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Bending Toward Justice tells the story of the rampant closings of Catholic parishes across the United States and documents the courageous advocacy of Sr. Kate Kuenstler and hundreds-indeed thousands-of ordinary Catholics whose persistence charted a new course in canon law. Sr. Kuenstler's expertise eventually gave increased leverage to the laity-and their parishes-in the struggle to preserve their parish homes, especially in ethnically diverse and poor neighborhoods. In 2012, after what Catholic pundit Rocco Palmo described as "the most ferocious and bitter parish planning face-off the Stateside church has seen in the last quarter century," Rome ordered Cleveland's Bishop Richard Lennon to re-establish 12 parishes he had wrongly closed and reopen their churches. It was an unprecedented victory. For the first time, Rome ordered a bishop to restore a large number of suppressed parishes as well as reopen their churches. The Vatican powerfully upheld the rights of Catholics in those parishes to have an appropriate voice in determining the future. This book offers an inside view into the wholesale closing of too many vibrant Catholic parishes in too many neighborhoods.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Context - A Church in Crisis
Chapter Two: Seeds of a Prophetic Life
Chapter Three: Canon Law Studies in Rome
Chapter Four: Catholics Discover They Have Rights
Chapter Five: Advocate for the Laity- St. Mary Jamesville, NY
Chapter Six: Making a Way Where There Was No Way
Chapter Seven: In the Diocese of Cleveland, Catholics Rise Up
Chapter Eight: Parishioners Persevere
Chapter Nine: A Landmark Ruling - Rome Upholds Cleveland Appeals
Chapter Ten: Bringing Forth a Harvest
Chapter Eleven: "Making All Things Revenue" - Archdiocese of New York
Chapter Twelve: Perseverance, Pain, and the Will of God
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
About the author
Sister Christine Schenk has worked as a nurse midwife to low-income families, a community organizer, a writer-researcher, and the founding director of an international church reform organization, FutureChurch. Currently she writes an award-winning column for the National Catholic Reporter. Schenk is the author of Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity (2017), which received first place in the history category from the Catholic Press Association. Her most recent book, To Speak the Truth in Love: A Biography of Sr. Theresa Kane RSM (2019) won first place in biography from The Association of Catholic Publishers and a first place in biography from the Catholic Press Association. She is featured in the award-winning documentary Radical Grace and the 2017 documentary Foreclosing on Faith: America’s Church Closing Crisis which documents the pioneering canonical advocacy of the late Sr. Kate Kuenstler, which changed Vatican policy around church closings.
