West Seattle, Washington
10 Tuesday
Looks like one of the mega-churches within the Seattle city limits is branching into West Seattle. Doxa on 35th apparently started as a “church plant” from the trendy Mars Hill Church in Ballard; now we’ve read in a few spots that Doxa will be rechristened Mars Hill-West Seattle (and in fact, when we drove through the area earlier this week, the Doxa logo was gone from the sign). We’re all for spiritual diversity; just wish this side of the bay could get a vibrant New Thought church going gangbusters as well …
Taking a break from the Holy Rosary situation … another West Seattle pastor makes it into the news today. Unfortunately, it’s because he seems to be “our” version of noted prejudice-monger Ken Hutcherson (second-to-last paragraph here; at least this story rescues the WS image with a more reasonable quote from Councilguy Dow).
Our friends who attend Holy Rosary are keeping us up to date on the priest situation following the bombshell resignation of the church’s longtime pastor. They say today’s church bulletin said “this weekend, the identity of our new pastor will be revealed, but he won’t arrive until July 1” — however, at least at the service they attended, they didn’t hear an announcement.
The Times picks up today on the flyer that we mentioned on Sunday. Also noteworthy in the story: a link to a remembrance blog. One of the listed contributors traces back here. Seems like something/someone I would have heard about before, so I went off in search of more info about that business — found two stories, here and here. (Not necessarily relevant to the topic at hand here except that it’s yet more proof of the abundant creativity bubbling beneath the WS surface!)
Seems the case isn’t entirely closed on the priest resignation at Holy Rosary. Our friends who go there tell us they got a flyer in today’s bulletin announcing a meeting on Tuesday night to discuss the whole thing. The flyer also says something about the circumstances of the case involving an area of the rules overseeing “sexual misconduct and harassment,” which wasn’t really hinted at in any of the local media stories about the departure. Wonder just how much information church leaders will be able to share; it’s going to be hard for the upset parishioners to really feel any kind of “closure” unless they really understand whatever it is in this case that was such a heinous violation.
Friends of ours who go to Holy Rosary say an official from local Catholic headquarters dropped a bombshell at morning services today: the church’s priest resigned amid allegations of “improprieties.” No details, but our friends say the official was careful in his announcement to point out that it involved “adults.” This has to be a big shakeup for hundreds of local families — this priest had run that church for more than a decade. Nothing about it on the Holy Rosary website as of this writing.
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