{"id":3202,"date":"2008-03-19T07:16:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T07:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/03\/braxton-a-little-background.html"},"modified":"2008-03-19T07:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T07:16:00","slug":"braxton-a-little-background","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/03\/braxton-a-little-background.html","title":{"rendered":"Braxton: a little background"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few readers have been wondering just what kicked up the kerfuffle in Belleville<\/a>, and what exactly Bishop Braxton had done to incur such animosity among his priests. <\/p>\n

As usual, I turned to the definitive source<\/a> on episcopal matters, and found a few newsworthy nuggets.<\/p>\n

He has a very good overview of the situation right here<\/a>. There’s also some interesting commentary from priests<\/a> back in January, from the St. Louis Dispatch. <\/p>\n

Any way you look at it, buying vestments with several thousand dollars that had been allocated for missions is unseemly. Then there’s the princely sum the new bishop spent renovating his residence. As Rocco noted: <\/p>\n

Braxton’s 2005 appointment was greeted with presbyteral protest amid complaints that the clergy weren’t consulted — an outcry that grew after the bishop sought to renovate his residence. (While the diocese allotted $25K toward the spruce-up, Braxton’s friends kicked in the rest of the project’s reported $250,000 total.) Months later, frustrated over what one termed the bishop’s “imperial” style of governance, a third of the priests met publicly to sign a statement of discontent. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To paraphrase “Casey At The Bat”: There is no joy in Belleville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few readers have been wondering just what kicked up the kerfuffle in Belleville, and what exactly Bishop Braxton had done to incur such animosity among his priests. As usual, I turned to the definitive source on episcopal matters, and found a few newsworthy nuggets. He has a very good overview of the situation right…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-pope-and-bishops"],"yoast_head":"\nBraxton: a little background - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/03\/braxton-a-little-background.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Braxton: a little background - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few readers have been wondering just what kicked up the kerfuffle in Belleville, and what exactly Bishop Braxton had done to incur such animosity among his priests. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}