Months of no resources and zero cash-flow will break your priest's resistance. His bosses cannot afford to subsidize your chapel. (They need to keep every dime they can: it's traveling season, and they've lost many supporters.) Once the savings and operating accounts are depleted, there'll be no other choice but to throw in the towel. More than likely, the cult-masters will recall the priest, thinking they've left you in a lurch. However, if you followed our advice, you'll have lined up a replacement and identified a new site for your Mass center.
The transition should be smooth as you begin to rebuild anew. Sure, you may lose the building and the furnishings, but that's a small price to pay for self-determination and freedom from grasping, domineering clergy. At least by starving the beast you'll have guaranteed that the creature doesn't have any of your ready cash left. The last thing you want is for your funds to pay for a fancy vacation to a luxurious New Mexico spa. Make them sell the property and auction off the contents to get their mad money. The brokerage and auctioneer's fees will at least keep some of the proceeds out of their greedy hands.
There is the possibility that your priest may decide not to go with his masters. He and his fellow lumpen clergy all harbor a deep resentment about the way they've been treated. They particularly chafe at how these Écône Caligulas attempt to control every aspect of their lives. (It's amazing just how granular the meddling is! You'd think those bishops had more important things worry about -- like the people's good and their salvation.) In their hearts, the priest-children know what's wrong. They openly share their misgivings among themselves and whisper their complaints to sympathetic laity. Therefore, there's a good chance that your priest might find it opportune to escape from the soul-killing trap he's in. If he has any sense of dignity as a man, he cannot wish to remain where he's miserable and subject to the manic whims and unpredictable outbursts of his control-obsessed masters. If he has any sense of self-interest, he'll see the clear advantage of working for a lay board and joyfully exercising his priestly duties, freed from the restless pursuit of filthy lucre and oddball demands from afar.
For this reason, right before the cult masters pull the plug in spite, the board should approach the priest with a sincere offer to remain as the chapel's contract pastor. (Click here for a model employment contract.) Assure him that under a lay board, he'll be treated like a man and a priest, and not as a backward child under overbearing bishops who want to regulate every detail of his life, private and public. He'll have the protection of his contract and the bylaws; he'll be independent for the first time since he entered the seminary; and, most important, he'll be able to develop spiritually. Furthermore, if he's a "One-Hand" Dan product, by the board's insisting he undergo conditional ordination, he'll at last be relieved of nagging doubts about the validity of his orders.
That's a sweet deal. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will take it. We're betting your priest will. Even he sees the writing on the wall foretelling the end of chapels held ransom by grabby, ego-centric clergy. We bet your priest and his fellow completers are just waiting for the laity to come to their rescue.
Save them. Start with Step I tomorrow!
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