The next part of the project was that of changing the copy room into an office in order to get all of the offices off of the bedroom floor. Thee is just something creepy and inappropriate about taking a shower and getting dressed in your bedroom while in the very next room someone is meeting with a bereft parishioner. 
Interestingly enough, the change in status of the rooms altered our taxes. Every square foot of the house needs to be accounted for. Having offices turned back into living space means a slight loss of a tax break for the Church. But hopefully the investment in sanity and appropriateness would be worth it.
Attending a party as a seminarian and being in a Roman collar, a lady came up to me to talk and she started telling me all kinds of things that I doubt she really wanted just any old person to know. I interrupted her and said, “I’m not a priest. I am only a seminarian. I don’t think you should tell me these things.” She waved my comment away and said, “You’re close enough,” and continued with her story.
So what is a priest to do at the parish? Pennsylvania is the elephant in the room. The readings for this weekend are so beautiful, challenging and dynamic but, because of the actions of some, we will have to deal with the scandal. Trust has been gravely damaged.
As one priest put it, the Church is on fire. What are we to do? What does Christ call us to do? Run away or hide until there is no more need for fire fighters? Or does He call us to run in and help put out the fire especially where souls are most at risk? 
To the right, the former pastor’s office, was now the office of the parish secretary and with her the parish records, various forms and envelopes and stationary of all kinds, an anachronistic typewriter, FAX machine, office supplies, mailboxes, and in general, anything that would not fit anywhere else. Across the hall in what was the secretary’s office was now inhabited by the copy machine, copy paper, stapler, cutting board and all things copy machine related. 
When there was such a thing as institutional slavery, the Church recognized this as a fact of the world and gave teachings based on those given in Scripture on how those who “owned” slaves should treat their servants. Over the course of time, the Church recognized that, because each human person has an inalienable dignity, nobody could possibly be “owned” by anybody and to be a person who “owned” slaves was inherently evil. This happened at a time when the Christian world was sufficiently awakening to the evil of this practice it was possible to bring this abomination to an end. 
This was not a change in the teachings of the Church. It was a development in the understanding of the inherent worth of each individual human soul. It was a slow and painful path. But the moment there was any recognition that the oppressed person was in fact a person with a soul, with dignity and worth, who was saved by the Passion of Jesus Christ, it was inevitable that slavery would be done away with. The very idea of a “slave owner” was poisoned with the first drop of Christ’s blood and every subsequent teaching and recognition of the value of life brought it closer and closer to death.
Many will disagree. Many will disagree with the way he said it. Many will disagree with the format in which he said it. Indeed, the reader of his article may think the pope was either premature in this declaration or a bit of a Pollyanna in his worldview or that he took one step too far, but, in my opinion, the one wagon that no one should jump on is that he has been speaking heresy. It is not only unhelpful to the conversation it does not display an understanding of how the Church has operated for 2,000 years. 
The Parish of Saint Sebastian was founded in 1928. Until 1805 the east boundary of the parish was the western boundary of the United States. The modern day road marking this line, Portage Path Road, roughly follows the trail Native Americans once used to portaged their canoes from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscawarus river. Doing this allowed them to travel from the Great Lakes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico via waterways save for this relatively short stretch of land. 
The first building to be built was a combination church, school, convent, parish offices, and social hall. The pastor lived at the local Catholic hospital and served as chaplain there until he moved to a rented home a few blocks south of the rectory. But in the mid-thirties that house was sold forcing Father Zwisler and his parochial Vicar, Father John Murphy to find another house to rent. It was at this point that the pastor decided that it was time to build a parish rectory.
From reading the various articles, it sounds as though the project was not without controversy. The great depression was still on, the bank that held the parish’s saving had just failed and this was no small amount of money. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, $100 in 1936 equaled about $1,813 in purchasing power in 2018. Today it would be the equivalent of raising well over a million dollars. But it was successful and soon the rectory was constructed.
You are walking down the street with your dog. It doesn’t seem like there is another person on the face of the earth. But three of you, all with dogs, show up at the same corner at the same time and jockey around to see who will pass and how.
There are (basically) two ways to handle this. One is to get frustrated and angry. (I preferred this method for a long time and to which I still sometimes revert when not at my best game.) “You’ve got to be kidding me! God, is this a test? Oh come on! This is ridiculous! What are the chances? People are so annoying!”
FINDING TRUTH WHEREVER IT MAY BE FOUND: "The unappreciated, disregarded miracle had happened once more; it was day again." from Cornell Woolrich's, "Night Has a Thousand Eyes."
On a drizzly afternoon in June, the Knights of Columbus council at St. Sebastian came to St. Clare in Lyndhurst, about 45 minutes away and where I had served as parochial vicar for the past three years to help pack up my belonging and move me south to Akron. St. Clare had been very good to me. The rectory there had been recently renovated and my room was very generous. It was one of two parishes in the diocese that still had a live-in who cooked and did laundry; Social Security and rising standards of living having all but wiped out the need for a person to find work in a rectory to make ends meet.
All the rectories that I had lived in previous to coming to live at St. Sebastian had been in the middle of a field of a tarmac parking lot. This was particularly evident at my first parish when car alarms were finishing their first blush of being standard equipment on cars. Gentlemen, and I use the term loosely, still thought it hysterical to wait until a female acquaintance walked by their car so they could set off the alarm from a distance and bend over laughing when the lady would screech. Neither the women nor I, listening to it for the umpteenth time in my room, found it the least bit funny.
Privacy, then, is always at a bit of a premium. I remember once, at St. Ambrose, I had been taking a nap, woke thirsty, and stepped out of the room to go downstairs to get a cup of water. The door was locked to keep well intentioned persons from coming in. After stepping out into the hall, the wind from an open window caught the door and slammed it shut locking the room up tight. It was one of those days that I wanted desperately to have a little alone time so I snuck downstairs in my stocking feet, hair mussed (having hair then) and clothes crumpled.
In contrast, the rectory at St. Sebastian is located in the middle of green lawns, hemmed in by the school and the church building. But no general parking lot comes near it. Across the brick avenue is a park named Elm Hill Park though everyone calls it Forest Lodge which is the building that stands on its grounds. The new building built by the WPA was named after the hunting lodge that once stood there when this part of Akron was considered way out in the country. All in all it is about as nice a setting one could hope for while still being inside the city limits and it was this house that the truck carrying all of my worldly goods drove up to using the curving brick driveway under a canopy of oak and maple trees to the rear entrance of the rectory.
