There’s an epic comment thread over at the SavingOurParish blog. It puts a light on the situation so many of us face in the DOR and the tug and pull between “should I stay or should I go?” and “is there something I can do about all this nonsense?”
It starts off with an anonymous poster deriding those who have left the parish. Another anonymous poster followed w/ this:
If you are comfortable to sit in the pews at All Saints and support the current leadership, good for you. We are all being called to help bring about the change that is so desperately needed. Perhaps my absense will bring about a greater good than your presence or vice-versa. My teen-aged children and their faith formation is my number one priority. If we are required to drive 10 miles up the road to provide them with an experience that they will embrace, I will do it. I will drive much further if necessary. The spiritual crisis in this parish is much bigger than the possible loss of Saint Vincent’s; I am more troubled about the diminishing presence of the Catholic in our faith.
I totally sympathize with this view. Sometimes I consider staying close to home to go to mass instead of hauling the family downtown. Is it really worth it? Wouldn’t it be nice to work to build a more local community. Then I realize that when I baptized my children, I promised to raise them as Catholics, not as Moralistic Therapeutic Deists.
Susan says later on:
Regarding the request for more money, parish leadership should provide some basic info first. Let’s see last year’s financial statement. What is the plan going forward? Providence Housing did not apply for funding last month, and their next chance to apply is next February. Why hasn’t this been announced? How can we possibly consider not cutting positions, or at least reducing hours to part-time? People in surrounding parishes are amazed at the size of our staff.
Demoralize people and destroy their churches. Yep, that’s a recipe for successful fund-raising.
Another anon
If you were a parent, would you take your children to a day-care provider if you had doubts about the care they were receiving? Or to a doctor that people were constantly complaining about? Why do some people have this loyalty thing with the Church; believing we stick together and stand by, no matter what? We are a universal Church. What a beautiful gift to have wonderful options for worshipping. I WILL NOT subject my children to the current policies, politics and failings of our local parish. It is my responsibility to ensure that they receive the best faith formation I can provide and it is not here. I have too many unanswered questions, in particular with the youth leadership.
and another Anon:
As others have said, we could pack the churches and everyone tithe, and they would still shut our churches down and implement their vision.
and another:
To the parishioner who sent the accusatory e-mail, I would say that I have felt the same way that you do. There have been times when I wondered “who are these insane, unknown, un-Christ-like people who say all of these horrible things about our church leadership?” But then I started hearing troubling things from people that I know and that I respect, who are very involved in the parish activites, I saw that both sides were telling the same things. The truth. Some people are a little more charitable and more gentle but, in the end, we are all saying that we need a new leader. In fact, even when people protest about the comments on this blog, they criticize the brutality of the comments but they never state, or attempt to prove, that they are not true. What does that tell you? If the truth is damning, sometimes it can’t be sugarcoated, it just needs to be told.
This comment thread pretty much sums up what life is like in the Diocese of Rochester. If you’re like me, it also sums up your inner turmoil. If you’d have told me 5 years ago, I’d be contributing to a blog “Defending Truth and Tradition in the Lay-run Diocese of Rochester”, I’d have said you were nuts.
Disclaimer: I just picked these comments because I found them interesting. I’m certainly not advocating that everyone should leave their parishes. If your situation allows you to do so, to stay and fight is certainly a noble cause.
Tags: Diocese of Rochester
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Our Lady of Victory/St. Joseph.
To go or to stay is a personal or family decision. I can find no fault in a decision one way or the other. But, if you object to what is going on in the parish and elect to stay then I think you are obligated to fight (speak up, write letters, become a thorn).
Also -and few will agree with me on this- if you stay you are obligated to continue your full financial contibution. This is a change in my opinion since we were last confronted with a decision to stay or leave. It turned out in that instance that we didn’t stay at that parish but the plan was to reduce our contribution to a minimum if we did. But my opinion now is if you are going to stay, then you should ‘stay.’
And if you stay and contribute, set up some kind of deal with the pastor that you can give money to your parish directly that won’t be counted as part of the weekly collection, thereby subject to the diocesan “tax”. That way you can support your church without supporting all the goofiness on Buffalo Rd.
Or do what some parishes do – start a total separate entity (you’ll need a lawyer to do this) called “The Friends of “fill-in-the-name-of-the-parish”. Your board of directors will have control over the money and can pay whatever bills or donate whatever money they want to said parish.
Thank you Choir. Thank you Anonymous.
I am new to cleansingfire, I am speechless for the things that are going on,in the DOR.
I do not feel that I belong to a Roman Catholic Church.
Will we be heard by writing to Rome expressing our concerns?
Meanwhile I will continue praying.
Thank you for your wonderful and hard work.
The countdown is great.
It certainly can’t hurt.
Fr. Hardon stated, “according to my Vatican superiors, unless the laity do something, one diocese after another will be lost”
Ok,I shall.
I’ll encourage others to do so.
I would also like to thank CleansingFire for all the diocesan information posted, as well as the links to SavingOurParish blog. It has been quite an education for me over the past few months, sometimes depressing, but wonderful to find that so many others are concerned and working for change.