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June 28, 2012
My greatest joy as your archbishop is visiting our parishes! In my recent Catholic New York column, I wrote about my visits to some of the parishes in the last few weeks. Let me share an excerpt with you:
The colorful priest-sociologist, Father Andrew Greeley, used to comment that the Catholic Church was the most “grassroots organization in the history of the world.” He went on to explain that the heart of Catholic infrastructure was the parish, which was about as close to the people as you can get.
He’s right. When I arrived here as your archbishop a little over three years ago, the first thing Cardinal Edward Egan told me was, “The strength of this archdiocese is our 400 parishes and mission churches. That’s where the life is.”
To those observations I say, to use a Catholic word, bingo!
This, of course, flies in the face of the caricature of the Church as oppressively controlled by Rome. While our Catholic people love the Holy Father and cherish his mission as successor of St. Peter, they are hardly concerned about the intricacies of Vatican gossip, personalities of the curia, or the latest Roman controversy.
You can read the whole column here.