PEACE ON EARTH

GOODWILL TOWARD ALL MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, BORN AND UNBORN

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

I stand corrected

Wuerl makes ten or eleven appearances at "his" Cathedral

Previously I objected to the sparsity of Archbishop citings in his own ostensible hood the Cathedral of Saint Matthews. After looking on the website I note that he hits about ten or eleven major holidays. But that is it and I don't think my point is diminished. He is a figurehead talking head, not a parish priest. He probably could not tell you the names of three daily mass goers at Saint Matthews. His policy focus has been overwhelmingly on suburban catholic elementary schools and he sent a few of the best priests out to administer them whether they wanted to or not be exhiled to the burbs.
McCarrick who speaks fluent Spanish established an enormous ministry for hispanics in the area who are overwhelmingly immigrant (some refugees from the earlier civil wars in places like guatemala and el salvador). He established a huge hispanic catholic center out in the suburbs. Each Archbishop has a particular focus. This one is big on Catholic schools in the suburbs.
These things are not intrinsically wrong, they just cause neglect of other areas and other parts of the body and create a distorted priority focus if one thing is sacrificed to satisfy another.
It also creates a lot of misery and unhappiness unnecessarily if a particular priest has skills and talents elsewhere and he is forced to be an administrator for a catholic school. This used to be in some quarters considered a stepping stone to Bishop if one does this well.

It leaves a vacuum of a bit of despondency in the city however where large numbers of people have nothing to do with catholic suburban schools, either because they are empty nesters who have returned to the city, they are single and childless, or they don't particularly want to send their kids to exclusively catholic schools for a variety of reasons.

We do need an Archbishop who is in tune with the downtown DC dwelling population. New Evangelism should start at home.
It is not everyone's American Dream to get a mortgage you have to pay for 30 years with a long traffic congested commute, mow the lawn and send your kids to catholic schools. Sorry.

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