St Stanislaus Kostka East?
Well, not yet. And, hopefully, not ever. But still...
The story thus far:
Rev. Justinian B. Rweyemamu, a priest at St Bernard's Church in Rockville, Connecticut, was running a charity on the side that was intended to provide aid for his native village in Tanzania. People raised questions about Rev. Rweyemamu's management of the charity, and his bishop, the Most Rev. Michael Cote, tried to inquire about the issue. Rev. Rweyemamu refused to answer Bishop Cote's questions, claiming that he was the victim of racism. Disobeying one's bishop is a big no-no when you've taken a vow of obedience, so Rev. Rweyemamu was removed from his position as parochial vicar at St Bernard's. He continues to refuse to meet with the bishop, or to hand over various documents to the diocese.
Many members of the parish are up in arms. There have been two op-eds in the local newspaper by parishioners who support Rev. Rweyemamu that are very critical of the bishop. There was also a meeting of the parish at which Bishop Cote spoke, and met harsh criticism from members of the parish.
There are many reasons to think we don't have another St Stanislaus on our hands. The rests of the priests of the parish, and - more importantly - the laypeople running the parish council, seem to be supportive of the bishop. There also isn't the complicated ownership/control issue that's making the St Stanislaus controversy possible. So, no, I don't worry that anyone's going to need to bust out the Big Stick of Interdict any time soon.
That said, this story does seem to fit in to a disturbing trend. There's St Stanislaus. There's St Bernard's. There's the thing in Boston, which Domenico Bettinelli comments on here, on which former members of some of the closed parishes are camping out in their churches and having "Communion ceremonies" led by deacons. There's a creeping Protestantism haunting the American branch of the Church: people giving the finger to their bishops, and to the Body of Christ as a whole; people deciding they can do without the Blessed Sacrament; people deciding that all that really matters is "community" (i.e., their parish) and their "personal relationship with God" or their "faith" or whatever. Ugh. Some bad ideas never seem to go away.
Of course, the bishops exposed themselves to a lot of this through their spectacularly bad handling of the molestation crisis. It's a lot easier for people to argue that we don't need to be obedient to the bishops when they can point to specific, and egregious, examples of episcopal bungling. Of course, there's no logic in saying "because Cardinal Law was obscenely lenient with child molesters, therefore Bishop Cote has no right to inquire into the charity Rev. Rweyemamu runs," but since when have people been driven by logic?
There's also the issue of race: though I think, clearly, that Rev. Rweyemamu has the obligation to obey his superior, and that he's therefore being rightly disciplined, I will not dismiss out-of-hand the possibility that race, and racism, had something to do with the underlying accusations. I don't know if they are or not, and we'll probably never know without a real investigation (which is of course impossible without the cooperation of Rev. Rweyemamu). The race issue is going to be a bigger and bigger issue in the coming years, as the supply of American-born priests continues to dwindle and we have to start importing priests from places - Latin America, India, Africa, the Philippines - that are still producing them. Foreign-born priests are going to become less and less the exception, and more and more the rule, in more and more parishes in this country. We'd better get used to priests with dark complexions and, perhaps, an imperfect grasp of English, 'cause that's what's coming. This means the dioceses, too: they'd better start thinking of the Dravidian and Guatemalan priests as indistinguishable from native-born ones, up for the same promotions and assignments, 'cause if they don't, we'll be in for big problems.
The story thus far:
Rev. Justinian B. Rweyemamu, a priest at St Bernard's Church in Rockville, Connecticut, was running a charity on the side that was intended to provide aid for his native village in Tanzania. People raised questions about Rev. Rweyemamu's management of the charity, and his bishop, the Most Rev. Michael Cote, tried to inquire about the issue. Rev. Rweyemamu refused to answer Bishop Cote's questions, claiming that he was the victim of racism. Disobeying one's bishop is a big no-no when you've taken a vow of obedience, so Rev. Rweyemamu was removed from his position as parochial vicar at St Bernard's. He continues to refuse to meet with the bishop, or to hand over various documents to the diocese.
Many members of the parish are up in arms. There have been two op-eds in the local newspaper by parishioners who support Rev. Rweyemamu that are very critical of the bishop. There was also a meeting of the parish at which Bishop Cote spoke, and met harsh criticism from members of the parish.
There are many reasons to think we don't have another St Stanislaus on our hands. The rests of the priests of the parish, and - more importantly - the laypeople running the parish council, seem to be supportive of the bishop. There also isn't the complicated ownership/control issue that's making the St Stanislaus controversy possible. So, no, I don't worry that anyone's going to need to bust out the Big Stick of Interdict any time soon.
That said, this story does seem to fit in to a disturbing trend. There's St Stanislaus. There's St Bernard's. There's the thing in Boston, which Domenico Bettinelli comments on here, on which former members of some of the closed parishes are camping out in their churches and having "Communion ceremonies" led by deacons. There's a creeping Protestantism haunting the American branch of the Church: people giving the finger to their bishops, and to the Body of Christ as a whole; people deciding they can do without the Blessed Sacrament; people deciding that all that really matters is "community" (i.e., their parish) and their "personal relationship with God" or their "faith" or whatever. Ugh. Some bad ideas never seem to go away.
Of course, the bishops exposed themselves to a lot of this through their spectacularly bad handling of the molestation crisis. It's a lot easier for people to argue that we don't need to be obedient to the bishops when they can point to specific, and egregious, examples of episcopal bungling. Of course, there's no logic in saying "because Cardinal Law was obscenely lenient with child molesters, therefore Bishop Cote has no right to inquire into the charity Rev. Rweyemamu runs," but since when have people been driven by logic?
There's also the issue of race: though I think, clearly, that Rev. Rweyemamu has the obligation to obey his superior, and that he's therefore being rightly disciplined, I will not dismiss out-of-hand the possibility that race, and racism, had something to do with the underlying accusations. I don't know if they are or not, and we'll probably never know without a real investigation (which is of course impossible without the cooperation of Rev. Rweyemamu). The race issue is going to be a bigger and bigger issue in the coming years, as the supply of American-born priests continues to dwindle and we have to start importing priests from places - Latin America, India, Africa, the Philippines - that are still producing them. Foreign-born priests are going to become less and less the exception, and more and more the rule, in more and more parishes in this country. We'd better get used to priests with dark complexions and, perhaps, an imperfect grasp of English, 'cause that's what's coming. This means the dioceses, too: they'd better start thinking of the Dravidian and Guatemalan priests as indistinguishable from native-born ones, up for the same promotions and assignments, 'cause if they don't, we'll be in for big problems.
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