Boston, USA -- In a challenge to the authority of Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, former parishioners of closed Catholic churches in Natick and Quincy have asked married priests to celebrate Easter Sunday Masses for them.
The Masses are scheduled to take place in non-Catholic settings -- one in a Protestant church and one in a city park -- and will be said by priests who have been suspended by the church because they married despite promises of celibacy. But the services nonetheless mark an escalation in the battle between some Catholics and the church hierarchy over the archdiocese's attempt to close 80 of its 357 parishes.
''It's not a move toward heresy, but it's definitely another step toward the schism that a lot of people have been fearing," said the Rev. William A. Clark, who has been following the parish closings as an assistant professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross. ''They're not giving up on their faith, but on the leadership, and that has big implications ecclesiologically. It's the way the Protestant Reformation began."
In Quincy, an organization called Friends of Star of the Sea, made up of some former parishioners of Mary Star of the Sea Parish, invited a married priest after O'Malley rejected a written request to send a priest of his choosing to celebrate Easter Mass in Squantum, the peninsula where the closed parish is located. The unsanctioned Mass is scheduled to be celebrated at First Church of Squantum by the Rev. Terry McDonough, 69, of Duxbury, who was ordained a priest in 1962 by the Society of the Divine Word but has been suspended because he left in 1983 and was married a year later.
''They're a parish without a priest, and I'm a priest without a parish," McDonough said.
In South Natick, Anne Green, who was arrested last Christmas morning for refusing to leave her closing parish, Sacred Heart, is leading the Easter effort. The Rev. Ronald P. Ingalls, 70, of Ashland -- who was ordained a priest in 1960 by the diocese of Harrisburg, took a leave in 1971, and was married in 1979 -- has agreed to celebrate the Mass under a tent in Shaw Park on Route 16. After the Mass, the worshipers plan to march to the shuttered doors of their former parish.
''I'm really happy to see the people standing up and wanting to be heard, wanting to have a say in what happens to them," Ingalls said. ''People used to just quietly grumble when things like this happened to them, but now they're speaking up and doing something about it."
Archdiocesan spokeswoman Ann Carter issued a statement yesterday saying that ''the archbishop continues to acknowledge the pain and sadness being felt by those people in the archdiocese whose parish life has undergone significant transitions in the past year," but that the planned Easter Masses by married priests are a ''serious violation of church law and teaching."
'Priests who have left active ministry to marry are prohibited from the exercise of any priestly ministry and, with the exception of the sacrament of Penance in the danger of death, no member of the faithful may legitimately seek to receive the sacraments from them," the statement said, citing a 1997 Vatican declaration.
Both of the unsanctioned Easter Masses are being facilitated by CITI Ministries Inc., an organization of married priests whose name is an acronym for ''Celibacy is the Issue." The group, based in Framingham, runs a website, rentapriest.com, that connects divorced and other disenfranchised Catholics with suspended priests willing to perform sacraments such as marriage, baptisms, and funerals.
The organization's president, Louise Haggett, disputed the archdiocese's assessment that the Masses are impermissible, citing a canon of the Catholic Church that states, ''Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them."
Over the last several years, particularly since the explosion of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, some alienated Catholics have quietly talked about the possibility of setting up an independent American Catholic Church, and one local Catholic has been circulating a proposal.
But no organization has endorsed such a proposal, and it is not clear how much support there would be for a direct break with the Archdiocese and the Vatican; multiple schismatic Catholic bodies exist in the United States, but their followings are small.
Haggett insisted that the congregations using married priests are not schismatic, but are merely at the vanguard of an inevitable change in the priesthood.
''If we were being schismatic, we wouldn't be following canon law," she said. ''There are 19 other canon laws that empower the laity to call on married priests when they cannot find a priest."
Haggett said there are several communities around the country, including in Saginaw, Mich.; Indianapolis; and Nenno, Wis., where Catholics whose parishes have closed and are now regularly meeting for Masses said by married priests.
She said she has been in touch with parishioners at several area churches that have closed, including some of the seven now occupied by parishioners, but that only the Natick and Quincy parishes have thus far asked for the services of married priests.
Sean Patrick Glennon, the former organist at the Squantum parish and cochairman of Friends of Star of the Sea, said parishioners are not seeking a confrontation with the archdiocese, just to worship together on Easter, the most important Christian holiday.
''Our intentions are not to upset or anger or embarrass Archbishop O'Malley or the Catholic Church," he said. ''We would love to have his blessing, and if he would allow us a diocesan priest, we would gladly do that. Christmas was such a painful time, not being able to worship together, and we couldn't bear doing that again, especially on Easter."