It may very well relate to the Catholic Schools incident that has been getting national press. Perhaps because people are digging for anything to smear the church, perhaps because it caused generally upset people to be more aware or critical of the diocese, or maybe because it took an already present complaint and gave it room to grow into the public eye.
Honestly I don’t really see the reason as important because it put a halt to a stupid and dehumanizing practice. The parish can issue all the excuses it wants, but they aren’t adding up and I think most of us innately know that the system had some hardened hearts in it’s conception.
Washing away feces and needles? Seems like the system would only need to run once a morning for that. Not to mention someone would have noticed it wasn’t working due to a lack of drainage after 2 years.
Other buildings in the city practiced it? I expect and am glad that society holds the Church to a high standard than buildings like banks and other businesses. And if this because a catalyst to get other people to turn off or remove those systems then even better.
Warned them ahead of time? This pretty much leads into the idea of it being somehow morally different if an automated system was chasing people out rather than a priest with a garden hose.
At some point you just have to own up to it. It was dumb, if my parish did this I would be embarrassed. I’m glad they were called out on it, and I am glad they are stopping.
Please keep him in your prayers.
They did own up to the fact that it was wrong. The reason they are explaining the mitigating details is because the entirety of the media, minus a few Catholic sources, are only reporting the negative aspects of the story and letting people assume the worst to fill in the gaps.