By John C. Seitz
ISBN-10: 0674053028
ISBN-13: 9780674053021
In 2004 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston introduced plans to shut or merge greater than 80 parish church buildings. ratings of Catholics―28,000, via the archdiocese’s count―would be requested to go away their parishes. The closures got here simply years after the 1st significant revelations of clergy sexual abuse and its hide up. Wounds from this profound betrayal of belief had no longer healed.
In the months that undefined, distraught parishioners occupied numerous church buildings against the closure decrees. Why did those unintended activists face up to the parish closures, and what do their activities and reactions let us know approximately glossy American Catholicism? Drawing on large fieldwork and with cautious realization to Boston’s Catholic historical past, Seitz tells the tales of resisting Catholics of their personal phrases, and illuminates how they have been attracted to re-evaluate the earlier and its meanings. We listen them contemplate their parishes and the sacred gadgets and thoughts they carry, at the manner their own histories hook up with the background in their local church buildings, and at the constructions of authority in Catholicism.
Resisters describe how they took their parishes and non secular lives into their very own fingers, and the way they struggled with daily theological questions of recognize and reminiscence; with relationships between faith, group, position, and luxury; and with the that means of the neighborhood church. No Closure is a narrative of neighborhood drama and pathos, but in addition a course of inquiry into broader questions of culture and alter as they form Catholics’ skill to make experience in their lives in a mundane world.
