Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [153]
Nancy McGrath, a founder of Endangered Catholics, was nodding. Their group mounted continuing protests.
“If you get your foot in the door with a supplemental brief at Congregation for the Clergy,” said Borré, “make sure you do it as registered parishioners, not as a committee.” He traced the steps a case would travel in the Vatican labyrinth. “We are pushing up the caseload. Burke has issued a regulation that cases will not be screened by a panel of the Signatura, but by the secretary of the tribunal. Carlo Gullo, our superbly trained canonist, is up in arms; he considers this a gross violation. He will challenge this at the Council for Legislative Texts, which is like a Supreme Court for procedure in the Vatican.”
FutureChurch’s package on canonical appeals was on its website. As time passed, Sister Chris Schenk followed the increase in download patterns.
“Preserve every scrap of paper with postmarks,” Borré told them. He cited Bishop Skylstad’s position in the Spokane diocese bankruptcy proceeding; and the affidavit by canon lawyer Nicholas Cafardi. “Even if the title is held by the bishop, under canon law, Skylstad said in effect, ‘I am a trustee and it would be terrible if I took this property for my own.’ He said he did not own the parishes under canon law. But more than a few bishops are despotic.”
“We think church closures is a policy issue the Vatican needs to address. No human institution except the Boston Red Sox is entitled to eternal life.”
Only a few people chuckled. “But the notion of a vibrant, financially stable parish just thrown under the bus is wrong, and it’s where I’m making my stand. The leadership that emerged from the pews has largely been by women.”
Amid the experiences recounted of people with the poker-faced bishop, a lady said, “You shouldn’t have to work this hard to be a practicing Catholic!”
Of the many parishes in the struggle, St. Peter on Superior Avenue downtown, catty-corner to the Plain Dealer newsroom, was a sturdy Gothic Revival church. It was also a model parish for a city confronting a cycle of decline. Founded by German immigrants in 1853, St. Peter had for generations been a church school. As people moved away from the old urban core, the parish lost membership, and as the population flow to suburbs accelerated, the school closed. As the downtown area grew more commercial by day, the walking poverty increased by night. In 1991, a young pastor, Father Robert Marrone, oversaw a $300,000 renovation of the church thanks to resilient parishioners—some of whom pushed wheelbarrows of concrete to repave the floor.
Marrone’s eloquent sermons drew new followers. A liturgist who saw rare ceremonial potential in the large, shabby space, Marrone had the vaulted interior painted white, “revealing the simple elegance of the structure,” writes theologian Joan M. Nuth, “reminiscent of a Cistercian monastery chapel.”40 Pale Corinthian pillars stood in symmetry with the slender stained-glass windows. Marrone dispensed with padded kneelers and extraneous furniture to accentuate the altar as spiritual anchor of the large floor, particularly as the congregants walked in processions. The beauty of the space exuded a deep serenity. By the midnineties, St. Peter had seven hundred parishioners; most members drove in from the suburbs to the deserted downtown for the Sunday liturgies—attorneys, arborists, teachers, physicians, academics, and professionals whose generosity anchored outreach ministries, including one with a public school for tutoring, clothes, books, library assistance, and mentoring help for parents.
Lennon’s chessboard