AmericanPapist Comments
Father Marco! Woo!
Anyone know of a T-shirt I can purchase that says something like:
BXVI: My German Shepard
?
Thanks
With Burke gone, there is real hope for reconciliation.
actually, all of these reconciliations took place with burke, but were only announced now.
The issue is the full reconcilation of the parish with the Archdiocese, which is yet to happen and for which we pray.
I agree with that.
How was Burke a barrier to reconciliation? It seems renouncing the Catholic Church, hiring your own (excommunicated) priest, rejecting the Church's teachings, and refusing to abide by previously agreed to bylaws, while defying several archbishops in a row places a rather heavy burden on the folks at St. Stan's.
Katherine doesn't like orthodox bishops, if you haven't figured that out yet. That's why in her mind Archbishop Burke was a barrier to reconciliation.
Most clear thinking individuals would see that it's the parishioners' pride that is the true barrier.
Many would say he took a ham-fisted approach. While a judge seeks to determine who is right and who is wrong, a pastor seeks unity, love and harmony.
St. Stan's practice of trusteeship was a perfectly canonical option at the time the parish was founded. As particular canon law evolved (this is not a matter of universal law) and trusteeship was no longer permited for newly founded parishes, it was 'grandfathered' in unless the local bishop objected. At first the bishops allowed St. Stan's to continue under trusteeship. Then bishops began trying to work with them to bring them into comformity with the more modern means of ownership of the church's temporal goods.
Burke, unlike those before him, was impatient. Certainly in the parish there were concilatory people and hot-heads. I don't defend the hot-heads. However, I totally understand the moderates and I would have done the same as they did -- walk away leaving the hot-heads in the majority. Burke never accepted the difficult position the moderates were in. He was expecting them to sign over $9 million to his personal control with no assurance from him that the Archdiocese would protect them from lawsuits that they had not followed their fiduicary duty. Faced with the choice of either defying the Archbishop or risking expensive lawsuits, they walked away, leaving the more strident parish members in control.
A wiser, more pastoral Archbishop would have handled this differently. There was no immediate need to bring end trusteeship at St. Stan's; thousands of parishes are incorporated this way today (including all of Quebec).
Many would say Archbishop Burke was a wonderful bishop who brought many, many blessings to the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, Katherine.
everyone is allowed their say
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