Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [67]
Peter Borré and Cynthia Deysher formed the Council of Parishes on October 14, 2004, with seven churches in vigil, asking “the process of closing parishes to be suspended; for closing decrees to be revoked; and to cooperate with Archbishop O’Malley in addressing archdiocesan concerns.” Doris Giardiello, who had spent sixty of her seventy-five years at St. Therese church, slept on the altar in her beige winter coat.56 Harking back to sit-in protests of the Southern civil rights era, Boston’s vigil members, with their pillows, sleeping bags, and cell phones, put their sacred spaces in conflict with the archbishop.
AGONY OF AN ARCHBISHOP
“I have a plan,” Archbishop O’Malley had told Bowers on the phone.
As before, Borré drove his pastor to the chancery and waited outside, unwilling to sit in the foyer. Now, on a luminous autumn day, Mary Beth Borré’s beloved Red Sox were battling into the World Series and her candidate, Senator Kerry, was in a close race with President Bush. If the hard-luck Red Sox could do it, anything was possible. Borré was pleased when O’Malley appointed David Castaldi, a former chancellor of the archdiocese (and Harvard Business School classmate of Peter’s), to chair a Reconfiguration oversight committee. Lennon now faced two groups authorized by O’Malley.
Father Bowers sat opposite Archbishop O’Malley, who explained that he had decided to close all three churches in Charlestown and consolidate them into a single parish. “A fresh start,” said the prelate; however, it would require all three pastors to resign. Bowers did not want to resign, but he was wiped out emotionally and physically; he took heart that the archbishop had embraced his advisory group’s recommendation of a planned phaseout. “Did you get the other two pastors to resign?” Bowers wanted to know.
They had indeed agreed, O’Malley assured him.
The long process of trying to save the parish had left Bowers feeling like a piece of wood into which a screw has been driven so deeply as to make it split. His group had advocated a long transition guided by three pastors; this was the opposite. If I don’t resign, my parish closes, he brooded. If I do resign, all three pastors leave and one church will stay open. At least it creates a level field.
O’Malley promised that the parish would not close for at least a year, that whatever melding of congregations into a chosen church would be handled by the new pastor. Exhausted and dispirited, Bowers took it as the best deal he could get. The archbishop wanted him to leave within a week. Bowers needed more time, both to pack and to prepare his flock for a hard transition. O’Malley agreed.
Bowers approached the car, deep in thought. “How’d it go?” asked Borré.
“I think it went pretty well. Seán hugged me at the end of the meeting.”
Resisting the urge to bellow What the hell happened? Borré started the car, gently prodding for details. He felt a sinking disappointment at what he heard. Borré wanted St. Catherine of Siena to join the vigil protest. Bowers said the parishioners would have to decide for themselves. Borré’s disgruntlement rose on realizing that the force of fifty-eight priests who had signed a letter denouncing Law for concealing abusers would not carry into the realm of parishioners losing parishes. Law, after all, was gone. Bowers got the deeper message when he returned to sign the papers affirming the agreement. He asked O’Malley where he would go next as pastor. “You will not be a pastor for a very long time,” the prelate said gravely. “Many priests are angry with you.” It’s he who is angry with me, thought Bowers. He asked for a sabbatical and received it on the spot.
Lennon refused to answer questions for David Castaldi’s group and stood aloof from the Meade-Eisner inquiry. With people bedding down in pews of eight parishes, O’Malley’s reform