We're Doomed. Again.

 Here's the Headline:

Is this the end of Catholicism?

This was harder than I thought it would be,” Margaret O’Brien told a CBS reporter last weekend. O’Brien, 86, had been one of the hundred or so parishioners holding a round-the-clock vigil at St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate, Mass.

 

Eleven years ago the Boston Archdiocese announced that it was closing the parish, a reorganization necessitated by the financial settlements after the clergy sex-abuse scandal. The parishioners at St. Frances have tried to alter the hierarchy’s decision using canon law as well as the US legal system, maintaining a presence in the building so it would not be sold out from under them.
But last month, they lost their final appeal when the Supreme Court declined to take their case. And on Sunday, they held their final service, holding 11 prayer quilts the community had created to commemorate each year of their battle.

 The story says these are just the kind of Catholics we need to save the Church from declining attendance. 


While the Catholic hierarchy may not have had a choice in closing the parish, in order to thrive they need to re-create exactly the kind of community that St. Frances had become. Especially with a decline in vocations, the church is more dependent on lay participation than ever.

So how did these upright and outstanding Catholics respond to the closure?


While the hierarchy has expressed its hope that the St. Frances congregants will join other local parishes, they say they are done. Starting next week, the members will be forming a religious institution independent of the church, meeting initially at the local Masonic lodge.

Good Catholics? I say....