Parishioners of Closed Scituate and Quincy Churches Say Fight Is Not Over It s Going to Be Catholics in Handcuffs, Jennifer Mann, The Patriot Ledger , May 18, 2010

Parishioners of Closed Scituate and Quincy Churches Say Fight Is Not Over: "It's Going to Be Catholics in Handcuffs"

By Jennifer Mann
The Patriot Ledger
May 18, 2010

http://www.patriotledger.com/news/state_news/x1070012725/Parishioners-of-closed-Scituate-and-Quincy-churches-say-fight-is-not-over-Its-going-to-be-Catholics-in-handcuffs

A parishioner arrives for a at a service Sunday commemorating the fifth anniversary of the vigil at St. Frances Cabrini Church in Scituate.
Photo by GARY HIGGINS/The Patriot Ledger

SCITUATE — Parishioners of St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate say they’re ready to be taken away in handcuffs before ending the around-the-clock vigil they have held there since 2004.

“It’s going to be Catholics in handcuffs, but it’s going to be peaceful,” the group’s spokesman, Jon Rogers, said Monday after a ruling by the Vatican’s highest court that Cabrini would remain closed. “I feel bad for the local authorities who are going to have to arrest us. The blame squarely falls on the shoulders of the archdiocese.”

The rejection by the full college of the Apostolic Signatura was widely expected by parishioners of the 10 churches for which appeals were filed. In addition to the Scituate church, which is one of three occupied by parishioners in vigil, Star of the Sea Church in the Squantum section of Quincy was also appealing its closing.

Star of the Sea reopened in July 2005 as a chapel of Sacred Heart Church in North Quincy, but it has only one Mass a week, and it no longer can hold funerals, baptisms or weddings.

Both groups of parishioners are considering new ways to fight the closings, their spokesmen said.

Maureen Mazrimas, a chairwoman of the Friends of the Star of the Sea, said she doesn’t expect the Vatican’s decision to affect Star of the Sea’s status as a chapel.

Her group, however, believes the intent of the Meade-Eisner Reconfiguration Review Committee, an eight-person committee that the archdiocese had review its recommended closings, was to have the Quincy church restored to full parish status, while sharing a pastor with another church in a practice called “twinning.”

She said the model has been used with the Infant Jesus-Saint Lawrence in Brookline, which also appealed its closing, allowing that parish community to maintain all its programs and hold weddings, funerals and baptisms.

“In some respects, it’s very shortsighted of the archdiocese to have the doors open, but not have people very involved,” she said.

The 10 appeals were heard in a closed-door meeting of the Apostolic Signatura on May 7.

The Council of Parishes, which formed in 2004 to support churches scheduled to close, announced the Vatican’s decision Monday after hearing from Carlo Gullo, the canon lawyer who represented parishioners in their appeals.

The Boston archdiocese released a statement delaying comment until formal notice of the decision is received from the Vatican.

“The Archdiocese continues to seek a prayerful resolution to all of the vigils,” the statement reads.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley has repeatedly said he would wait for the canon law appeals process to play out before deciding his next move on the vigils. His spokesman, Terrence Donilon, recently said there is no intention to forcibly remove protesting parishioners.

Peter Borre, chairman of the Council of Parishes, said the next possibility for appeal would be to challenge how the church buildings can be used, and to whom they can be sold, by appealing the “relegation to profane use,” which is the process of transforming the churches to nonsacred ground.

“This is not the end of the story, and that’s not an idle statement,” he said.

More than 60 churches were closed by the archdiocese in 2004 as part of a cost-cutting reconfiguration plan that was intended to deal with a drop in attendance, a priest shortage and financial problems amid the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

The spokesmen for both the Quincy and Scituate lay groups said they have tried to offer the archdiocese other cost-saving alternatives. Mazrimas said her group suggested using the rectory for retired priests or renting it out to other groups. Rogers said his group has offered to buy their church.

“There’s an open invitation to sit across the table from each other and work out a fair and equitable solution,” Rogers said. “Stealing our church is not a fair and equitable solution.”

Jennifer Mann is at jmann@ledger.com