Given that my grandparents all came from Poland and that as a boy I went to church at a Polish Catholic parish, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow when I came across a recent NY Times article about the St. Stanislaus parish controversy in St. Louis. St. Stans was a nice Polish church not unlike Sacred Heart in Wallington, where I grew up (although as an urban-based parish, it might be a bit more like Holy Rosary in Passaic, where my mother was raised). About five years ago, the parish got into a disagreement with the St. Louis archbishop (Raymond Burke, at the time) regarding ownership of the land and buildings at St. Stans. It had something to do with protecting diocese property from being seized in law suits stemming from clerical abuse. (Ah, what a tangled web that has been weaved . . .). The board at St. Stans decided to stand its ground about parish control of the property; the secular law was pretty clearly on its side.

However, the priests who performed all the Catholic rituals (masses, confessions, baptisms, marriages, last rites) at St. Stans also agreed that the archbishop was their boss. So, when the bish got ticked off at those stubborn lay people on the parish board, he decided to pull his guys out; no more priests. The idea was to get the parish board to reconsider, given that they now had a Catholic church without any Catholic sacraments happening inside of it. In a nutshell, the parish board decided to see the archbishop’s bet and raise him one, by finding a priest from another parish to come in and get the sacramental mill rolling once again. They found their man in a priest named Marek Bozek, a guy in his thirties who grew up in Poland but who became a priest and served the church in the USA.

For the past 4 years, Bozek has been keeping the holy fires burning at St. Stans. But Archbishop Burke struck back by excommunicating Father Bozek; so all of the sacraments at St. Stans thus became questionable at best under official Roman Catholic standards. But people kept on coming to St. Stans for them.

As time went on, Bozek upped the ante even more. Taking a cue from the courses he took while in seminary on liberation theology and Protestant theology, he expressed a renegade vision for the church by calling for local control and for opening the priesthood to women and gays. He might also take it easy on lay people who are divorced but wish to re-marry in church (i.e., by not always requiring the rigorous and sometimes impossible ecclesiastical annulment procedure for divorced Catholics). He thinks that parishes should hire priests and that bishops should be selected by local priests and laity.

That all incurred the wrath of Rome, and last year Bozek was “dismissed from the clerical state” by Pope Benedict himself. So the sacramental situation at St. Stans went from questionable to totally non-kosher ! The NY Times article thus addressed Bozek as “mister”, not “father”; and Wikipedia describes St. Stans as a “former Catholic Church parish”.

And yet, people kept on going to St. Stans and Bozek for what appears on the surface to be authentic Catholic sacraments. But what people? Are they still Polish? The parish supposedly had around 400 households (a “household” could be a family of 5, or a single person) when the problems started, and is now up to 500. However, about 200 of the original households have left, many going to another St. Louis Polish parish called St. Agathas. Some local newspaper articles suggest that the new people coming into the parish aren’t Polish; they are more interested in Fr. Bozek’s “new church” vision. E.g., gays and re-married couples who could not be married in a regular Catholic church. The Times article itself cites two Bozek supporters at “the new St. Stans”; their last names are Schnieder and McCall. No “ski” or z’s and k’s in those names!

In the latest chapter to this slowly escalating game of ecclesiastical chicken, the bishop who replaced Burke (Robert Carlson) offered a settlement with the parish; i.e., we will keep our hands off your property and provide a priest for at least a year, and also give you some seed money to get your fundraising efforts going. St. Stans would be certifiably Catholic once again. But Bozek would definitely have to go. A vote was held and the new St. Stans parish decided against it, 257 to 185. Some think this has become all about Bozek and his “new vision”, while others said that Carlson just needs to sweeten the offer a bit as to guarantee that the diocese won’t shut St. Stans down if it doesn’t meet their financial expectations right away.

Whatever the case (and I suspect that it is a mix of both influences), this situation will remain on my radar. I don’t have any plans to assert the Catholic Trinitarian creed once again, after all my research regarding the historical Jesus; on such matters, you can’t go home. I’m quite happy with my local Zen “sangha” and our “dharma teacher” (but given, our “roshi” is a Catholic Jesuit priest!). And yet, something of my heart still goes out to the whole Catholic experience, and to those who would try to expand it just a bit to meet the social and justice concerns that Fr. Bozek seems aware of. And given that Polish blood is involved in all of this . . . that is an unexpected yet welcome surprise !

For now, Bozek is still a priest as far as I am concerned. But I hope that Fr. Bozek is the real-deal, truly a man filled with the Spirit. I hope there will be a peaceful and amicable resolution to all of this, but sometimes (rarely but occasionally), God is on the side of the revolutionaries and apocalyptics. If this is to be a revolution or apocalypse of some sort, then let’s hope that we won’t be fooled again. Let’s hope that this won’t become Marek Bozek, Superstar. Yes, I’m showing my age here once again, referring to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera from the 1970s.

But if it is becoming a Bozek thing, let’s hope that he remembers the opening song from Jesus Christ Superstar, i.e. “Heaven on Their Minds”. If Father Bozek is truly going to make a stand out of this, he had better remember Judas’ warning in “Heaven” – i.e., they’re going to hurt you and ultimately crush you if you follow your dream. I hope that Bozek is ready to be crucified, and not take a comfortable buy-out in the Episcopal Church and write a book (the usual outcome in situations like this).

However, the official church here is messing with a son of Poland, where the true spirit of Catholicism is not taken lightly. Over the centuries, Poland has somehow withstood the Mongols, the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Prussians, the Nazis, and the Communists. If the Roman church that they love somehow starts seeming foreign to them, don’t put it past the Poles to resist Rome too. Maybe even just a small band of Poles (and wanna-be Poles) in a run-down urban neighborhood in the midwestern US. I saw a blog comment about the St. Stans rejection of Bishop Carlson’s offer, which said

Poles in the U.S. have long memories and don’t like people telling them what to do. They’d rather be right than go to heaven.

That doesn’t sound like such a good “heaven” to me. Don’t put it past a group of stubborn but enlightened Poles to re-do the place! Or go down trying.