The Vatican has reversed Bishop Leonnon’s clsureof several Cleveland parishes, including St.Peter’s.
Now the question is whether the Community of St Peter’s will become the Parish of St.Peter’s, losing most of its autonomy, but getting back a church building and canonical status.
I haven’t read the decisions of the Clergy yet, but I bet Lennon didn’t meet the grave reasons to close a church under canon 1222. I’m not sure about the procedural aspect. Did he fail to consult the presbyteral council? If the newspapers are getting this story are right, both the parish and church closings are being overturned.
At any rate, this is great. Lennon might try to fight these re-openings as did the Dioceses of Springfield (MA), Allentown and Syracuse. I’ve seen so many good parishes and churches wrecked by bad figures in the Church. Vatican II-style collegiality is being destroyed.
Last night I read two of the decisions handed down by the Clergy. Absolutely incredible. Lennon, a self-proclaimed canon law expert, did not follow canon law at all in the closing of the churches and parishes. The Clergy called his failure to follow the law “troubling.” In Lennon’s world there is now law. Decrees don’t need to be issued. Procedures don’t need to be followed (i.e., consultation of the presbyteral council) God help Chicago if Lennon gets transferred there as has been rumored.
Canon Law does not seem to be relative to Bishops .Canon Law only seems to be invoked on an as needed basis these days. Head of the CDF, Monsignore Charles Scicluna noted the same with regard to the pedophilia crisis.
“In particular, during the press conference he held after his speech at the Gregorian University symposium, the archbishop from Malta seemed to refer to canon law 128 from the Code of Canon Law (“Whoever illegitimately inflicts damage upon someone by a juridic act or by any other act placed with malice or negligence is obliged to repair the damage inflicted”); but in more general terms he stressed how bishops, as members of the clergy, are subject to the same punishments and rules that apply to priests. “It’s not a question of changing laws, it’s a question of applying what we have,” said Scicluna.”
Mary,
Such has been the situation for quite some time. American bishops always have been quite powerful. The version of collegiality after Vatican II ensured that bishops could do as much destruction as they wanted. Some of the most liberal bishops have been tyrannical (remember when Weakland blew off Vatican condemnation of his cathedral renovation plan?). Ecclesiastical politics is atrocious. The faith of many Catholics would be destroyed if they had any clue as to the strange and depraved things that go on in the Church. Malachi Martin’s tales are anything but fiction.
Alton, Fr Martin explained to me about the “nota expicita” that was largely ignored during the “Collegiality” takeover of the Papacy during Vat Two.
A PhD priest returning from studies at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross recently related to us that he would never consider the Diocesan priesthood because of the political nightmares involved. He also said that the Vatican is by far worse and that he was shocked by the number of seminarians he encountered there who were usually inebriated by noon.
I cannot count the number of former seminarians I have met who, have either left shortly after Ordination ,or exited the seminary due to being “disedified”.
I am neither a pessimist nor optimist . I am realist and the reality I see is that the visible institution is corrupt to the core. One cannot serve both God and mammon. The sifting is taking place. God’s Will be done.
Word is that nice cash from Chicago for Poland kept JPII happy with Bernardin in the midst of the sex abuse scandals in Chicago in the 80’s.
Mary H., amen to that. Except that I would say canon law is invoked selectively, as desired, not as needed, to speak literally, since the ones who need it rarely get the benefit.
Here’s the decision of the Clergy in the case of St. Patrick’s Parish in Cleveland:
http://media.cleveland.com/metro/other/StPats.pdf
I wonder how far the Clergy will go to enforce its decisions. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lennon sent in the wreckers to take down these churches.
Mary, Thankyou you did a better job of rephrasing what I was trying to express.
Alton,
The taking down wreckovation has been going along for many decades.Profiteering Prelates did a great job by selling off church properties to the Madison Avenue Folieri Group ,whose chief exec was Raphaelo Folieri. However, Sodano’s nephew who was employed by the Follieri Group as the “Vatican connection” got off free.
Jason Berry has done a good job covering the story.
“While functioning as Secretary of State under John Paul, Sodano helped set up his nephew with the now-imprisoned Raffaello Follieri, in a profiteering scheme to sell shuddered U.S. churches. The nephew, and two Vatican functionaries who were part of the scheme, are considered unindicted co-conspirators by the FBI agent who investigated their role. Lawler does cite Sodano and the Follieri case in his review, but misses the large point: these men are protected by the Vatican. An appreciation of apostolic succession is central to this point.”
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=833
Ahh yes, the Follieri group. My question is whom in the USA was being paid off for flipping these parish properties. Diocesan officials must’ve been paid off to help those in Rome make money off these closings.
Who’s making money on the abuse scandals besides Church lawyers as well as those for the victims? Church insurance companies? You gotta wonder.
I don’t wonder at all.
It’s not just canon law which is invoked only when it supports the hierarchy, it’s the whole idea of the role of the laity in light of VCII. The laity are pushed or claw their way into faux clerical roles when they sycophantically support the decadent episcopacy and their enablers but are ignored, marginalized and labelled backward when they point out the failures, errors and sleaze that characterizes most of the powers-that-be in the Church today.
Terra ……you are so right and it has been going on for decades. i am concerned about the new Dicastery for the New Evangelization given that all these masonically structured Movements are involved.
It is a know that Escriva envisioned a secularized Church thirty years before the Council.
“Answer
Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, anticipated and
Developed 30 years before Vatican II a revolutionary, new, secular theology of
the laity, and accepted the principle of pluralism and indifferentism: a Novus
Ordo Seclorum.”
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Catholics-955/Opus-Dei-1.htm