Parade Day draws near. Be warned.
Last year I banged out a few posts on the day itself; my thoughts on it, my own Irish heritage, and other assorted and inconsequential items.
This year, how about we talk about the bishop. That, of course, would be the Roman Catholic Bishop, one Joseph F. Martino.
The bishops in this diocese have all enjoyed a very cordial and gentlemanly relationship with those who sit upon The St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee and also with The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
Somewhere since his taking up residence on Wyoming Avenue, there's been a strain placed upon the relationship, so much so that the bishop doesn't attend the Friendly Sons' Annual Dinner. That sounds like a rush towards enmity to me. It has a nice antagonistic feel to it.
This past week, Bishop Martino directed a fine, genteel, and seemingly very humble man, Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty, to set out some rules for this year's parade and just who's who in that parade.
Why Bishop Dougherty is the go-to on this matter, I have no clue. That he is, I'm guessing, is a source of some discomfort to the man. Perhaps Bishop Martino was fatigued from all the finger-wagging he's been doing of late. Perhaps he needed to appoint a relief finger-wagger.
The threat, and it was a threat, make no mistake, was to to shut down St. Peter's Cathedral on parade day should the parade committee "honor" anyone who isn't 100% certifiably anti-abortion. What precisely defines "honoring" such a person via the parade I do not know. Is simply marching in the parade enough to slam shut the doors of the cathedral?
Bishop Martino is pretty darned good at slamming shut doors. His greatest legacy will in all likelihood be that of closing doors, while at the very same time, failing to open one single door across the diocese he tends to like a feudal lord, rather than the gentle shepherd he is called to be.
He'll also leave behind a history of what appears to be absentmindedness, an odd forgetting of who and what the Church is.
The Church isn't Bishop Martino.
Locking down the mother church of the diocese, I suggest, is without precedent. It is likewise unacceptable, unless there was an imminent and real danger of physical harm being done to the building itself. Denying access to the cathedral in order to make a political, moral, or ideological point is inexcusable. Of greater importance here might be that any threats against the Diocese of Scranton don't come from without, they come from within.
Bishop Martino is not a well liked man. He's sowed a few nasty rows. He now reaps.
Some would say he is simply being true to his beliefs. The flaw in that defense is that his beliefs are not in keeping with The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, thereby not in line with Vatican thinking. Remember, this is the man who crashed a meeting in Honesdale in order to spank those parishioners present for having the temerity to so much as even discuss the policies of the USCCB.
Bishop Martino is running his own show here, the curtain upon which will in time fall. My prediction, maybe worth a pint on parade day, is that Bishop Martino knows precisely when it is he'll be moving along, that his stay here was designed to be somewhat brief from the very start. Also worth a pint at some other time is my guess as to who the next bishop of this diocese will be. I have a very strong feeling as to who will succeed Joseph F. Martino.
This bishop's fans are few. It's his own doing. Other bishops in other dioceses of this country haven't seen fit to take the Church back several centuries. Not only does this bishop have a taste for yesteryear, he expects his flock to embrace making the trip back to darkness and unquestioning fealty with him.
Left with no other alternative, or so they feel, the parade committee has announced they will surely be in compliance with the bishop's directives. I tend to doubt they were planning otherwise.
Then there's that rebellious group of females who find their presence not requested by the Friendly Sons at their big annual bash. No need for them to RSVP, this group exists solely because us men just can't let go of old ways. Might not the bishop truly serve his flock by speaking out on that matter? Apparently not.
Somehow, the women got dragged into this situation, though not without speaking up, mind you.
Evie Rafalko McNulty, a founder of the Society of Irish Women, explained that her group is not even Catholic.“We’re not a Christian organization. We’re not ‘saint’ anything. We’re just a group of Irish women,” she said.
Her group pays $500 to help defray the cost of the Mass offered at St. Peter’s Cathedral on parade day, because it was asked to help. (Am I the only one curious about the defraying of any cost of any mass? Where does that $500 go? If the girls pony up $500, how much do the boys pay?)
“If he doesn’t have the Mass, then we save $500,” she said. A practical reaction, some might say. Others might say, a brilliant reaction. I would be among those latter others.
Bishop Martino was politely told to take a hike by the Society of Irish Women.
God bless their hearts. May it become an annual tradition.
