Can you imagine the horror?!? :roll_eyes::roll_eyes:
 
Remove the new from the headline and there is good alliteration.
Portland parish protests priest’s politicies
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
mewhere there was an article about how some African dioceses have sent missionaries to Europe. Whoa, I said, are things in Europe really that bad? Africa has many issues of its own, but the Catholic Church there does appear to be more conservative than in Europ
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There is no way around it. These parishioners are HERETICS. To do that during the Concentration means that have ZERO RESPECT for the the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

If I was there, it would take every single being in my body not walk up to the men doing that and punch them in the face for their disrespect. I surely would have started to drag people out of the church.

HORRIBLE and DEMONIC.
 
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