On loyalty to one's parish

As I logged on, after I checked my email and the queue of comments, and as I was thinking about what on earth I should do with them (they range from "you traddies suck!" to complaints about the chancery zeitgeist--can I use the word "zeitgiest" more than once a week without sounding pompous?--to perhaps the most profound comment: "Please use larger type")......as I was thinking, I checked through the blogs I normally read.

And I came across one post from a great guy in Northern California, Jeff of Hallowed Ground, on loyalty to one's parish. Jeff hit home, for me, anyways, in using the Kirk family as his exemplar. I love Russell Kirk's work, requiem aeternam dona ei Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

Leaving aside the controversy I've brought to light on the treatment of the traditional Latin Mass community, and thinking about the situation for the territorial parishioners in Wyandotte county (as well as some of the territorial parishioners I know in Franklin, Anderson and Coffey counties, who are fearing closure), my heart breaks for them. For years, they've done without so much one expects from one's parish, out of loyalty and love for their neighbors and their buildings. With an exception or two, lifetime pastorates are verboten; priests have come and gone as part of the rotation whereby the Archdiocese assures that the bonds of pastoral authority and pastoral responsibility aren't too strong, and the notion of spiritual fatherhood has been destroyed, and the quality of priests is ... shall we say ... not consistent. But these people have stayed with their neighbors and their buildings, which are the constant material reminders of their faith -- their sacramentals -- through it all. I haven't been to many Wyandotte novus ordo churches, but I've been to a lot of rural ones, and I have well-observed the Kirkian feeling that Jeff aludes to. Pray for them.