MONDAY DIARY: SEEING THE BISHOP ABOUT AN ORGAN TRANSPLANT

Just so you know, there will not be a post tomorrow. I will be in Washington D. C. for the ordination of a fellow Cleveland priest who will become the auxiliary bishop for the Arch Diocese of the Military. I’ll write to you about it when I get back – maybe next Monday.

In the meantime I had a little adventure last Saturday morning. Here at St. Sebastian we had the unexpected opportunity to expand our pipe organ considerably in a way that would be far less expensive than usual – long story – I’ll tell you sometime. At some point you have to tell the bishop. After all he legally owns all of the buildings and if you are going to do something that will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars he would like to know.

But WHEN do you tell him? If it turns out that nobody is behind the project it would have been a waste of his time to go to him. If you wait to find out if there is a lot of interest and backing, there may be too much momentum and then you go to the bishop and he says, “no,” he looks like a jerk. I don’t want to make my bishop look like a jerk.

So I think I was on that razor edge – knowing that there is significant support but not being so far into the project that it is too late to go see him. He graciously made time for me on an early Saturday morning so I zipped up I77 to see him.

You know, it might have been a rather nice visit for him – there was no emergency. I wasn’t coming with a complaint (who makes an appointment to come in and talk about what they like is going on?), I wasn’t in trouble, blah blah blah, we wanted to talk about organs.

It was about two hours and covered all manner of topics. All in all a very pleasant conversation and it put me well at ease. In the end however he gave me the worst possible answer concerning this project. He did not say yes (I could always say that it had the full backing of the bishop), he didn’t say no, (I could always say don’t blame me HE said no!) he said, use your best judgment and have the best interest of the diocese, the parish, and its people in mind and laid out what that meant.

So now the real work begins. What will we do? It is kind of exciting. This is a significant decision for the parish. It will have an impact on everything, almost every day, from this day forward and not something to be taken lightly. I wonder if everyone realizes? And how can we make sure that everyone does realizes?

Daunting vs Exciting

I look at our archives and see articles that our founding pastor wrote about building a rectory. “There are those who say we don’t need a rectory,” he railed (and he did rail.) Now the rectory has been around and serving the parish for over 80 years. How different would the place have been without the parishioners and their pastor going forth with this project back then? I’m glad they did (but wish they would have made more office space.)

Sorry – I’m rambling – but it is late (for me) and if I don’t post now I won’t until Wednesday.

Zadoste!