The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has offered to let a small Indian Catholic community move into a closed Framingham parish that has been occupied by protesters for the last three years.The unusual development, which will apparently result in the Indian priest living in the rectory across a walkway from where the Framingham Catholics are sleeping in the choir loft, is a new twist in the battle between the archdiocese and local Catholics over the fate of a handful of contested parish closings.
St. Jeremiah's in Framingham is one of five closed parishes still occupied by protesters, but is already in a strange state of limbo - officially shut down, purged from the archdiocese's online and printed directories, but with weekly Mass said by priests supplied by the archdiocese.
The closed parish has baptisms when members are born, and funerals when they die, but is barred by the archdiocese from celebrating weddings if any of their worshipers fall in love.
Now the archdiocese says it is inviting a little-known Eastern Rite Catholic community, the Syro-Malabars of southwestern India, to join the protesters in worshiping at the closed church.
An Indian priest, the Rev. Kuriakose Vadana, is to say an Eastern Rite Mass, facing away from the congregation, in Malayalam, which is the language of the Kerala region from which the Syro-Malabars hail; Vadana will also say a Latin Rite Mass, facing the congregation, in English, for the Framingham folks.
The archdiocese is hailing the plan as a testament to improved relations between church officials and the protesters; the protesters are denouncing what they say was a lack of consultation with them about the plan, but say they are happy to share space with a group of Catholics in need and optimistic after an initial conversation with Vadana yesterday.
"This is a Catholic community in need of a place to worship, and we open our arms to this community," said Mary Beth Carmody, a leader of the St. Jeremiah vigil, as the protest is called.
But, Carmody said, the worshipers are unhappy that Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley came up with the plan without speaking to them and has declined requests to talk directly with the parishioners.
"Does the cardinal value our community?" Carmody asked. "We have a diocese where so few people go to church, where so few people care enough to fight for their place of worship, and our people are a wonderful community."
Vadana, in a telephone interview, referred to the protesters as "good Christians, good Catholics" and said he would be happy to work with them.
The Syro-Malabars will pay all the expenses of the Framingham parish, which are currently paid by the Archdiocese of Boston. And the archdiocese says that if the parishioners lose their appeals, it intends to turn over the building to the Syro-Malabars.
The archdiocese said the situation would be similar to that at Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon, an Eastern Rite parish in Jamaica Plain that is part of the Maronite eparchy headquartered in Brooklyn.
"This step is not intended to signal that Saint Jeremiah Parish will reopen as a parish of the Archdiocese of Boston," archdiocesan spokesman Terrence C. Donilon said in a written statement issued yesterday. "After all canonical appeals have been concluded and taking their results into consideration, the Archdiocese will be in consultation with the leadership of the Syro-Malabar Eparchy concerning the possibility of establishing a Syro-Malabar parish at St. Jeremiah's."
The Framingham Catholics are suing the archdiocese in state courts, arguing they, and not the archdiocese, own the parish. And they are appealing the closing at the Vatican, arguing that the archdiocese committed a number of procedural and substantive errors in deciding to shutter the parish.
The Syro-Malabars are an ancient community who trace their founding to the apostle St. Thomas; they are fully in communion with Rome. There are about 3 million Syro-Malabars in the world, of whom an estimated 100,000 live in the United States, including about 100 families in Boston, according to the Rev. George Madathiparampil, vicar general of the Chicago-based St. Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese, which includes all Syro-Malabars in North America.
The Boston Syro-Malabar community currently worships in a small chapel at the Fernald School in Waltham.
St. Jeremiah Parish, which will mark its 50th anniversary in July, is the home parish of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher-astronaut killed in the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster, and its primary claim to fame is a set of bells dedicated in her memory.
The parishioners say that the family who gave money to establish the parish intended their money only to be used to finance Catholic worship, so the archdiocese has no right to sell the building.
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