Posted on 07/14/2004 8:14:37 AM PDT by Pyro7480
Rev. Paul Wickens, Latin Mass advocate Saturday, July 10, 2004
BY GEORGE BERKIN
Star-Ledger Staff
....Rev. Wickens, who defied the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to return to the traditional Latin Mass that was practiced before the changes ordered by the Second Vatican Council, died Thursday. He was 74....
....The church hierarchy was less enthusiastic. In a 1997 interview, a spokesman for then-Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick said Rev. Wickens' chapel was not a legitimate Roman Catholic entity. "He had no authorization to build it, to say Mass, to hear confessions or to preach. Those faculties were suspended in 1983 and have never been reinstated," said the spokesman, Michael Hurley....
....Last night a spokesman for the archdiocese expressed sorrow at Rev. Wickens' death....
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
RIP Fr. Wickens.
Obituary for Fr. Wickens ping. I did a Google search, and found this. The story also made it onto the AP wire, which I saw from my search.
Thanks for the ping.
"Rev. Wickens, who defied the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to return to the traditional Latin Mass that was practiced before the changes ordered by the Second Vatican Council, died Thursday."
Now that Rev. Wickens has left the Church Militant for his eternal reward, let's pray not only for the repose of his soul, but also that the Good Lord will send us more traditionalist priests of his caliber to keep the light of Faith alive in these dark days.
If only we had more priests with the courage to tell it like it is.
Relations between Rev. Wickens and the church hierarchy, already frosty, reached a breaking point in 1983. That February, Rev. Wickens held a press conference in Newark, denouncing another result of Vatican II -- the introduction of sex education into Catholic schools.And yet according to some on FR, it is precisely the "vipers" like Fr. Wickens who are going straight to hell for their "schism.""The material was without moral guidance and was inappropriate for some of the age groups," Rev. Wickens' brother said. "He felt they were stealing from children their innocence."
I will give just one example. It has to do with the paragraph you have highlighted. Fr. Wickens went to Rome and received jurisdiction and faculties from Rome.
His funeral was yesterday. He received a beautiful send-off in a Solemn Requiem High Mass. Prior to the funeral, he had been laid out in beautiful vestments and looked very much at peace. Domine, dona ei requiem sempiternam.
"Fr. Wickens went to Rome and received jurisdiction and faculties from Rome."
I know another priest (Reverend Father Timothy Hopkins at the Shrine of St Philomena in Miami) who received a celebret from Rome (the Ecclesia Dei Commission) granting him permission to offer the traditional Latin Mass exclusively. The only problem is that Favalora (the archbishop of Miami) finds the traditional Latin Mass divisive, tolerating only a single Sunday Sacrifice once a week (and even though only after a long and bitter battle). For well over a decade, Father Hopkins has tried to plead his case but the reply remains the same "the pope is bishop of Rome, I'm the bishop of Miami". Of course, requests for assistance from the Vatican have proved fruitless (since "this is an issue to be resolved with your bishop").
I was not talking of a celebret. I was referring to the jurisdiction and faculties a priest needs to provide valid and licit sacraments (I'm not a Canon lawyer, so I may not have the proper terminology).
It is my understanding that a priest - stricly speaking - does not need special permission from his bishop to celebrate the mass of history, the tridentine mass. The problem is that the Bishops are disobedient to the Pope, and regard the latin mass as a pesky fly to be swatted away, and interferes with the liberal/gay/autodestruction agenda the majority of priests seem to enable. Fr. Wickens was a good and holy priest who totally dedicated his life to God, and to Catholic people. McCarrick and his predecessor were no more Catholic then a flat tire. He was a thorn in their side, as he called them to task for their apostacy from the faith, and the sex ed agenda. So - Wickens was the diddident? If I had beenin his neck of the woods, I would have gone to his church anytime! At least you got the real mass said by a priest who truly taught the faith, and kept his vows.
A recent newsletter, for example, warns about "a sharp decline in faith as the homosexual prelates gained the upper hand."
Other lists have posted a number of articles on the suite he reserved at the seminary.
Amen! I wonder how many faithful Jesuits in the hereafter want to shake his hand for "Christ Denied", forever the definitive work on exposing the destruction of the church by the Chardinist heretics of the modern Jesuit Order. Requiescat in Pace!! Great priest! Pray for the repose of his soul daily. PAX..
**chapel was not a legitimate Roman Catholic entity. **
The truth?
Fr. Paul Wickens was the pastor of St. Anthony of Padua chapel http://members.tripod.com/StAnthonysChapel/ in West Orange, NJ. The chapel is "independent" of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ. The local ordinary has no control; therefore, is it Catholic?
As far as I know, Fr. Wickens was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark sometime in the 1950s, in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Newark, most likely by Archbishop Thomas Boland, who was archbishop from 1953 to 1974.
I heard that he decided to be disobedient when the Archdiocese introduced sex education into the parochial schools, a valid reason to be upset but not valid enough to not be in concert with the Holy See.
I don't believe the priest had any priestly authority while ministering in that church in West Orange, from what I understand he was not under the authority of any bishop nor was his church approved by the local ordinary. There is only one Pope and one Catholic Church. We can not go around making our own rules and building our own churches. Didn't Mel Gibson do something like that?
Father Denis McMahon left Saints Roger and Mary's Chapel in Boston [West Roxbury], MA, and went to help Fr. Paul when the cancer became too much to bear.
FYI, Fr. Wickens buried Fr. Malachi Martin the exorcist, this is not relevant to the post, I just wanted to throw in this tidbit. I recommend Fr. Martins books.
A Tridentine (Latin) Mass is offered just a few miles away in the Paterson Diocese at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel, Pequannock, NJ, by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, an order and church officially approved by the Holy See and the Local Ordinary, Bishop Rodimer, who is deemed a moderate to liberal bishop. He realized the need and provided it as a shepherd does.
Pequannock is more than "a few miles" from West Orange. It is at least a half hour drive. There is an indult Mass at Holy Rosary Church in Jersey City. Jersey City is about a 20 minute drive from West Orange.
Fr. Wickens's tragedy was not a phony one of offended cultural tastes but a genuine one of being literally ordered by Archbishop Gerety to perform objective immorality against the children of his parish by introducing an objectively evil sex "education" scheme to lead them to sin and take away their innocence.
Fr. Wickens was disciplined for refusing in his capacity as pastor to implement what he (likely rightly) regarded as a sex ed program that would have undermined the innocence of the children in his longtime parish school in the manner of SIECUS type programs. He then, after being fired as pastor and deprived of his priestly privileges by Gerety and continuing to occupy his rectory until evicted per order of the New Jersey courts, after which the parish school became a near occasion of sin as he feared.
Fr. Wickens was certainly not at that time an advocate of clerical reveolution against the papacy. If he later fell into the evils of Marcel's schism, then may God have mercy on his soul for that as well as for the customary sins.
Fr. Wickens's strategy was not wise. He had other and more effective alternatives. He could have retired and/or petitioned Rome to be laicized citing his reasons and formed an alternative school for the children of that parish and others to be protected in their innocence from the archdiocesan sex "education" program, simultaneously providing more doctrinally sound education generally (in communion with the Holy See) than Gerety would have permitted. Fr. Wickens could have sued in the ecclesiastical courts, holding resignation in reserve in the event of unfavorable decision and serving a great function in the event of a favorable decision. Instead, he cut and run on a do-it-yourself basis and effectively abandoned his vocation and priesthood.
Like most, Fr. Wickens was a flawed man but possessed of significant good as well. At least when I knew him, he did not foment revolution against the Holy See, advocate that people despise the Holy Father and advocate criminally illicit consecration of rebel bishops of extremely bad judgment.
The "vipers" are the antipapal revolutionaries who dare appropriate the good name of "Roman Catholic" while denying the validity of the normative Mass and while even urging people not to attend Indult Tridentine Masses lest they inadvertently support the normative Mass (as though such vipers were neither excommunicated nor adjudged in schism by their adherence to the schism). Fr. Wickens, in his crisis with Gerety, was NOT one of those.
Again, stop the opportunistic campaign of vilification against the Holy Father, stop opportunistically using a man like Fr. Wickens on the occasion of his death to further abuse the Church, repent and return to the Roman Catholic Church.
Max: Also see #7, #15 and #16 for what appears to be proof that Fr. Wickens did not fall into the SSPX schism from posters closer to him geographically and more up to date on him than thee or me. Rome is not issuing credentials authorizing priestly function to priests of the schism.
Regrettably, Fr. Paul WEicken's brother Albert is inviting the foxes into the henhouse by having Fr. Wickens's funeral said by schismatic SSPX priests and suggesting that they take over what has been a Catholic chapel via Fr. Wickens's credentials from the Vatican itself. What a dishonor to his memory!
I hate to burst your delusional bubble but Fr. Wickens himself gave the chapel to SSPX. He was interviewed in their book 'Priest, Where Is Thy Mass'. Considering all that, he can be considered a friend of the SSPX as many independent priests are.
Here's a tissue.
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