Saturday, January 17, 2009

Like we had a choice

In this week's online Along the Way column Bishop Clark gives us his impressions of the multi-choir Christmas concert held at Sacred Heart Cathedral last Sunday.

Toward the end the bishop remarks,

we are blessed by the generosity of the people of our diocese which made possible the renovation of our cathedral.

Generosity? Well, that's certainly true. The Partners In Faith campaign that raised the money was voluntary, even though many pastors - mine included - badgered their flocks until their parishes' goals were met.

But the sensible thing would have been to let the cathedral revert back to a parish church and to designate one of the large, suburban churches as the new cathedral.

That's what the Priest Council originally wanted to do and it would have cost considerably less than the $11 million we spent on Sacred Heart.

But we weren't given that option.  Indeed, we were never even told that most of our priests favored it.

So now we have this monument to Bishop Clark's obstinacy - and our generosity.

It's too bad that hardly anyone attends Mass there, but it's a great place to hold a concert.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What wasn't voluntary was the Partners in Faith campaign holding parish projects hostage and tying the cathedral renovations to them. In the case of Holy Trinity, we could only donate to phase 1 of the Life Center(phase 2 was the infamous gym that opened as the diocese closed the school) through the Partners in Faith campaign, of which half the donations were confiscated for the cathedral renovation.

Mike Shea said...

Anon. 1:01,

PIF wasn't just for the cathedral renovation. Don't forget the new St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry building in Pittsford, a.k.a., the French Road Heresy Factory.

Whatever the bishop wants the bishop gets.