This evening the voice of my blogging conscience emailed with the subject line, “Where’s the Where?” Good question, Nancy. The last week or two week, the place-based composition reader I’m working on with some colleagues as taken over my life and kept me from blogging about place (and kept me from being in any places besides the spot right in front of my computer). So Nancy has motivated me to post a photo I stopped to take earlier today.
On my recent bike rides to school, I’ve noticed this string of signs planted in yards along Foster St. protesting the May 25th announcement that Our Lady of Presentation church would be closed, one among 70 churches in the Boston area.
It’s significant that these houses sit right next to the Archdiocese property, a beautiful space just sold to Boston College for almost 100 million dollars in order to pay the costs of clergy sex abuse litigation. In a perverse ways, this was the best thing that could have happened to BC, since available land near the university is hard to come by. And BC continues to benefit: it just bought a 70-acre Dominican retreat center in Dover as well.
Comments
2 responses to “Save Our Lady of Presentation”
Interesting that there’s a shift of power from the Church to the college. Was BC vocal in support or in condemnation of the cover-ups? Now that I no longer live in Boston I’m removed from these clerical politics…
I don’t know if BC had any role in either exposing or covering up the scandal, but after everything came to light, BC’s primary response was to invite academic discussion of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. BC established the The Church in the 21st Century to serve as a forum for discussing the issue in an ongoing way, offering conferences, courses, publications, and lectures. This initiative seems like a productive, healthy response for a Catholic university like BC.