Current mood:	sympathetic
Entry tags:	burke, st stanislas kostka

The Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorilla Strikes Again
Now, let me get this straight:

If a Board member of a church -- declared to be not a Catholic Church by Archbishop Burke -- should also be declared to be not a Catholic, then this hurts him how? He still has a church to minister to his spiritual needs.

The Archbishop of St Louis (who has demonstrated repeatedly that the Roman Catholic Church is more interested in its greed than its charity) has excommunicated two more members of St Stanislas Kostka's lay board. In this fight over control of some $9 million worth of church property (which, by the way, has been raised over the course of a century by this Polish Catholic Church congregation without help from the Roman Catholic Church), Burke has
>> Appointed priests who spent the church's treasury nearly dry
.....The Lay Board voted to curtail the priests' authority to spend.
>> Removed those priests and refused to replace them
.....The Lay Board went out and hired their own priest, Rev. Marek Bozek.
>> Excommunicated all six members of the Board, as well as Rev. Bozek
.....who ignored the edict, continuing to celebrate Mass and minister to the parish.
>> Declared St Stanislas Kostka to be not a Roman Catholic parish
.....which should have ended the matter, as the Archbishop has surrendered any claim to authority over the parish.
>> Initiated proceedings to laicize Rev. Bozek
.....which he ignored, apparently feeling that his duty to God and his parish is more important than his duty to an Archbishop with an overlarge ego.
>> Excommunicated new Lay Board members who replaced retiring members
.....who will doubtless continue to be receive the Rev. Bozek's ministry.

Archbishop Burke is continuing a long tradition of the Catholic Church: assuming that the will of The Church is equivalent to the Will of God. What he is actually doing is proving that he -- and by extension, the Roman Catholic Church -- is irrelevant. His power exists only insofar as the people he ministers to permit. He is not a leader if the followers won't follow.

In the meantime, St Stanilas Kostka is doing quite well, thankyouverymuch. Its attendance is up -- way up, and in an age when "real" Catholic churches are mostly suffering from declining attendance.

Maybe ignoring greedy men in favor of serving God and the community is the right thing to do?