I think you misquoted. “two or more” is more correct.
Oddly, my aunt in Wheeling, West (by God!) Virginia is complaining about the same thing. They closed her parish so she went to the next-nearest parish she liked. She was told she ought to go to another parish.
She told them to shove it.
The Wikipedia article linked in the previous post states that the deed to the church belongs to the parish corporation, not the archdiocese.
I would respectfully ask that you and your mother leave Catholicism altogether.
It’s a false religion. In brief, Catholicism is merely the bastard child of the old Roman pagan religions. The pagan religion did not really pass away in the 5th Century, it was more or less merged with Christianity.
There is nothing in the Bible that states that a leader of a church cannot be married and have children. Nothing. As a matter of fact, Peter, to whom the Catholic Church calls the first pope was actually married. Because of the celibacy requirements, you are now seeing the sexual problems of a lot of the priests WORLDWIDE.
If she is interested in Christianity, she needs to read her Bible at home, and believe on that alone. If she reads the Bible, instead of doctrines of mankind, she might find that the Catholic Church is a bunch of phony baloney tainted by evil and a lot of blood.
She can start here: http://www.eaec.org/html_bible/B54C004.htm#V1
I would also advise her to just avoid churches. Read the Bible everyday. Pray. Let her seek God.
Excuse me, but why do you think that 5th century paganism was a direct influence on a 12th century legality? There were 7 centuries in between, if I remember my math.
(The recommendation of celibacy for priests comes from the Lateran Council, 1123, and became a rule during the Council of Trent, 1545-1563)
It sounds like this is the root of the problem. He told them to work it out for themselves and the people of St. Pete’s did - only not the way he expected. Now he’s acting like a bad teacher who’s been outsmarted by his students, being pissed off and feeling threatened when he should be applauding their creativity. They did a good thing; they made their parish self-supporting. A good leader would work with that.
A bad leader would get pissed off and feel his authority eroding. It was bad leadership in the first place to issue that “work it out for yourself” directive if instead he wanted everyone to toe the line. Instead he tried to weasel out of being the bad guy where a better leader would have made the straightforward argument “we can’t afford this” and the situation would have been understood (albeit unhappily.)
Captain Midnight, I am not a Catholic, but if it is a false religion, then so are all the rest of the Christian religions, It was Constantine who had the Bishops gather and select what writings were inspired and what were not. The creed for being Christian was written at that time or there abouts,and most of who were called Christians followed that creed, “I believe in the holy catholic church” was part of being a Christian. So if the Catholic church is a false religion then so are all Christian religions!
The Othodox and Romans split in 1,000. Martin Luther was a Catholic priest and split from the Roman church,then there was many splinter churches from that. The Bible writings that most religions use was decided by the Bishops in about 325 AD.
I have watched the Cleveland closings from a distance here, living in the 'burbs as I do, and though I haven’t researched things as closely as many of you, it seemed that a lot of churches that were told to close had active community outreach programs that benefited the poor and the children in their neighborhoods, regardless of their religious affiliation. I have long grumbled under my breath, when hearing the uproar from these Catholics about the loss of these services to the community, that they should just break away and continue doing the good works under a non-denominational umbrella. If they were raising enough money as a parish to support these programs without aid from the diocese, and they were truly committed to providing these programs, and the diocese wasn’t interested in continuing them on their own, then I felt they were overlooking a very painful, but logical step. But then, I’m a Protestant whose mom was excommunicated from the church back in the 40’s, so maybe I just have a different mindset! Glad to hear at least one parish is trying to do this.
Interesting. I wonder how many other parishes around the country have the same arrangement and what was the history behind that one? That is outside church norms and I wonder whether it had anything to do with the fact that it was being built for an immigrant community.
Just wanted to thank you for doing the Lord’s work and spreading the good news. Made my morning.
Actually, nothing prevented the merged parishes from continuing the same efforts even while staying in the church. They would actually be free to spend more money on outreach since their operational costs would have gone down. (For the most part, that is how those parishes that accepted the mergers have proceeded.)
Whether one wants to attribute it to spiritual or emotional bonds, it will be pretty rare for a large number of Catholics to simply stop being Catholic while turning to another denomination. Even groups such as the Old Polish National churches, (who have been in schism for over 125 years), and the Pius X crowd would still consider themselves “Catholic.”
Except that in the case of St. Stanislaus’s, it wasn’t. The parish owned their building. The archdiocese tried to force them to deed it over to the archdiocese, in the middle of the squabble, but in point of fact title to the property did lie with the parish. (An oddball exception to the general rule in Catholic parishes, to be sure – but this is the SDMB; fighting ignorance generally may be taking longer than we thought, but we’re fast with the nitpicks! :))
But see, you’re looking at it from a Protestant perspective, where you consider the Bible to be the source of knowledge about your religion. Someone who’s Catholic doesn’t start with that premise - the Church is just as authoritative as the Bible, and the Church said priests aren’t supposed to marry. They see it as Jesus handing off the reins of leading the Church to Peter, who handed it off to the next Pope, on down the line to the current Pope, in an unbroken succession. You can’t convince a Catholic of anything using the argument that something’s not to be found in the Bible.
I agree:
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
— Isaac Asimov
It should be noted here that, while celibacy for priests is indeed a rule in the Catholic Church, it’s not a fundamental rule, and there are in fact a handful of legitimately-married, legitimate Catholic priests.
AFAIK, not ones who started as Catholic priests. I.e., there are married priests who became Catholic and stayed married, but there are no priests who were ordained in the RCC and then were also allowed to marry and stay as priests in the RCC.
Well, I would say so, but the story goes that Pope Sixtus IV threatened excommunication for anyone who didn’t return books on time to the Vatican Library. You’ll have to decide for yourself if that was taking a nuke to a housefly.
Cecil on excommunication: How do I go about getting excommunicated? - The Straight Dope
Incidentally…
Coming from Pseudotriton ruber ruber, I’m not quite sure how to interpret that.
The Eastern Catholic Churches recognize Papal authority, but follow the same custom policy on clerical marriage as the Orthodox Churches. Priests cannot marry, but married men can be ordained as priest (ie if they want a wife they have to take time-off from seminary to find one). He cannot remarry if his wife dies. Married priests are prefered for parish duty (so that they can serve as a “model” for the couples in their parish & can better give marital advice), but bishops are drawn from the ranks of monastics (who never married) and the occasional widower.
My mother’s church in rural Minnesota faced a similar financial/priest shortage* situation a few years ago.
But they came up with a solution that seems much better.
Five parishes (within about 25 miles) now share 3 priests. Masses are scheduled so priests can travel on Sundays to cover all the parishes. And they can easily cover for a sick or vacationing priest. And after a couple of years, the parishes chose to go to a combined Sunday Bulletin, with common stuff and then a page or half-page for each parish (much reduced printing costs). And they have combined some activities (youth trips, combined choir concert, etc.). I understand they have also coordinated some backstage activities, like joint purchasing of supplies, etc.
It seems to have worked well for them. In the smaller parishes, they are only really ‘open’ 2-3 days per week. Savings on heating & other maintenance costs has really helped their budget. But the biggest cost was the priest, and a parsonage for him to live in. By sharing the 3 priests salaries & living expenses, the parishes save a lot of money.
And by not closing any of the parishes, none of the congregations was upset. Elderly people (a big part of some of the smaller parishes) did not have to travel to a different parish, especially problematic during Minnesota winters.
Seems like a much better solution than the one this bishop tried to force on his parishes.
*Mother gets upset when I say it, but a shortage of priests seem inevitable when the church starts out eliminating half of the population from consideration (women), and then forces the remaining half to suppress their inherent biological drive for reproduction to apply for the job.
I assume Mother is a biologist, and is shocked at your apparent belief that there is a genetic marker somewhere for priesthood.