What to think?

Ok, I have to just vent in here. Our parish has been moving through a rather stormy transition from our previous pastor, a Jesuit who was with us for many, many years, to our current pastor, also a Jesuit but now assigned both to our parish (IHM) and another one (St. Luke’s). There’s been widespread anxiety and even anger over his absence from our parish (he’s more often present in our partnered parish), and several weeks ago it came to a head in such a way that there were really sharp words exchanged at our normally rather supportive and even docile pastoral council (and yes, I’m a member of that group).

At that point our priest proposed a solution that involved getting rid of one liturgy at each church so that he could find a way to celebrate all of them at both churches each weekend, thus being present at least sacramentally (if not in other concrete ways) at ours. A "mass preference survey" went out, and information was duly recorded. It appeared that an appropriate solution was emerging, or at least one that a majority of parishioners at each parish would favor.

So far, so good. But now we have the official decision of our priest (and remember, this being the Catholic church, a pastoral council only "advises" it has no real role in making decisions). This decision eliminates a liturgy at each church, but does so on a schedule that STILL makes it impossible for our priest to celebrate all of the liturgies at each parish each weekend. I'm trying very hard to be thoughtful about this, I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but at the moment I'm just really frustrated and angry. Sigh. It's probably good that I won't be home for the first weekend of this schedule....