Cardinal O'Malley made the deal to disinter O'Connell's body and demolish his mausoleum without permission or even a courtesy call from his relatives. Upon learning of the deal, they promptly took the Cardinal to court where the matter has been tied up since 2004.
They didn't have the decency to hire a hearse. The gravediggers dug him up and the body was thrown onto the back of their truck.
Our friends at BCI point out yet another stupid lie from the Archdiocese. The Cardinal sold all of the land to Boston College. Our Catholic seminary is literally leasing air space on the parcel formerly owned by the Archdiocese and those entitled to her inheritance, built up over the last 200 years.
Last October, we reported in “Seminary Squeezola: BC Brighton Campus Plans” that St. Johns Hall is all that remains of the former St. Johns Seminary property for the seminary, and even that building sits on land now owned by Boston College. The building itself is legally considered a “condominium.” You can verify that in the St. Johns Seminary 2010 annual report on page 9, where it says: “The Seminary retained an ownership of a condominium in St. John’s Hall.”
Bottom line: there are in reality no more ”grounds of St. John’s Seminary.” BC owns all the land. Thus, the remains of Cardinal O’Connell were moved from the former chapel and mauselium that was on land currently owned by BC, to another plot of land that is also owned by BC, which is very close to St. John’s Seminary. Cardinal O’Connell was re-buried in a gravesite which is today legally Boston College property, not the “grounds of St. John’s Seminary.”
How strange, peculiar and unnecessary it is to lie about the situation.
It is duly noted by Boston Catholics that though the Archbishop couldn't make the time to perform his duty to give the honor and respect Cardinal O'Connell deserved under these most grievous circumstances, he was able to make the time to be present and accounted for to cry like a banshee at Myra Kraft's funeral.
The chicanery is breathtaking.
19 comments:
With the way they treat Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, would you expect them to treat O'Connell's remains any better?
Back to the Masons of Columbus. In the early 90's the KofC had a big outdoor Mass with the bishop in Worcester where our Lord was doled out in paper-lined baskets and poured back into a big glass fishbowl-like container and left alone on the makeshift altar on a flatbed truck. After awhile, some guy came along and put the Sacrament in a box with the other stuff, throwing the lectionary on top. (I took the book). Then he threw it all in the trunk of his car. I stayed. Some "priest" came by, picked up the stuff while chatting with folks. I wrote a letter, and the state grand poobah was upset with me.
They can't see Our Lord. They can't see a child in the womb. They certainly won't honor remains in a tomb.
Thanks for the reality check. You're absolutely right.
Several years ago when one of the first of the Churches was vacated, there was a series of articles for weeks about the Archdiocese coming to take out the pews and the carpets and the windows -- etc. Until the last day when the doors were locked.
Somehow, some poor lay person who was given access to pick something up noticed the burning candle in the Tabernacle. He went over to the Sacristy, got the keys and opened the Tabernacle where Our Lord was still reserved. The weeks of clearing the place out of valuables, Our Blessed Lord was not among the treasures disposed with the casting of lots.
Every once in a while, I'll get a phone call or frantic email telling me I 'have to do something' about some horrific scandal.
I made a phone call to the Chancery and said they had two hours to send somebody to retrieve Our Lord and if I didn't get word back that He has has been reserved in another Sanctuary, there would be a break in. They sheepishly did the right thing.
Some relief, but mostly overwhelming sadness at the state of affairs of the presbyterate, and Chancery legumes.
They neither care where Christ reposes nor what happens to Catholics entitled to the merits and virtues of receiving Him into a pure soul.
It is about the money - which is why the Cardinal chose to instead be present when one of his pocketbooks was buried.
LifeSiteNews.com has posted a story concerning a threat by Coptic Christians in Ontario who plan on withdrawing thousands from the Toronto Catholic schools. The Orthodox Coptic Church is revolting against "the Ontario government’s sweeping equity and inclusive education strategy, which has sparked an unprecedented mobilization of parents who fear that it will give homosexual activists a foothold in order to further subvert already weak Catholic sexual teaching in the schools."
Cardinal Sean has already set the groundwork for accommodating such a policy when the homosexual extremists become powerful enough to implement it.
Myra would be so proud.
What galls me is that there seems to have been no provision made to dismantle and relocate the Chapel of the Blessd Virgin Mary. It was simply demolished. So goes more of our physical patrimony that reflects the Faith of our forebears. Is anything sacred with these people? They are shameless pragmatists that have little value in past reminders of the Catholic Faith in Boston. It's all business.
Rob, In looking at the photographs of that beautiful Mausoleum, it's statutes reminding us of the guardians of souls and sacred space - I wondered too whether it was all just reduced to rubble by a wrecking ball, sitting in a ditch somewhere.
They could have just disassembled and reassembled the stones, windows, statues but from the story, it appears they simply marked O'Connell's grave site with a stone. A couple of less parking spaces for the sparsely-attended seminary was too much to sacrifice for a man they disinterred to pay for their irresponsible consequences of their morally bankrupt clericalism.
They are whores. You know the old expression: we have already established you are, now we are just haggling over the price...
MARIA
I made a phone call to the Chancery and said they had two hours to send somebody to retrieve Our Lord and if I didn't get word back that He has has been reserved in another Sanctuary, there would be a break in. They sheepishly did the right thing.
Carol: This is an incredible story. It is just so difficult to fathom what can only be understood as sacrilege.
Whoops. This remark by Margaret Mary was me, Carol, lol. I am setting up a new blog and having all kind of problems!
MARIA
LOL. Good for you re the new blog!!
True story, what can I say. I remember speaking to the priest in charge of sacraments at that time. He told me he wasn't sure it could be done in two hours. I said something like there are a dozen Churches within 15 minutes of the place with priests in them and to start dialing them and if he has no luck, it was a 45 minute drive from Brighton which leaves plenty of time for him to get into the car himself.
One of those times when I was too mad to say things nicely.
ROFLM Arse off!!!!! Could you do me favor and instruct Priests on how to institute silence in our Churches:)
Don't you Bostonians know about your Cardinal O'Connell? Your Phil Lawler wrote all about him and his antics in his book.
Veronica
Veronica,
absolutely and Cardinal O'Connell made corruption a family affair. His priest nephew was a real beaut.
Still O'Connell had plenty of competition-Cardinal Spellman was no better (if there is any truth to the John Cooney bio). The hell Spellman put Fulton Sheen through leaves me with few doubts about him.
All of this doesn't mitigate the lack of decency shown by the current placeholder in the Boston Archdiocese. As LBJ said about a South American tinpot dictator "he's a SOB but he's our SOB"!
I'm not trying to mitigate anything. Just calling a spade a spade, and pointing out that the corruption in our Church in general and Boston in particular has deep roots.
I like what Spellman said to one of his "men friends" when he was asked what he would do if any of this antics got out: "Who would believe it?" he asked. He was right. No one would have back then.
My small diocese, however, manages to hide its' dirty laundry very well. I'd be afraid to poke my nose into it lest I become a mysterious death victim.
Veronica
I'd be afraid to poke my nose into it lest I become a mysterious death victim.
ROFLM Arse off, Veronica.I often ask myself hwo I got to be in my fifties and totally unaware of the corruption among the clergy--prior to my conversion ( as a cradle Catholic). I am sort of coming to terms w/ it. I am also starting to think that perhaps it has ever been. Thinks what St. Teress of Avila went through. We are never free of original sin. I am learning to cope w/ it somewhat better...
But I wasn't joking, Maria. I am scared.
In the 1980's, a man I used to know one day asked to take me out for a drink. Said he wanted to tell me something. He knew I was religious and interested in convent life. I went and made sure it was understood that there was nothing to this "date". He proceeded to tell me he was an ex-priest and told me all about the priests and shenanigans in the Archdiocese of Newark.
I didn't believe a word he said and put him down as a bitter former priest with an axe to grind.
But you know something? He was right about everything. My only regret is that I didn't come home that evening and write everything down he had told me.
Veronica
Mercy, Veronica, mercy....
At Medjadorje, it was called "ethnic cleansing". Serb Orthodox were butchered on the very site by Ustashi Croatian Nazi Catholics. In Boston, that is all it is. It is ethnic cleansing. You have to "bury" the old Church befoee the new one can arrise. The Pope is only a "means to an end".
Cardinal O'Connell was not a good cardinal. I suspect that his rogue priest nephew either had something on him or the cardinal just was blindly indulgent. However, treating human remains this way is disgusting.
The Archdiocese of Boston has not been blessed with good shepherds in modern times.
Cardinal Cushing, who was adored by Irish Americans at one time, was torn between becoming a South Boston politician or going into the Church. His talents were those of a politician and as a back room fixer.
Cushing enabled the Kennedys and (and in the early 60s) he assured local Catholics and clerics that contraception was about to be approved by the Vatican. He allowed a group of Jesuits to advise the post JFK Kennedys (at the compound)on how to work for legalization of abortion and contraception and remain in good standing as Catholics. He publicly supported Jacqueline Kennedy's irregular marriage to Onassis.
Cardinal Henri de Lubac reported an exchange (at a Vatican II session) with Cardinal Cushing which illuminates where he was coming from--Cushing was sitting next to de Lubac while a long discusion of the "College of Cardinals" and "collegiality of the bishops" was dragging on. Cushing leaned over to de Lubac and said: "if they would only stop talking and let me go back to America. I'll build them as many colleges as they want."
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