Protesting parishioners say they won't leave closed church

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And on top of the abuse settlements, cities like Chicago and Minneapolis are now facing “public nuisance” charges. The situation can be only get worse as far as church closings (not to mention bankruptcies), as I see it.
 
anthony022071 said:
bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/03/protesting_parishioners_say_they_wont_leave_closed_church

Despite vacate edict, Scituate congregants vow to fight

origin.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/08/scituate-congregation-vows-ongoing-legal-fight-maintain-church/RKyCB4ts87D0vhZuvPeyBJ/story.html
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I don’t get what those people are thinking. Estranging themselves from the church and creating a fight with the archdiocese can’t possibly help anything, least of all their own souls.

The sin of disobedience is very insidious.
 
Is it not essentially sentimentality which is driving this? Along with being just plain disobedient?

A church is a sacred space we gather together in to worship God. The church building is not some end in itself.
 
Weirder and weirder. They claim to own the building. I bet everyone that could claimed a tax deduction for a charitable donation!
 
pnewton said:
Weirder and weirder. They claim to own the building. I bet everyone that could claimed a tax deduction for a charitable donation!
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I’m not exactly sure how all of this stuff works, but it is possible that the people technically do “own” the church, however the diocese has the right to determine if the parish stays open or is closed. Additionally they may be essentially depriving the successor parish of income from the sale of the building since they are blocking any sort of disposal of the property.

More importantly, as another poster mentioned the people are being disobedient and that can do great damage. We had a church here in the Cleveland area that was closed and the parishoners refused to acknowledge it so they, along with their priest, set up shop in an old storefront. Initially they told the bishop they were only using it to continue the missionary works their parish had managed before, however before too long they were holding mass. This led to the priest being excommunicated and numerous people willfully leading themselves into disobediance.

ChadS
 
wcvb.com/news/parishioners-refusing-to-end-10-year-vigil-to-save-scituate-church/31705240

(with video)

myfoxboston.com/story/28296071/parishioners-must-abandon-scituate-church-or-face-legal-action

(with video)

bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/03/scituate_faithful_gear_up_for_fight

< Friends of St. Frances X. Cabrini announced yesterday they’d hired attorney Mary Beth Carmody, who secured a resolution to a similar church dispute in Framingham, and said a Vatican review process still gives them hope the church they’ve occupied since 2004 won’t be demolished. >

< The Archdiocese says appeals were exhausted when the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s highest judicial authority, found against the parishioners. Parishioners counter that the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts’ decision to accept the case for 
review in November should preempt any civil action. >
 
Interesting. They are willing to buy the church and then what? Hire their own priest?
 
JamalChristophr said:
Is it not essentially sentimentality which is driving this? Along with being just plain disobedient?

A church is a sacred space we gather together in to worship God. The church building is not some end in itself.
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My Baptismal church, St. Michael’s in Lynn, was one of the earlier Boston closures and it broke my heart, sentimental perhaps and perhaps the protests of those parishioners was disobedient, disobedience to what to them was a real injustice. While I no longer live there I fully supported them, they were a self-sustaining parish right up to the closure not a financial drain on the Archdiocese.

Many of these are very old (100 to 200 years old) established parishes where the community is more family than neighborhood. Many of these, St. Michael’s Polish parish for example, are ethnic or nationality based communities for which there is no replacement. Sure a new parish can provide the Liturgy but what about the Mass in the vernacular, what about parish traditions, the simple things like the parish priest visiting parish households to bless the Easter bread?

If the cause of all this financial woe is indeed the abuse scandals and I suspect that’s not the whole story, all the more horrible that these parishioners are paying for the sins of those ordained sinners.
 
People who occupy a church 24/7 probably do end up owning the moral high ground after a while.
 
Darryl1958 said:
People who occupy a church 24/7 probably do end up owning the moral high ground after a while.
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Well, I hope they get heavily fined for their ridiculous behavior. They’ve occupied Church grounds for ten years without permission!
 
dshix said:
Well, I hope they get heavily fined for their ridiculous behavior. They’ve occupied Church grounds for ten years without permission!
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Yes, but aren’t their methods legal from the Vatican’s standpoint? AFAIK, anyone can appeal to them for help in this matter.
 
ProVobis said:
Yes, but aren’t their methods legal from the Vatican’s standpoint? AFAIK, anyone can appeal to them for help in this matter.
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To be honest, I’m not familiar with the legal process of appeals in a situation like this. However, to my understanding, any Catholic Church is physically the property of the archdiocese in which it resides, and thus the parishioners have no right or claim to it themselves.

Am I incorrect?
 
dshix said:
To be honest, I’m not familiar with the legal process of appeals in a situation like this. However, to my understanding, any Catholic Church is physically the property of the archdiocese in which it resides, and thus the parishioners have no right or claim to it themselves.
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If the doors are closed, they would be violating civil law, whether it belongs to the archdiocese or not.
 
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