Posted on 11/23/2012 3:32:15 AM PST by IbJensen
MARYKNOLL, NY, November 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has canonically dismissed Roy Bourgeois from the priesthood because of his public dissent from the Catholic Church’s teaching on the ordination of women. Bourgeois’ dismissal was announced by the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, also known as the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, in a Nov. 19 statement.
As a Maryknoll priest during 2008, Bourgeois participated in a mock ordination of a woman and a simulated Mass at a Unitarian church in Lexington, Kentucky. The radical feminist group Roman Catholic Womanpriests staged the ceremony.
Subsequently Bourgeois was given a “canonical warning” that his actions could result in his excommunication and expulsion from his religious order.
(Roy Bourgeois with two women who attempted to be ordained in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church teaches that it does not have the authority to ordain women, and that any such ordinations are invalid.)
Bourgeois was given thirty days to recant his position, but instead he initiated a campaign against the Church, and published a letter insisting the Church was “wrong” on women’s ordination. “After much prayer, reflection and discernment, it is my conscience that compels me to do the right thing,” he wrote. “I cannot recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church.”
He went on to demand that “all Catholics, fellow priests, bishops, Pope Benedict XVI and all Church leaders at the Vatican ... speak loudly on this grave injustice of excluding women from the priesthood.”
The Vatican responded with a decree saying that any Catholic bishop who attempts the ordination of a woman or any woman who participates in such a ceremony, is subject to automatic excommunication.
This decree is backed up by the late Holy Father John Paul II’s 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in which he states, “In order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, ... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
Bourgeois was excommunicated “Latae sententiae” (meaning “sentence already passed” or automatically) for not recanting his public stance supporting the ordination of women.
The Maryknoll statement says that while “the Holy See and the Maryknoll Society have encouraged his reconciliation with the Catholic Church,” the priest instead “chose to campaign against the teachings of the Catholic Church in secular and non-Catholic venues.”
“This was done without the permission of the local U.S. Catholic Bishops and while ignoring the sensitivities of the faithful across the country. Disobedience and preaching against the teaching of the Catholic Church about women’s ordination led to his excommunication, dismissal and laicization.”
Bourgeois, 74, called his expulsion from the priesthood and the Maryknoll order “very difficult and painful,” in a Nov. 20 statement published by the “Women’s Ordination Conference.”
“The Vatican and Maryknoll can dismiss me, but they cannot dismiss the issue of gender inequality in the Catholic Church,” the statement said. “The demand for gender equality is rooted in justice and dignity and will not go away.”
The Maryknoll Fathers’ statement says, “Mr. Bourgeois freely chose his views and actions, and all the members of the Maryknoll Society are saddened at the failure of reconciliation. With this parting, the Maryknoll Society warmly thanks Roy Bourgeois for his service to mission and all members wish him well in his personal life.
“In the spirit of equity and charity, Maryknoll will assist Mr. Bourgeois with this transition,” the Fathers conclude.
And your illustration is an anachronistic laugher. Notice the misplaced Puritan, stage right?
There was an entire cottage industry of this stuff churned out for the credulous, well into the nineteenth century. Much of it has made its way onto the Internet. If you want to a least get some decent literary value for your money, go read Charles Kingsley. "Westward Ho!" even has Evil Jesuits, always good for a thrill.
But Kingsley got his clock cleaned by Bl. Cardinal Newman, just the same.
Secondary sources, huh? I would expect to hear no less from you...
Thanks. You did indeed bring this back on topic. The truth has to be told.
"To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."
- Bl. John Henry Newman
One of the Spiritual Acts of Mercy, right? :-)
What puzzles me (and Fr Z mentioned this on his blog) is, What has happened to the Maryknollers? They used to have some good, faithful priests. But the leadership did NOTHING to discipline Bourgeois until Rome basically forced them to. Wazzup widdat?
Maryknollers got busy in South America, full of adoration for Che Guevarra, and began their ‘liberation theology’. This began several decades ago and this action ate through the order like cancer.
Maryknoll became a (red) dyed-in-the-wool leftist order more interested in revolution that saving souls.
I stopped contributing at least 25 years ago.
The Kayyaker is especially hatefully disposed towards Catholics and whatever tenets held onto after the onslaught of Vatican II.
I shouldn’t, but I assume you’re a Novus Ordo attendee. Since my children are as well I can’t comment too much against what happened to our Church.
I attend a Church that is considered ‘traditional’, that is the priests and the Church conform to Pope Pius V’s proclamation of maintaining the mass, rubrics and tenets exactly as enumerated centuries ago.
The rationale is that since Jesus doesn’t wear Nikes the Church mustn’t be dragged into the 20th and 21 centuries to please the protestants and the muslims. Instead of being the bellweather that other Christians respected and admired and even looked up to for guidance, it became an entirely new religion. So I left and joined the old-timers. Since over half of my congregation is comprised of young families I guess that old-timer thing isn’t true.
Our parish generally uses the Ordinary Form, but we have Latin Mass every First Sunday. It's a very traditional parish (though not as traditional as the FSSP parish down the road) and there is no nonsense proclaimed from the pulpit or taught in religious education.
We could have joined the FSSP parish, but we prefer to encourage 'the reform of the reform' as instructed by the Holy Father. The Latin, Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony are bound to have an effect . . . .
The traditional church to which I belong in Florida is a non-affiliated church which, like the sedevacantists, believe the Roman Church is in serious error and does not hang a portrait of Pope Benedict.
Martin Luther was properly ordained, and for that matter all the English bishops who threw in their lot with Henry VIII were properly consecrated. That in no way justified their actions apart from and in opposition to the Church.
And of course, there's also the little problem about the gates of Hell not prevailing . . .
Many of us are praying that the SSPX will be able to work out a concordat with Rome and come back into the fold. We need them as salt and light in the Church, not off in a small corner congratulating themselves on their own salvation and not working to Counsel the Doubtful, Instruct the Ignorant, and Admonish Sinners.
Of course, I'm a veteran of the Episcopalian Wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, so I am not shy. Your average liberal Catholic is an easy sell, compared to your average liberal Episcopalian (which is a tautology, these days.)
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