I weighed-in earlier with hopes that His Excellency the Archbishop of St. Louis would find some way to arrive at a peaceable solution with St. Stanislaus which did NOT constitute a ‘victory’ for either side, but a win/win solution satisfying the needs of all. Over and over, posters kept insisting that the legalities were all on the side of His Excellency Archbishop Burke and that because the RCC is ‘not a democracy’ it fell to the parishioners of St. Stan’s to submit or else. It was unthinkable to the persons who interacted with me that anything other than a win/lose or a lose/lose solution could or should be explored.
Some comments here. I am not a Roman Catholic. Obviously, my ecclesiology is a tad different–I don’t think the Church is a democracy, per se, but neither is it an autocracy. Those charged as shepherds of the flock ought not to use their positions to lord it over their charges, but IMHO should bear in mind that they are ‘servants of the servants of Christ’–a turn of phrase coined by a Roman Catholic, btw. This said: I like the strong leadership that Archbishop Burke has brought to the Archdiocese of St. Louis. It’s a shame that ECUSA has for decades lacked leadership with the cojones (I choose the term advisedly, fully mindful of it’s politically-incorrect, gender-exclusive implications) to have put a stop to the various and sundry shenanigans that have left the Anglican movement in shambles.
I still believe that His Excellency should have done more to be a peacemaker rather than a divider on this issue, over which no pressing issues of orthodoxy immediately presented themselves. Since the public concerns of the parish were that the Archdiocese sought it’s assets as a way of off-setting the costs of Archdiciesan legal settlements and judgements due to liabilities incurred by wayward priests; AND since the parish further feared that the compromises proposed by the Archbishop did not place their parish assets beyond the reach of future adverse legal judgements; AND since the parish (wrongly im my private view) made His Excellency’s desire to exert his authority an issue, one compromise could have been as follows.
His Excellency could righly and justly insist that the St. Stanislaus Board of Directors re-affirm their allegiance to his authority within the Diocese and promising full feasance to his perogatives within his own Archdiociese. (One of the perpheral issues which brought things to a head had something to do with a unilateral action by the Board regarding a priest, undertaken without consultation with or consent by the Archbishop). In turn, His Excellency would ensure that St. Stanislaus would be appropriately served by priests capable of doing justice to an ethnic Polish parish. (Again, the Archbishop contributed to some of the ill-will in this whole affair by assigning one or more priests to the parish who did not even speak the Polish language). Finally, His Excellency could issue a decree, to which the parishioners would have to be signatory, obliging the parish to relinquish all of it’s assets to the Archdiocese no later than December 31, 2016–approximately 99 years after the parish was given the privilege of it’s peculiar status within the Archdiocese; and presumably long after His Excellency will have completed his tenure as Archbishop of St. Louis; and long after the current legal issues plaguing the American RCC should have been resolved. In turn, the Archdiocese would pledge to sustain St. Stanislaus as a Polish parish with Polish-speaking priests, so long as the parish was economically self-sustaining and retained it’s ethnic character.
I write this two days following the first celebration of Mass by Fr. Marek Bozek and not quite a fortnight, I think, since His Excellency has excommunicated Fr. Bozek and the St. Stanislaus Board. Whether anything to heal the breach can be done now along lines such as those I suggest here is difficult to say. Had I been in His Excellency’s shoes I think I would have awaited the actual celebration of the Mass–perhaps even the end of Christmastide-to have issued the decree of excommunication. (I would have issued warnings that it was nonetheless gravely sinful to receive communion from a priest who was acting in disobedience against his rightful superiors and without faculties). At this point some further measures of public penance on the part of the parish, the Board, and Fr. Bozek would be needful, I would think. I do nonetheless hope that as this is the season where angels once proclaimed ‘Peace on earth, good-will towards men’ that some sort of peaceable resolution can yet be found among people of good will.
