ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, March 13 2008

Divisions at St. Stanislaus follow a predictable pattern
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

There was a strong helping of irony surrounding the proceedings at St.
Stanislaus Kostka church last week when a group of parishioners called for the
ouster of the renegade priest they had recruited just three years ago to lead
their defiant flock.

Given Rev. Marek Bozek's rocky history — his dismissal from a Polish seminary
on charges of sexual impropriety, his decision to skip out on his assignment in
another diocese to join the media circus as pastor of St. Stanislaus and his
participation in the faux ordination of two Catholic priestesses — it is not
surprising that Bozek has generated controversy, even at the rebel Polish
church.

What is noteworthy about the movement to oust Bozek is that its leaders seem
genuinely shocked by his dissident streak. Did they really think that a priest
drawn to a breakaway church, a man who had flouted the authority of two bishops
by accepting a job offer from excommunicated Catholics to shepherd a parish
that had been officially suppressed, would respect the Catholic Church's
authority to decide doctrine? Did they think that a parish defined by its
refusal to remain united to its larger church body would itself remain
uncontaminated by the virus of division?

Apparently they did, but had they studied church history, they might have known
better.

Despite breathless media coverage, this controversy is, after all, merely
another chapter in a very old story. At its heart is a centuries-old clash
between Catholicism's hierarchical structure and America's democratic impulses.
Generations of anti-Catholics and more than a few Catholics have scorned the
Catholic hierarchy for its refusal to remake itself in the image of American
democracy and for clinging to the millennia-old belief that the pope and
bishops are successors to the apostles with authority that derives from God,
not from the consent of the governed.

Disputes over parishes such as St. Stanislaus also are not new. They are the
last gasp of the controversy over trusteeism, a short-lived system that found
American laymen controlling Catholic parishes in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. Although initially seen as a way to smooth tensions between Catholic
and American sensibilities in an anti-Catholic climate, trustee-controlled
parishes became breeding grounds for infighting, factions, rebellion, scandal
and schism — problems familiar to St. Stanislaus parishioners today.

After Pope Pius VII denied in 1822 the right of America's lay trustees to
appoint and remove pastors and declared that church properties are subject to a
bishop's control, America's trustee-controlled parishes gradually shifted to
the universal Catholic model that gives bishops authority over parishes.

But St. Stanislaus, built in 1880, has remained an anomaly. Beginning with
Cardinal John Glennon, St. Louis bishops have labored for six decades to bring
the parish into full compliance with the laws of the Catholic Church. Efforts
by St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke to make St. Stanislaus conform to the
same legal and financial structure as all other parishes in St. Louis merely
mark a new phase in a long-simmering dispute.

As they rebuff Burke's attempts and bask in the media attention, the St.
Stanislaus rebels imagine that their grassroots revolt is breaking new ground.
Yet schism is nothing new — as the scores of Christian denominations that trace
their lineage to a break with Catholicism can attest. Nor is there anything new
about a church that calls itself Catholic, even though its doctrine, sacraments
and structure deviate from official Catholicism. Websites of such sects crowd
the Internet, where pseudo-popes and breakaway groups spawned from other
breakaway groups abound.

The domino effect of church division is a well-established historical pattern.
If the members of St. Stanislaus want to address the root cause of division in
their ranks and make church history, they should drop the rebellion against
authority and try something truly radical: reconciliation.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host, and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.