Don’t touch that steeple!

The Vatican has a position on closing churches:

Three years [after her parish church in Minersville PA
was shuttered], [Marie] Lutkus and parishioners at eight other shuttered churches in Pennsylvania‘s Allentown diocese have persuaded a Vatican panel to overturn the bishop’s decision to close them down an exceedingly rare reversal that experts say may signal a policy shift on U.S. church closures.

“This is a thunderclap. I am absolutely floored,” said Charles Wilson, executive director of the Saint Joseph Foundation, a San Antonio, Texas-based group that helps Catholic laity navigate church law.

What else?

In a series of decisions that parishioner groups began receiving in January, the Congregation for the Clergy the Vatican office in charge of the world’s 400,000 Catholic priests said the bishop had failed to come up with a “grave reason” for shuttering the churches as required by Catholic law. The panel ruled that parishioners must be allowed to use the padlocked buildings for worship.

“It does not bring the parish back to life, but it puts on the table what could be a workable compromise: to physically re-open the locked-up church as a Catholic place of worship,” said prominent Catholic activist Peter Borre of the Council of Parishes, which has spent years appealing church closures in the Boston area.

They can start with Bible services and maybe persuade a priest to come and offer the holy sacrifice. Who knows?

They also need a finance committee. volunteer maintenance, money, etc. Can it be done?