For three years before the church closed, a priest celebrated Mass in the basement because scaffolding cluttered the main nave. But a small, committed cluster of neighborhood residents and Lithuanian immigrants kept coming, and other groups also held services in the building, including Portuguese and Filipino contingents, parishioners said.
“There was like a renaissance happening in the church, with ebbs and flows,” said Ramute Zukas, the president of the New York chapter of the Lithuanian American Community.
Before deciding to close the church, the archdiocese consulted with the regional vicar, the parish administrator and the neighboring pastors, according to court documents. There was no need to get the agreement of the parishioners under church law, the archdiocese said.
Something parishoners can look forward to under the newly defined TEC hierarchy.
[blockquote]“We are grateful that the Court of Appeals has upheld the right of Roman Catholic bishops to determine the best way to meet the needs of the faithful in their diocese.”[/blockquote]
It seems to me that this comes very close to establishing a religion.