Good Bye, And Thanks For...Something Or Other

He started his Charlotte career in 1974 as the first priest ordained in the brand new Catholic diocese here. He ends it this month as pastor of St. Matthew, the largest Catholic parish in the United States.

At 75, Monsignor John McSweeney will soon leave affluent Ballantyne – where this parish named for the patron saint of bankers was built – and move to Jamaica or Haiti, where he hopes to spend his retirement years living with and ministering to the poorest of the poor.

“I’m going to try to walk in the sandals of the Lord,” he says.

Sounds like a great guy, huh? Read on....

Echoing Pope Francis – the fifth pontiff to reign during McSweeney’s time as a priest – he’d like the church and the diocese to be more about hospitality and less about judgment. That means, he said, being more welcoming: Of divorced-and-remarried Catholics, of LGBTQ persons, and of others who have long felt excluded by the church.

With too few diocesan priests, including in Charlotte, where the Catholic population is booming, McSweeney said he’d also support the church re-opening the door to married priests by making celibacy optional – as it was the first 1,000 years of Roman Catholicism.

And...

McSweeney said he’s also “very concerned” that many of the priests graduating from seminaries these days are too conservative and could spur a revolt by Catholics in the pews against the priests’ efforts to stifle the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Also known as Vatican II, this council in the 1960s embraced church reform, including expanding the role for lay Catholics and celebrating the Mass in the local language more so than in Latin.

Because Vatican II has done wonders for Church participation.