Posted in January, 2009
The current book by my armchair is The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican by David Yallop. In the chapter, “The Marketplace” the author discusses the discreet, but powerful involvement of money in the popular Medjugorje pilgrimage site. A series of local bishops declared the apparitions a hoax and the visionaries liars, but so far the Vatican has declined to make a pronouncement.
On page 221 of the book the author quotes this gem from a member of the Secretariat of State about Medjugorje: “Of course its a fraud but the money is genuine.” 
On January 6, 2009, the conservative Italian Catholic website “Petrus” broke a story that Pope Benedict has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to prepare a vademecum, or handbook, on how to deal with alleged Marian apparations and visions such as those at Medjugorje. It actually amounts to an update of a 1978 document on the same subject.
It would reportedly require individuals who said they have experienced appearances or visions of the Virgin Mary to remain silent while their claims are investigated carefully by Church authorities.
The document was also rumoured to specify that local bishops should set up commissions composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, theologians and priests to investigate the claimed apparitions.
The commission is supposed to establish whether the visionary seems psychologically unstable; whether trickery or economic interests may be involved; whether any alleged revelation is consistent with church teaching; and whether there are grounds to suspect demonic influence.
One interesting winkle: according to the Petrus report the alleged seers will be required to turn over their computers to investigators, who are supposed to determine if they’ve gone online researching miracles and wonders–suggesting that perhaps they wanted to minic other famed incidents.
In the background to these alleged new guidelines lurks the continuing controversy over Medjugorje, the Bosnian site where the Virgin Mary has been delivering revelation to a group of local seers since 1981. Medjugorje has become a pilgrimage destination for millions of devotees every year, despite the fact the church has never authenticated the visions. Pope John Paul II was a believer.
Vatican concern has also been shaped by ferment in Italy over the “Madonnina” or “little Madonna” of Civitavecchia–a small statute of the Virgin, originally purchased in Medjugorje, which has reportedly been shedding tears of blood since the mid-1990s. 
In May 2008, his excellency Andrea Gemma, 78, bishop emeritus of the Isernia-Venafro Diocese northeast of Rome and one of Italy’s best known exorcists, announced in Petrus that the Catholic Church had officially stated that the Blessed Mother had never appeared in Medjugorje and that the entire operation was the “work of the devil.” When asked to be more specific about the interests motivating involvement in Medjugorje, the bishop declared, “I’m referring to the devil’s shit, money.”
The fact that many priests from around the world continue to lead pilgrimages there is “a disgrace,” the bishop added. “The phony seers and their assistants make money hand over fist, while at the same time the devil creates dissension between the faithful and the Church.”
The well known theologian Rene Laurentin, after years of research, has recorded over 2,450 Marian documented events in the history of the church. But out of almost 300 requests for investigation initiated in the last 100 years, church authorities have officially certified as true only a dozen appearances. The most recent recognition is “Our Lady of Laus,” in France, which took place on May 8, 2008.
The local diocese declared the apparition as authentic in 1665. It only took the Vatican three and a half centuries to concur.
Former Papal Envoy to the U.S., Archbishop Jean Jadot of Belgium, died last week at the age of 99. Jadot’s predecessor and successor as papal delegates to the U.S. received the red hat of a cardinal. Jadot never received one in recognition of his work here. In fact, he is the only Vatican diplomat assigned to the United States that was never made a cardinal. Why not a red hat? 
In 1973, Pope Paul VI sent Archbishop Jadot to Washington, DC to serve as the apostolic delegate to the United States. The pope told him he was chosen partly because he was not part of the Vatican bureacracy, and thus might not be as pliable in the hands of powerful American bishops; who to Paul VI’s view were often more businessman than pastor. Jadot was sent to press the American church to carry out the reforms of Vatican II, and find candidates for future episcopal appointments who were willing to do so.
Although largely undone by the conservative appointments of Pope John Paul II, Jadot had a hand in over 100 nominations, including such well known names as Roger Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, Joseph Cardinal Bernadin of Chicago, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, Archbishop Rembert Weakland in Milwaukee, Archbishop Francis Hurley of Anchorage, and Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Virginia. All of these bishops have made an effort to outreach to Catholics on the margins, including gay people.
As a Washington Post article said in 1983, “Whatever their background, the new breed of bishops was less concerned with the ring-kissing and watered silk vestments that went with the office, and more with getting to know their people.”
Paul VI saw an evolving role for his nuncios after Vatican II. “Nuncios should travel,” Paul VI said, not so much as the representatives of Rome to secular governments, or even as legates between Rome and the world’s bishops. Instead, they should “show the Pope’s concern for the poor, the forgotten, the ignored.”
Although Archbishop Jadot strongly adhered to most of the church’s teachings, including its opposition to abortion, he was willing to leave some issues, like artificial contraception, to individual consciences. He also helped to lead a largely successful effort to push the American church to welcome minorities, widen the role of women, increase participation by the laity and relax some rules, like the automatic excommunication of divorced people.
In A Watchman for the House of Israel , his November 9, 1976 address to the general meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jadot called attention to the situation of minorities in the American church: “How are we to give pastoral care to those who do not feel at home with our white, Western European ways of public worship and community living, to those who have not adapted and do not want to adapt to what we call our American way of doing things?”
He added, “I wonder if the majority of our priests and people realize our shortcomings in these areas and even our arrogance toward our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in some ways different from ourselves. I wonder if we can ever fully understand the legitmate frustrations that they feel.”
He could have been speaking about how gay Catholics feel treated by their church.
In his concluding remarks, the apostolic delegate called brief attention to two other areas of concern that the bishops would have to follow up on: “There are other problems either near or far on the horizon. I could mention the question of the role of women in society and in the church or problems that will come from the rejection of the traditional standards of morality in society, political and business life.”
Jadot concluded his address to “my brother bishops” by saying: “Let us be confident, courageous and open to the Spirit. Let us build the church of God by our foresight.”
After this address the apostolic delegate became the target of bitter animosity from conservative bishops and laypeople. He received a steady flow of anonymous hate mail telling him to get out of the United States and go back to Belgium. He was also being denounced at the Vatican. At one point, Jadot offered his resignation to Paul VI, who responded immediately by saying, “No. You are doing just what I want you to do.”
The anti-Jadot campaign was allegedly spearheaded by Cardinals John Carberry of St. Louis, John Krol of Philadelphia and John Cody of Chicago. Polish-American Cardinal Krol had the ear of John Paul II and eventually convinced him Jadot was “destroying the Catholic church in the United States.” Cardinal Cody was opposed to Jadot because he knew personally that Jadot had asked Paul VI to remove him. 
When John Paul II became pope, Archbishop Jadot was relieved of his position and given a minor post. The fact he was not honored with the customary red hat was the subject of a September 7, 2002 article in the Tablet by veteran Vatican reporter Robert Blair Kaiser.
“The Jadot I found in Brussels,” Kaiser wrote, “did not strike me as a man who was nursing any grievences. He knew he had done a fine job – for Paul VI and for the Church. He refused to speculate about why he did or did not become a cardinal, and had good words, moreover, for some in the Roman Curia. He said he liked Cardinal Gianbattista Re. “I trust him very much. He’s in the category of honest people.”
“I asked him how many cardinals he in put in that category.”
“Jadot hesitated, then laughed. ‘I don’t know all the cardinals,’ he said.”
But Jadot may have expressed his private feelings to his good friend and biographer, theologian Dr. John (Jack) Dick, the day his successor, Archbishop Pio Laghi, who appointed conservative bishops, was named a cardinal on May 29, 1991. That day, after lunch, Jadot said, “It is a slap in my face.”
Dr. Dick, now retired from the University of Louvain in Belgium, is completing a book about Jadot titled Paul’s Man in Washington. Perhaps the book will reveal things Jadot was too much of a diplomat and a gentleman to ever mention directly.
On the other hand, when it came time to select a new archbishop in Vienna in 1986, John Paul II picked Hans Hermann Groer, a Benedictine abbot, because he had met the man at a Marian conference and was impressed for one reason alone: his obvious devotion to Our Lady. (Cardinal Franz Konig got the news about Groer’s appointment on television.) A few years later, Groer had to retire after allegations that he had been seducing the young men at his monastery.
The AP story headline read: Vatican secret confessional tribunal opens up. “One of Vatican’s most secrecy shrouded tribunals,” the story began, “which handles confessions of sins so grave only the Pope can grant absolution, is giving the faithful a peek into its workings for the first time in its 830-year history.”
It’s known as the Apostolic Penitentiary, and its currently headed by an American, Cardinal James Francis Stafford.
“Even though it’s the oldest department of the Holy See, it’s very little known – specifically because by its nature it deals with secret things,” said Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the tribunal’s #2 official.
The sins this “tribunal of conscience” hears include:
1. Defiling the Eucharist.
2. A priest breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who sought penance.
3. A priest who has sex with someone and then offers forgiveness for the act.
4. A man who directly causes an abortion–such as paying for it–who then seeks to become a priest or deacon.
5. Physically attacking the Pope.
6. A bishop who consecrates another bishop without permission from the Holy See.
These sins bring automatic excommunication. Once the pope has granted absolution, the excommunication is lifted.
Personally, I was surprised. I would have thought mass murder, child prostitution and pornography, stealing food from starving people, etc. would have been worse sins, but I guess not.
“Maximum Leader,” (who I assume is Catholic, given his comments and other posts on religion) weighed in on his blog, Naked Villany: 
“This was quite intriguing to your Maximum Leader as he’d never known such a tribunal existed. And he also never knew specifically that there were sins so grave that only the Pope could grant absolution. He had assumed that there were probably real “doozy†sins that required going to a Bishop. He supposes that at some level he might have assumed that there were sins so serious one would need to get in contact with Rome (at least) before granting absolution.
One wonders if the act of confession dealt with by the Apostolic Penitentiary actually ends with the penitant coming and confessing to the Pope personally. Your Maximum Leader would assume that it would have to be a face to face encounter. He doubts that the Pope would sit in a little confessional and open the screen to hear the confession.
This reminds your Maximum Leader of one time he went to confession. Many years ago he happened to be on the campus of Catholic U and walked into the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It was during one of the times they offered Confession, so your Maximum Leader decided to make a confession. Up to this point in his life, he’d always gone into the little dark confessional and waited for the screen to open and get started. Well, there was some construction in the area where they normally have the confessionals. So he waited in a side chapel in front of a nondescript door. People would go in, and after a time would come out. When it was your Maximum Leader’s turn he walked in and found himself face to face with a priest sitting in a bright room with two chairs. There was a moment there when your Maximum Leader considered walking right out without opening his mouth. He was used to the dark. Used to the annonymity. Used to hiding what he was doing. But there was no hiding here. Bright light. Open chairs. Face to face (almost eye to eye) contact.
It was one of the most difficult things your Maximum Leader ever did; making his confession that day.
In retrospect it seemed the most fulfilling as well. There was something very comforting about seeing the priest and making a personal connection.”
Your Censor Librorum remembers the last time she went to Confession. The priest refused to grant absolution because she refused to promise to stop using birth control. She and her husband were students, and she told the priest that while she intended to have children someday, they could not afford them when they were in school. The priest asked her to leave the confessional, and she never went back.
Confession is good for the soul; secrets we are ashamed of, and carry around inside can be corrosive. It is a relief to unburden yourself, and ask to be forgiven. When we feel forgiven, it helps us to forgive ourselves.
But we need to make sense of the sins, so the emptying is not an empty gesture.
New Calvinist Mark Driscoll, 38, is the head preacher at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He believes Christianity has gone soft on sin, women should submit to their husbands, and the Gospels have been watered down to a glorified self-help program. In regards to church music, “I’ll be happy,” he said, “when we have more than just prom songs to Jesus sung by some effeminate guy on an acoustic guitar offered as mainstream worship music.” 
Driscoll says he admires Martin Luther, the vulgar, beer-swilling theological rebel who sparked the Reformation. “I found him to be something of a mentor. I didn’t have all the baggage he did. But you can see him with a quill in one hand and a drink in the other. He married a brewer and renegade nun. His story is kind of indie rock.”
Driscoll was raised Roman Catholic. In high school he met a pretty blond pastor’s daughter named Grace who gave him his first Bible. He was “born again” at 19. “God talked to me,” Driscoll said. “He told me to marry Grace, preach the Bible, plant churches and train men.”
The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that..would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”
Driscoll takes issue with any group who would rename the Trinity (like “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier”) “The One God has kindly told us who He is—Father, Son, and Spirit. But some chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists and minors in “womyn’s studies†are not happy because two persons of the Trinity have a dude-ish ring.”
“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.”
Mark Driscoll certainly is up for a butch, rough trade Jesus. If he ever wants to come back to Catholicsm, he can always hook up with the Dignity leather group, The Defenders.
The web is loaded with praise, criticism and withering commentary on Driscoll, his church, and his brand of New Calvinism. Two of the funniest are Ultimate Fighting Jesus by Dan Savage, and David Goldstein’s Huffington Post blog, Who’s to blame for Pastor Haggard’s fall from grace? His fat, lazy wife.
Amen.
The parishioners are not letting their church get taken from them and sold.
St. Frances Cabrini was among dozens of churches that the Archdiocese of Boston decided to close and sell in 2004, partially to help pay the costs associated with the priestly sex abuse scandal. While most churches closed without a fight, parishioners at St. Frances rebelled.
Kim Brown, 36, said she had become convinced that St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was a victim of its real estate.
Built when this South Shore community was considered the Irish Riviera, the church towers over a wide clearing on the side of a wooded road; ocean views beckon just over the treetops. ”The biggest problem is we have 30 acres of buildable land,” said Marsha Devir, 50.
Brown said church leaders never understood the commitment parishioners had put into the parish and the vigil. ”They’re not seeing the whole picture,” she said. ”They’re just seeing dollar signs. You know what? Sell some of your Vatican jewels. We need this church as a town and as a community.”
For over 1,560 days, the group at St. Frances has taken turns guarding the building around the clock so that the archdiocese cannot lock them out and put it up for sale. They call it a vigil, but for many it has become part of the way of living their faith.
“It’s much more of a living 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week faith,” said Margy O’Brien, 78, a parishioner since St. Frances opened in 1960. “My generation of Catholics have paid, prayed and obeyed, but you get to a point where you’ve had it.”
Many of the people involved in the vigil describe being transformed from passive Catholics to passionate, deeply involved members of a spiritual community that they say could be a model for the future of the church. 
“You would think because there are fewer and fewer priests that the various archdioceses would welcome a new configuration,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “Let the lay people do everything but the sacramental.”
Since St. Frances has no priest, parishioners lead services that include everything but the consecration of the host. On the Sunday before Christmas, about 50 parishioners attended a service conducted entirely by women, including the distribution of Communion. The hosts had been consecrated elsewhere by a priest described by Mrs. MaryEllen Rogers as “sympathetic.”
Parishioners hold suppers in the vestibule and meet Tuesdays to say the rosary. They raise money as a nonprofit group, donate to charities, and open the church to outsiders seeking comfort or repose.
“Lots of troubled people have come through and all they need, really simply, is someone to connect to,” said Karen Virginia Shockley, 43, who participates in the vigil with her two teenage sons. “Usually there’s an older person here who will sit down and just listen to you.”
Some parishioners have grown so disenchanted with the church hierarchy and so fond of the vigil routine that they cannot imagine returning to the old way.
“I cannot go back to the priest and the vestments and all that, I always felt, prince-of-the-church approach,” said Mary Dean, 61, who keeps vigil at St. Frances at least four hours a week. “I’ll always be a Catholic, but I may not be able to worship in the mainstream Catholic Church.”
”A very good thing has happened in this vigil,” Margy O’Brien added. ”A strong faith community has formed. There have been many little miracles happening. People’s lives have been touched, some improved. And I think this group of vigilers will be a strong community forever. I don’t regret doing this at all. Not one moment.”
After opposing a United Nations declaration that called for the decriminalization of homosexuality last month, the Vatican issued its own call to eliminate criminal penalties for homosexuality.
“The Holy See appreciates the attempts made in (the declaration) to condemn all forms of violence against homosexual persons as well as urge states to take necessary measures to put an end to all criminal penalties against them,” the statement said.
“The Holy See continues to advocate that every sign of unjust discrimination towards homosexual persons should be avoided,” said Vatican spokesman Fr. Frederico Lombardi.
An explanatory note published in the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said that if the resolution on sexual orientation aimed simply at ensuring no country treated homosexuality as a crime, “there would have been no reason for (the Vatican) to criticize that document.”
“The Catholic church maintains that free sexual acts between adult persons must not be treated as crimes to be punished by civil authorities,” said the newspaper. 
The Vatican specifically objected to the declaration’s use of the terms, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” According to L’Osservatore Romano, these terms “imply that sexual identity is defined only by culture,” and their use in the declaration is part of an attempt to “equate same-sex unions with marriage and give homosexual couples the change to adopt or ‘procreate’ children.”
The paper argued that the declaration would endanger “other human rights,” such as “liberty of expression…thought, conscience and religion,” since it might limit religions in their freedom to teach that homosexual behavior is morally wrong.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the U.N., warned the European-backed text could “create new and implacable discriminations.” “For example,” he said, “states that do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”
The Declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity was presented to the U.N. General Assembly on December 18, 2008. This non-binding declaraton, which was sponsored by France and backed by the 27-member European Union, received 66 votes in the 192-member U.N. General Assembly. Aside from the Holy See, opponents included China, Russia, the United States and the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Sponsors of the European text point out that homosexuality is still punishable by law in 93 countries and by death in seven of them, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Nigeria.
An opposing Arab-backed statement, read out at the United Nations by Syria, said the European text could lead to “the social normalisation, and possibly the legitimisation, of many deplorable acts including paedophilia.”
Fr. Lombardi told Reuters that the Vatican did not support the Arab-backed statement, either.
The Vatican’s tilt toward leniency didn’t rub off on the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez. 
The cardinal fumed that “killing children (abortion) or promoting marriages between all kinds of people, men with men, women with women,” leads to nowhere. The countries that choose to experiment with these things “will sink morally,” he added.
“I don’t thank the U.N. for anything, nothing, since today it is making such a great effort to spread this immortality throughout the entire world,” Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez continued. Calling on Domincans to “defend our country,” the cardinal exclaimed, “To those who want to come and bring that immorality here, get out! We are not interested.”
Those comments weren’t the cardinal’s first anti-gay press foray.
According to El Nacional, back in November 2007, the Cardinal, arguing that fidelity should be at the core of education efforts to stem pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases “explained that for those reasons the Catholic church was opposed to promiscuity between ‘heterosexuals and maricones’ because sex had to be of the moment and between a man and a woman.”While discussing gays coming to Santa Domingo, RodrÃguez remarked, “They should stay in Europe or the United States, we don’t need that social trash, we don’t need it.”
I wonder if the maricones Cardinal RodrÃguez has met among his clergy and in the Vatican appreciated being called “social trash.” I doubt it.
Proposition 8 was a California constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Much to the utter shock of many people, especially gay people in California that took tolerance for granted, the measure passed on election day. The people who voted for it in the largest numbers were black Christians who also pulled the lever for Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama. Obama won, but so did Proposition 8. 
The California dioceses and California Catholic Conference weighed in against the measure, and the Knights of Columbus provided over $1 million for media and public relations efforts. Against this flood one gay priest spoke out against it, Father Geoff Farrow. Who said all the good men were gone from the priesthood?
Shock, anger, bitter disappointment, hostility, disillusionment, grim resolve…Quo Vadis, lesbian and gay Catholics? Walk away from Rome, or walk back to your people?
Two of the Roman Catholic dioceses in California have made an effort to extend an conciliatory hand to homosexual Catholics and others who support gay marriage, and worked for the defeat of Proposition 8.
Shortly after the vote, when name-calling and tempers on both sides were starting to rise, Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco made an appeal for public civility, gently chiding everyone that “tolerance, respect and trust are two-ways streets, and tolerance, respect and trust often do not include agreement or even approval. We need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.”
“While we argue among ourselves,” he continued, “the people who need our help with hunger, unemployment, homelessless and other problems wait for us to turn together toward them. More particularly, we Catholics in the Archdiocese of San Francisco need to minister to the needs of all Catholics in this local church. Whoever they are and whatever their circumstances, their spiritual and pastoral rights should be respected, together with their membership in the church. In that spirit, with God’s grace and much prayer, perhaps we can all move forward together.”
On December 3, 2008, about a month after the passage of Proposition 8, Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney, and all six of the auxiliary bishops signed a letter titled – A Pastoral Message to Homosexual Catholics in the Archiocese of Los Angeles.
“As bishops of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” the letter begins, “we are addressing this message first of all to homosexual members of our church. Given the controversy generated by the passage of Proposition 8, we want to reassure each of you that you are cherished members of the Catholic Church and we value you as equal and active members of the body of Christ.” 
“The passage of Proposition 8 in the state of California does not diminish in any way the importance of you, our homosexual brothers and sisters in the church. Nor does it lessen your personal dignity and value as full members of the body of Christ. The church’s support of Proposition 8 was our effort to resist a legal redefinition of marriage.”
“We were disappointed that the ballot information about Proposition 8 stated that the purpose of the initiative was ‘to ban gay marriage.’ From the very beginning, this was not our purpose.”
“Proposition 8 was never intended, directly or indirectly, to lessen the value and importance of gay and lesbian persons. Your intrinsic values as human beings and as brothers and sisters continues without change. If we had ever thought that the intent of this proposition was to harm you or anyone in the state of California, we would not have supported it. We are personally grateful for the witness and service of so many dedicated and generous homosexual Catholics. We pledge our commitment to safeguard your dignity.”
“We welcome thoughtful and civil dialogue with you so that we can deepen our realization that all of us cherish God’s creative life which we equally share. We are committed to find ways to eliminate discrimination against homosexual persons and to help guarantee the basic rights which belong to each of us.”
Read the whole letter here.
The remaining California Dioceses of San Diego, Orange, Fresno, San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, San Bernadino, Monterey, Santa Rosa, and Stockton have apparently declined to offer any post-Proposition 8 reconciliation.
Archbishop Niederauer and Cardinal Mahoney did go out on a limb to reach out and reassure gay Catholics. Their statements were disingenuous in spots, but for the most part I believe they are sincere.
I hope one of them is willing to offer Fr. Geoff a pastoral position, if he needs to leave Fresno.
Fr. Roy Bourgeois, 69, a Maryknoll priest and nationally known peace activist, has been excommunicated for his participation at an ordination rite for women. 
Bourgeois ran afoul of Vatican doctrine by participating in the August 9, 2008 ceremony in Lexington, Kentucky, to ordain Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a member of Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Sevre-Duszynska is the 35th woman to be ordained.
Vatican spokesman Fr. Frederico Lombardi said Bourgeois’ excommunication would be automatic, in other words, a latae sententiae excommunication, effective when the offense is committed. In other words, the person excommunicates himself or herself.
Excommunication is the most severe penalty under church law, cutting off a Catholic from receiving or administering the sacraments.
Fr. Bourgeois said he was following his conscience in his participation at the ordination rite, though it was clearly against the church’s teaching on women’s ordination.
“Conscience is very sacred,” Bourgeois said in his November 7, 2008 letter to Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. “Conscience gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do the right thing…Conscience is what compels women in our Church to say they cannot be silent and deny their call from God to the priesthood..And after much prayer, reflection and discernment, it is my conscience that compels me to do the right thing. I cannot recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church.”
James Martin, SJ, a writer and associate editor of America Magazine, noted in its document Dignitatis Humane, the Second Vatican Council wrote: “On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all his activity man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with this conscience, especially in matters religious.”
Martin added that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting from Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes notes, “Conscience is man’s most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”
Fr. Bourgeois was impelled to follow his conscience. He must have known by participating in the ceremony–particularly in the laying on of hands, one of the main symbols of ordination in the Catholic church–his actions would have some serious consequences.
But why did the Vatican feel compelled to enforce canon law and excommunicate him within three months of the event?
In comparison, I do not know of s single instance where a Catholic priest, bishop or other religious has been publicly excommunicated for the sexual abuse or rape of a minor.
Does that mean it’s more of a scandal for a man in good conscience to participate in the laying on of hands in a women’s ordination ceremony; than a man to lay hands on a child for his sexual gratification?
Is something off here?
