The process at St. Rose - continued

Picking up on yesterday's post concerning the allegations against our pastor, some more considerations:

• St. Rose of Lima is not a wealthy parish, but it is not without resources. Having said that, the parish school has struggled in getting enough students. Like many Catholic parishes, you see a lot of gray hair in the pews at St. Rose. The parish school is about to celebrate its 75th anniversary, but there are concerns about the long-term viability of the school. Even if the allegations against Fr. Fitzpatrick are false, there will be repercussions in terms of attracting children to the school. This will be a definite challenge for the staff.
• Some commenters on the previous post were wondering about the identity of the accuser. We don't really know much about that. The archdiocese has to be quite circumspect about discussing any of these cases in a public forum. As the process goes forward, we'll likely learn more about the accuser.
• We don't know if the timing of the accusation is tied to the deadline for filing claims against the archdiocese in the bankruptcy proceedings. The deadline for new claims has now passed and the local lawyers, especially Jeff Anderson, were trolling like crazy for a month prior to the deadline. If you listened to the radio in your car on your commute in July, you likely heard Jeff Anderson talking about the deadline. It is possible that this accusation comes from that, but we don't know, because at this point the accuser has not come forward publicly. If that happens, we'll hear plenty about the case in the local media, which always takes Anderson's calls.
• What makes this case an additional challenge is that Fr. Fitzpatrick is the pastor at two parishes, St. Rose and Corpus Christi, a smaller congregation about a mile west of St. Rose. The two parishes work together a fair amount but they are separate and Corpus Christi will have a similar meeting with the archdiocese in a few weeks. 
• It's tough to know how this will play out. The archdiocese has to operate differently now and, given the problems of the past, that's a good thing. The Catholic Church has lost many, many people because of this ongoing scandal. While some have found shelter in Protestant congregations, too many Catholics of my generation no longer practice the faith. The Church has weathered plenty of other scandals over the past 2,000 years, and I suspect it will weather this one. In the meantime, the damage is immense.