MASSACHUSETTS
MetroWest Daily News
By Arthur McCaffrey
Guest Columnist
Posted Dec. 7, 2014
Dear friends, I am writing to you as a victim. Usually I write to you as friend, or neighbor, or fellow parishioner. But now I am writing as a victim of plunder and pillage because my home has been raided.
I don’t mean my home home, the place where I sleep and struggle with marriage and children and taxes, and having to take out the trash while NCIS is on. No, I mean my spiritual home: the place I go to get away from trash and taxes, the place where I think deep thoughts, wonder about my place in the universe, resolve to treat my family better, be a better person, and even pray for my boss to change his ways. I am of course talking about my personal oasis in Wellesley, my refuge from the daily assaults of life, the church of St. James the Great, out there on Route 9, 02482.
During the last 10 years, I have often written about this home in these pages, because certain forces have been conspiring to take my home away from me – bishops, cardinals, the Vatican, even the prelate who was just demoted by Pope Francis – Cardinal Ray Burke of St Louis – no, not a famous Bruins hockey player, but a tough opponent nonetheless who should have been whistled into the sin-bin long ago for unnecessary roughness. This guy has been the Supreme Court Justice on the Vatican Supreme Court (“Signatura”) during all the years that it was hearing the appeals from us parishioners in 02482 to have the Vatican stop our local cardinal, Sean O’Malley, from closing our patrimony and heritage, our beloved home-parish of St. James.
Long, long ago in 2004, in a Chancery far, far away, our newly appointed, tentative leader Sean O’Malley took bad advice from escapist Cardinal Bernard Law and his handlers that the only way to pay for all the excesses (spiritual, criminal, financial) of employees (priests) gone over to the dark side, was to close churches and use their property as an ATM to pay for the sins of the fathers. Well, on planet 02482, we thought differently, and spent the next 10 years trying to prove a negative – bad policy should be opposed by good remedies. We lost. Even though by 2011 the Archdiocese was admitting to the press that “closing parishes didn’t work,” so their latest buzzword was parish “mergers” instead of “closures.” Sadly, even the Peter principle applies in the Vatican (no, we don’t mean St Peter!), so O’Malley has become the go-to American guy for Pope Francis – which just goes to prove, better an ex-pat prophet than a bum rap in Boston.
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