But... but... but Katherine told us Archbishop Burke was an impediment to reconciliation.

You mean she was wrong?

I'm so disillusioned!
Thomas | 07.29.08 - 6:17 pm | #

Thomas,

So all of this strum and drang for nothing? Burke is now saying that he will restore the status of things as they were on the day he became Archbishop (St. Stan's as a parish of the Archdiocese of St. Louis with a pastor appointed by the Archbishop and the temporal property of the Church held by the Lay Corporation according the to the original incorporation of the parish).

So Burke picks a fight. The hot-heads respond predictably. The moderates get out of the way so Burke and the parish hotheads can have it out. Lawsuits and excommunications fling around. Excomunications are withdrawn and there is a suggestion by the Archdiocese that they will agree to restore things as they were before Burke arrived.

Its a rough path to just get back to where we started from. It seems if the Archbishop had just not set things off in the begining, we could have avoided this whole mess.
Katherine | Homepage | 07.30.08 - 11:42 am | #

Excommunications were not "withdrawn." Instead, the excommunications ended. In other words, the conditions precedent that required the imposition of the excommunications no longer exist, thank God, for those individuals. To say that the excommunications were withdrawn makes it seem that they were issued mistakingly or embarrasingly and that the ordinary had to terminate them despite the fact that the conditions causing the excommunications still exist.
Paul Madrid | 07.30.08 - 7:40 pm | #

I'm sorry I mispoke, The excommunications ended. The inviduals in question have withdrawn from membership from St. Stans, restoring them to communion with the Archdiocese of St. Louis and leaving St. Stans in the control of the more strident element.

So much for reconciliation.
Katherine | Homepage | 07.30.08 - 8:17 pm | #