After three years of litigation and beaucoup bucks paid to high profile lawyers, Cardinal Dolan and the Archdiocese of New York lost the final appeal to keep the remains of Archbishop Fulton Sheen in New York. It would be interesting to know the rationale behind New York's decision to renege on a 2002 agreement to allow the move, since they had no interest in pursing Sheen's cause for sainthood.
And then there's Peoria. They could have pursued the case without Sheen's body. Why they didn't is another puzzle.
Why did Dolan et al resist the move for so long after agreeing to it?
It's usually about money so maybe both dioceses saw Sheen's body as a tourist draw. Did that cause the multi-million dollar body tug-o-war? Seems like a stretch.
What a waste of time and money. And what a scandal all that wrangling was. Can you imagine how non-Catholics view this kind of thing? New York's intransigence caused big expenses to both dioceses. Peoria spent over a million dollars on the legal fight. How much did New York spend?
Does this make you want to give to your bishop's lenten appeal? I quit years ago. How many millions do we want to see going into fancy vacation homes for the likes of Bransfield and Dolan while they spend millions over a legal fight like this? It's your money, folks; not their personal slush fund! But you'd never know it from the way they act.
I'm glad this shameful episode is reaching its final conclusion. Here's the song for this post.
They better double check the remains BEFORE they move them. It would be the first time that the remains were switched with someone else.
ReplyDeleteSee this story about Daniel Boone https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/21/garden/the-body-in-daniel-boone-s-grave-may-not-be-his.html
Ask yourself WHY the New York diocese did not choose to pursue the cause for sainthood. They could have. He was their celebrity. And as you say, a drawing card for tourists.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, Sheen isn't their kind of saint. Sheen was an anticommunist, a social justice smearing witness, a warrior for an incorrupt doctrine, free of any taint of "librration theology," group guilt, universal salvation, or world religion.
In other words, Sheen was a 24 K gold Catholic and unashamed to declare it. New York, sadly,is not.