New Cleveland Bishop Shows Dissidents the Door

(Hat tip: Rich Leonardi and Amy Welborn)

When our family first considered moving to Norwalk, Ohio, one of the first things I did was to check to make sure Norwalk was in Bishop Leonard Blair's Diocese of Toledo and NOT in Bishop Pilla's Diocese of Cleveland.

Let's just say that Bishop Blair has been described by Father Richard John Neuhaus as a "John Paul II bishop", while Bishop Pilla is fairly well-known for the rainbow flag flying on the diocesan website, as well as for offering diocesan property as the headquarters for the dissident group FutureChurch, which was founded in Cleveland.

Well, it seems my concern may have been all for naught. Just 2 weeks after Bishop Richard Lennon replaced Pilla as Bishop of Cleveland, he has has ordered FutureChurch to vacate the premises, leaving the dissident group scrambling to find commercial space in which to relocate their headquarters:

FutureChurch needs your help

You may know that Archbishop Pila has been succeeded by Richard Lennon, late of the Boston Diocese. It sounds as though there is a crackdown on everything that looks progressive. The letter below is a request for badly needed help.

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Faced with an enormous challenge, we turn to you, one of our special friends, to ask for help.

For 15 years, FutureChurch has been able to devote maximum resources to our educational and advocacy efforts because our offices have been in very low-cost parish based space.

Now, we have been asked to move out of the rectory basement that has been our home for 8 years. We must find new space by August 1st and know that we have no choice but to find commercial rental space. Doing so will have a significant impact on our operating budget.

There is no possibility of finding space in another church. Diocesan officials have made no secret of their desire to deny FutureChurch access to church property for our activities – including educational programs and prayer services. And, as many of you know, FutureChurch has been the subject of a nasty, vilifying campaign by a self-proclaimed group, which has also harassed pastors who have been supportive of our mission.

We anticipate that going to commercial space will quadruple our office overhead costs. Added to this ongoing operating expense are the costs of moving and replacing office furnishings that were in the basement when we moved in.

We hesitate to turn to you for help, knowing that you have recently received our annual Pentecost appeal, which provides funds vitally needed to maintain and expand our programs. But, we have no choice if we want to continue to move ahead with our educational and advocacy programs, including The Future of Priestly Ministry and Women in Church Leadership, at their current level.

As you know, we are hard at working at expanding our Mary of Magdala celebrations to include a post card campaign to urge that bishops welcome women as proclaimers and preachers of the Gospel. We are also collecting signatures on a letter to Bishop Wuerl, a member of committee drafting the Pope’s Post-Eucharistic Synod with the hope of encouraging the Vatican to adopt meaningful solutions to the priest shortage. We are also moving full speed ahead on our newest advocacy project, Save Our Parish Communities, designed to give Catholic parishioners tools to meet the challenges of maintaining vibrant parishes in a time of fewer priests and closing parishes.

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We are especially sad to be asked to leave church property because we believe that discussing opening ordination to all who are called and advocating for greater lay involvement in the life of the Church are very important to the future of our Church. We should be talking about these critical issues in every Catholic parish, every Catholic school, and every Catholic home. Otherwise, we risk losing access to Eucharist and losing our parishes because of the ever-worsening priest shortage.

FutureChurch will keep these important discussions alive as we work “to participate in the formulating and expressing the Sensus Fidelium (the Spirit inspired beliefs of the faithful) through open, prayerful and enlightened dialogue with other Catholics locally and globally.”

Thanks to the commitment, trust and generosity of people like you, FutureChurch has grown in fifteen short years from an all-volunteer, ad hoc committee of Catholics concerned about loss of Eucharist to a nationally respected voice advocating for renewal of our Church in the spirit of Vatican II.

[More]

(emphasis added)

Looks like the cafeteria is officially closed in Cleveland.