Thriving Parish: Success Is a Damnation
According to La Cigüeña De La Torre (InfoVaticana.com, 9 February), the parish church has four confessionals that are never empty for a single minute during the Eucharist.
Many receive Holy Communion properly and don't take it with their hands. Some receive it on their knees on the hard floor because the parish priest, Don Jesús Higueras, doesn't want to provide a kneeler.
There is a remarkable number of young people in the congregation and in front of the confessionals.
At the nine o'clock Eucharist, which La Cigüeña attends, many people stand because the pews are full.
The Masses at twelve and half past one are almost inaccessible because the number of people attending far exceeds that of the nine o'clock mass.
Even the 7.45 a.m. weekday Mass attracts a crowd that would be the envy of many Madrid parishes on their most visited Sunday Eucharist.
When the Archdiocese of Madrid held a collection for the victims of the floods in Valencia, Caná contributed 140,000 euros (!) of the one million euros collected by the Archdiocese of Madrid, which has 476 parishes.
La Cigüeña writes that all these achievements, instead of inspiring enthusiasm in some people, only seem to provoke "envy".
In a normal organisation, a manager like the parish priest of Caná would have been promoted to the highest levels, he says: "Well, not at all. And worse".
Until now, Don Jesús also had some exemplary priests who were his collaborators and loved by the parishioners.
But in less than six months these three priests, Don Nicolás, Don Fernando and Don Gonzalo, were transferred by the archdiocese: "With the exception of Don Nicolás, the other two have been assigned to less important posts than the ones they had".
"I don't understand it and I don't think the parish does either," writes La Cigüeña, "unless we resort to envy."
"There are some people dumber than Abundio [= Spanish saying]. Or meaner than Jack the Ripper."
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