{"id":556,"date":"2009-06-19T08:30:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T08:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/hell-raiser-in-a-collar.html"},"modified":"2009-06-19T08:30:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T08:30:05","slug":"hell-raiser-in-a-collar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/hell-raiser-in-a-collar.html","title":{"rendered":"“Hell-raiser in a collar”"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s how this Plain-Dealer profile<\/strong><\/a> describes the Rev. Bob Begin, Cleveland’s “rebel priest,” who has grown savvier as he has grown older, but still with the same zeal on behalf of his flock. The story focuses on Begin’s campaign to fight Bishop Richard Lennon’s order to close Begin’s parish, the 129-year-old St. Colman’s Church, one of 50 parishes Lennon ordered closed in a downsizing plan last March. <\/p>\n

All parish closings are painful and exceedingly contentious, the merits of each case a saga like a Russian novel. St. Colman’s is in a poor area and provides a vital service to the community as well as to parishioners, and so it is natural–and right, I’d say, from afar–to champion their cause.<\/p>\n

And yes, I cite this story as a counterpoint of sorts to the post below on the pope’s letter for the Year for Priests <\/strong><\/a>and his invocation of Saint Jean-Marie Vianney–but truly not so much to say one model is better and one worse, though I and many others might empathize much more with Father Begin. Rather, I think Begin represents another aspect of a dedicated pastor, perhaps every bit as much as Vianney. Yet it is an aspect that is too little appreciated, I think, by the powers-that-be simply because it smacks of a “wordly activism” that Benedict XVI warns clergy against. <\/p>\n

Above all, however, I was struck by Father Begin’s approach to this campaign–standing firm but consulting others and “keeping a cool head.” That is a difficult balancing act for many groups in the church, especially reform groups, who are marginalized by the power structure, which often leads to them to become more outspoken or radicalized, which then confirms the suspicions of the authorities who pushed them away in the first place. <\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt from Begin’s story<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Begin, a lawyer, wasted no time organizing parishioners and filing a formal appeal with the diocese. <\/strong><\/p>\n

“The biggest struggle was to keep it from becoming adversarial,” he said. “And so many people wanted to be adversarial. Thank God it didn’t come to that. I would have gotten fired and they would have had to evict me from the rectory.” <\/strong><\/p>\n

On the brink of taking it to the streets again, Begin sought the guidance of retired Bishop Anthony Pilla, who advised him to work patiently through the diocese’s appeals process. <\/strong><\/p>\n

“I told him to keep a cool head and trust in the Holy Spirit,” said Pilla. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Begin obeyed. <\/strong><\/p>\n

And after two meetings with Lennon, Begin convinced the bishop that St. Colman’s social services were vital lifelines to the neighborhood’s poor people and that the church was capable of operating in the black. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Last month, Lennon rescinded his order and kept St. Colman’s open. Two weeks ago, a congregation filling the church to the back burst into applause during a Mass of celebration. <\/strong><\/p>\n

“We’re so thankful, we’re serving ice cream and pizza in the church hall after Mass,” Begin told the happy gathering from the altar. He then led them in a chant, “The church is the people! The church is the people! . . . ” <\/strong><\/p>\n

For Begin, it was the people who saved St. Colman’s, but without his leadership, his followers say, the people would have been lost. <\/strong><\/p>\n

“He had the right tone, despite his reputation as the rebel priest,” said Eileen Kelly, outreach minister at St. Colman’s. “He was calm, not confrontational. <\/strong><\/p>\n

“It takes courage to speak to authority – truth to power. Bob has that courage and he has the experience. He was the right person for leading us.” <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s how this Plain-Dealer profile describes the Rev. Bob Begin, Cleveland’s “rebel priest,” who has grown savvier as he has grown older, but still with the same zeal on behalf of his flock. The story focuses on Begin’s campaign to fight Bishop Richard Lennon’s order to close Begin’s parish, the 129-year-old St. Colman’s Church, one of 50 parishes Lennon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\n"Hell-raiser in a collar" - Pontifications<\/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\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/hell-raiser-in-a-collar.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Hell-raiser in a collar" - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That’s how this Plain-Dealer profile describes the Rev. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}