Day: April 30, 2011

Who owns St. Sabina parish anyway?

Fr. Pfleger’s executive assistant objects to the arrival at the St. Sabina rectory of the new priest.

“Can you just imagine somebody moving into your house that really was not invited by us,” said Kimberly Lymore, the Associate Minister at the Faith Community of St. Sabina.

She’s been misled. It’s not her house, nor the parish council’s. That matter was decided a long time ago, when “trusteeism” was squelched in the American church by Rome.

Trusteeism controversy

ca. 18151840

In its infancy, the Catholic Church in America relied on the initiative and benevolence of laypeople to an extraordinary degree. Lacking priests, many early parishes were established and managed by laity. As the nation grew and the clerical personnel of the Church increased, priests and bishops sought to standardize the Church’s organization in accord with canon law and common practice. The result in some localities was tensionand sometimes hostilitybetween pastors and bishops on one side and lay trustees on the other. Significant battles over control of parishes occurred at St. Mary’s in Philadelphia and in New York, among other places.

Indeed, there is little new under the sun when it comes to the Roman church, periodic clerical chutzpah notwithstanding.

Pfleger to Leo? You’re kidding

What part of the Pfleger resume led Cardinal George to think he would make a good president of Leo Catholic HS? The church is a depository and guardian of deep mysteries. This is not one of them, but for passing attention it qualifies.

Leo High, named after Pope Leo XIII, friend of the working man, opened in 1926, the father school of two other Irish Christian Brothers-run operations. But unlike Jesuits, Dominicans, Carmelites and others, the Brothers neither founded nor funded it. The Brothers run diocesan schools, as did and do the De La Salle (French-origin) Brothers, who have “D” and St. Pat’s if not others. So the archdiocesan CEO has a say in who’s president. Question is, why Pfleger?

I am bothered intensely by the apparent answer to that question, namely to provide a dumping ground for Fr. P., one he presumably (bad assessment of situation here) could not refuse, when faced with such brilliant (not) Machiavellian strategy.

Is there another CEO in the Chicago area or state or nation who would name Fr. P. among the thousand, nay ten thousand potential high-school presidents, worthy of consideration to fill the next opening? No, he would not be in the running for that or any other educational leadership post.

Not to say I have a brilliant strategy of my own. I just know a bad one when I see it.