ONE YEAR, ONE MONTH, AND COUNTING.............

Another month has passed in my enigmatic residency at Mercy McMahon Terrace, making thirteen months of being warehoused away from full time priestly ministry because I am in a wheelchair as a result of my right foot and leg below the knee amputation.  After a very active month of March participating in liturgies and other priestly ministry experiences and successfully standing on and walking with my prosthetic leg and gaining greater stability and ability with it, recognized by others in my circle of family, friends, and former parishioners, the diocese continues to remain silent and status quo about my remaining here and doing priestly ministry only part time by invitation versus by assignment.  What sense it makes that I remain here in a retirement community with residents two to four and a half decades others than I am, and doing less ministry as an active priest than I am capable of carrying out, is unnecessary, unfair, and unjust.  Unretired, there is no reason for me to be residing for one year and one month in a retirement community, with no assurance of an exit date in sight.  For the past month I have begun to search for alternative housing, if not possible in a parish rectory where I prefer to be, then in an apartment of my own choosing, where living normally for a person and a priest my age is possible.  My patience and willingness to remain here has expired.  The time to move out and go forward in fulfilling my vocation in parish priestly ministry has more than come.  Being sidelined to vegetate here most of the time makes no sense and is wasting the full time capabilities as a priest I retain.............Fr.  Troy