This week posts are focusing on the implications for the Amarillo Diocese” of a synodal process that looks to hear from voices on the margins of the church. Implication #3 draws upon the similarity this process has to our United Catholic Appeal process, although the input sought would not be monetary…
Implication #3- Bishop Zurek may not be willing to take “a chance for reinvigorating an engaged community through creativity and the call to be open…a chance to reaffirm the good and reimagine some things that could be better,” if it requires leaving the nest to listen instead of collecting money to feather it…
“And may God preserve us from the ‘nest’ mentality, that of jealously guarding ourselves in the small group of those who consider themselves good: the priest with his loyal followers, the pastoral workers closed in among themselves so that no one can infiltrate, the movements and associations in their own particular charism, and so on,”
Pope francis from “‘Nest mentality’ in church leads to judgment, exclusion, pope says”
by Bishop Patrick J. Zurek
Click to read Bishop
Zurek’s Letter to St. Mary’s Cathedral
I now speak to all the rest of you, the parishioners of St. Mary’s Cathedral Parish. You are the faithful and loyal disciples that the Lord Jesus desires. I am so sorry that you have to experience this awful bashing against other members of the Body of Christ manifested here. I cannot thank you enough! I am proud of you; your Rector, your Associate Rector, all my brother priests are very proud of you.
Bishop Patrick J. Zurek, “A Reflection on Christian Life”
Bishop Zurek will need the support of “the few” if he is to abandon his “nest mentality” of the “serious mistake” and answer Pope Francis’s call for, “the church to practice synodality, that is listening to — and hearing — one another in all facets of church life“; but if he does perhaps we, “will see heaven opened
and the angels of God ascending and descending on the” Diocese of Amarillo.
“Inasmuch as there could be serious legal implications for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles if we do fully disclose to you our concern regarding the Reverend John Salazar, Sch.P., by this letter I am informing you that the Reverend John Salazar, Sch.P. would never be allowed to minister as a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in any way whatsoever given the circumstances of his case.”
From a 1991 letter from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to the Diocese of Amarillo prior to Bishop’s Matthiesen’s bringing of John Salazar to the Diocese of Amarillo. Bishop Matthiesen ignored this warning. Later he defended the “serious mistake” by stating that he never conducted his own checks of the priests – which included the Rev. John Salazar-Jimenez, and that it wasn’t until 10 years later that he learned some priests were not the first-time sex offenders that they purported to be when he agreed to hire.
A Memorial in the Grotto of St. Mary’s Cathedral raised by Monsignor Waldow (whom Bishop Matthiesen labeled as a “congenital liar”) during Bishop Yanta’s episcopacy. Monsignor Waldow wrote:
“In memory of the death of innocence of the victims of clergy sexual abuse. When innocence dies…a life stops. It is essential that we never forget.”
