St. Stanislaus

Since many of you don't live in St. Louis you may not be familiar with the controversy going on over a Polish Catholic Church here. St. Stanislaus was founded by Polish Catholics in 1891 and has controlled their own property and finances since that time. They have done quite well without being under the control of the Catholic hierarchy but, there is a new Archbishop in town (can you here the Spaghetti Western music?).... He has decided that St. Stanislaus needs to be controlled by the Catholic Church and needs to turn all of their money and assets over, a total of about $9.2 million.

Needless to say, the parishioners feel differently. The board has fought the archbishop, because he really can't force them to turn over the assets. So, what does he do? He pulls their priest. That's okay. The parishioners fly in their own priest to celebrate Christmas mass. Now what would any self-respecting, power hungry archbishop do to get this church under control? Oh yeah! Threaten to withhold the sacraments and essentially excommunicate them if they don't "see the error of their ways and come back into the fold of the Catholic church." Well, the members took a vote and decided overwhelmingly to thumb their nose at the archbishop. It will be interesting to see how this power-play works out...

Money, power and property. I just wonder if the parishioners are seeing that there are better ways to be the church? Unfortunately, probably not.

Read about it here and here.