Render Unto Rome by Jason Berry Read Free Book Online

bills to the archdiocese.” Hurley had children aged eleven and seven when the 2004 vigil began. She was well paid as an assistant to a corporate CEO. Four years later, sitting in a quiet pew of the once-bustling church, with a handful of women preparing for a Council of Parishes gathering, Hurley cited an independent contractor’s study which concluded that St. James was the parish best suited for growth in its geographic cluster. “We determined that no church in the cluster should close. It’s like being voted off the island in Survivor ,” she said. “This parish sits on land donated by the Maffei family. They paid $25,000 for the marble altar. Kay Maffei, ninety-two, went to court. She wanted to keep the church open.”
    The state’s Supreme Judicial Court denied standing for the case.
    For O’Malley, the cost of defending the archdiocese in legal challenges was another expense layered into the protracted dispute. The chancery had to keep utilities working to maintain insurance; drawing down the cash reserves in a given parish, while the parish no longer paid an assessment, meant losing money at both ends.
    In lieu of Sunday Mass, the parish had Communion services for which sympathetic priests in open parishes provided them consecrated wafers. “I am a lapsed Catholic,” Hurley reflected one chilly night with Christmas three weeks off. “I feel attached to this place ”—she gestured toward the stained-glass windows. “I had been a lector at Mass, but it wasn’t until this parish that I heard the words differently, and it gave me a sense of ownership about faith. I’ve become jaded. My kids are well past their First Communion. I listened to my son ask, ‘What’s a pedophile?’ I’m not concerned about something happening to my children, but I could not ask them to look up to me if I ran from this church. My father-in-law goes to Mass at his church, then comes to our vigil. I consider these services as legitimate as the Mass. I was hurt by the injustice of the Reconfiguration process. I remember sleeping in the choir loft, the first time. My husband said, ‘I’ve had enough. I will never walk my daughter down this aisle.’ … It takesa toll.” The moral premise of the vigil, the human investment in sacred space, had its own logic. “I feel I can raise my children as good Catholics or good Christians.” 3
    As the vigil movement gained momentum in 2005, Peter Borré’s strategy with Cynthia Deysher on the Council of Parishes was to play for time, expect a loss at Clergy, and plan an appeal at the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican high court; in the meantime, the parishioners occupying churches would keep the issue in the news. Sympathetic lawyers were exploring other strategies, but Borré knew that even in liberal Massachusetts an intrachurch dispute was a legal long shot, given the Constitution’s guarantee for freedom of religion.
    Borré was prepared at his own expense to spend time in Rome to see if just a few high church officials could grasp that each week in which a given group of parishioners kept their vigil meant lost Sunday collections, no taxes to the archbishop, continued expenses for the archdiocese, and the potential of losing good Catholics who wanted the sacraments in their home churches . O’Malley was losing money on each occupied parish. But Borré and the vigil members were clear-eyed about Vatican tribunals. The church legal system was not democratic. Bishops governed as princes. The pope as supreme arbiter of canon law could intervene in any proceeding; however, that rarely happened. Making the system work for protesting laypeople was one tall order.
    For Mary Beth Borré, the biggest surprise was watching her husband “take on the role of a Don Quixote,” as he headed out on an exotic journey against the odds. “It seemed a natural progression of the fight he chose to wage,” she said later. “Peter is a natural entrepreneur. His greatest strength lies in seeing