Posted on 04/24/2008 10:11:49 AM PDT by NYer
Just as a sideline, in Spain until the early 20th century, when they degraded a cleric, they would slash his fingerpads. After the "Cura Merino" (Merino the Priest) attempted to assassinate Isabel II of Spain in the mid-19th century, he was laicized and before he was put to death, the fingers that he used to hold the consecrated species were slashed and his fingerpads removed. Now that would dissuade a few people here, I do believe!
...”here” meaning in the US, not on FR!
Thanks!
That's consonant with what is described generally in the Catholic Encyclopedia for degradation to the lay state.
sitetest
Richard Sipe is one of the good guys, isn’t he? A reformer of seminaries to weed out those who can’t bear the burden of celibacy?
Incidentally, I’ve met McCarrick. Struck me as queer as a three-dollar bill, printed in the new “lavender” color five-dollar-bill ink. But the allegations around him also involve other archbishops!
“Richard Sipe is one of the good guys, isn’t he?”
I'm not sure what you'll think after you read some of his writing:
sitetest
“Richard Sipe is one of the good guys, isn’t he? A reformer of seminaries to weed out those who can’t bear the burden of celibacy?”
Sipe is a man of questionable allegiances. However, that detracts nothing from the letter he wrote which appears to be spot on to me. It could just as well have been written about the English seminaries.
They have all tried to brush the homosexual infiltration under the carpet, but this may get the dirt out into the light of day again.
Isn’t another possibility to not laicize a priest, but bar him completely from practicing the sacraments? There is a two-word phrase for this in Latin I don’t recall, but I don’t know if it applies to bishops in the same way as to priests.
At first glance I thought you’d posted an article called “Sipes on Jesuit’s sexuality.” My next thought was, this is could lead to a heck of alot more than just two Canon Law cases.
That’s suspension “a divinis.” They seem to have figured out what to do with priests, actually, but the case of bishops is a little more complicated. And I imagine that the case of archbishops will be even more complicated, not because they are any different from bishops in terms of their sacramental powers, but simply because they’re more powerful and influential on a secular level.
If some of these allegations are correct, even some of our archbishops are part of the lavender mafia. IMO, this is why the situation of homosexuality among the priests has been so difficult to solve: it’s become part of the structure of many dioceses, from the top to the bottom. One of the problems with cliques of homosexual males is that they tend to promote and give preference to each other, which is precisely one of the reasons that efforts have always been made to keep them out of the military. In the American Church, we’re seeing their effect on an institution that they have largely taken over, and it ain’t pretty.
There was an interesting article I read by an Eastern Rite Catholic, who was schooled in Thomism, with respect to the ordinations done by Abp Milingo, the African Bishop was involved with the charismatic movement and ultimately married one of the Moonies. When Milingo performed those ordinations, Rome immediately said they were invalid. This Priest, who blogs at “Priestly Puglist” (I think) was shocked. From the Thomistic theological view (St. Thomas Aquinas for our non-Catholic friends), as long as the rite was followed and proper matter used (oil used) and man was being ordained, the ordinations were “valid” but “illicit”. So, he asked some friends of his in Rome and again they stated, no the ordinations were invalid.
Pope Benedict, who is fundamentally an Augustinian in his theologial world view, and thus as this writer puts it, he is an Augustinian in conversation with Aquinas, used what was called the “Bound Power Doctrine”, which is found in ST. Augustine’s writings on eccesiology. From this point of view, a Bishop is ordained for a purpose, and that purpose is for the good of the Church to build up the body of CHrist. Under this view, a Bishop can’t ordain someone against the “doctrine of Rome”, since there has never been a definition of what being raised the level of Bishop means. I was shocked when I read this, but as this Eastern Rite Catholic Priest points out, the Council of Trent states that a Bishop is consecrated. Vatican II used the term “a Bishop if ordained”. However, neither Council defined what those terms mean, and thus since a COuncil can’t directly contradict what a previous COuncil stated, exactly what being “consecrated as Bishop” and “ordained a Bishop” means has “never been fully defined by ROme”
So where does this leave us. A Bishop is consecrated and ordained for the purpose of ministry to the Church and service to the Body of Christ. It is not and ends to itself. Thus, nothing “ontologically” changes when a priest is ordained a Bishop. He is still a priest who has been given authority by the Church to use the fullness of the “priestly ministry that Christ gave him at his ordination”. So, there is nothing new added as the sacrament was conferred at priestly ordination, no new sacrament was conferred at a Bishop consecration/ordination.
In summary, what does this all mean. Well, I think it means 1) A Bishop, when ordained, is not “ontologically” different from when he was ordained a priest, 2) A Bishop who acts in direct opposition to Catholic Doctrine, even if he follows the Rite, may not be even by validly ordaining (e.g., the case of Milingo). In closing, it appears that a Bishop’s authority to ordain priests and confirm can in fact be taken away by the Church and even if that Bishop were to go into schism, the sacraments of priestly ordination, thus Eucharistic celebrations from said priests would “not be valid”. Of course, Baptisms would still since that, along with Holy Matrimony/Marriage are the 2 Sacraments that the Catholic Church sees as being valid among the Proestant confessions not in full Communion with Rome.
I encourage others to read this Eastern Catholic Priest’s blog at “Priestly Puglist” and let me know what you think. I found the entire discussion fascinating.
“Under this view, a Bishop can’t ordain someone against the ‘doctrine of Rome’,...”
This isn't as strange as it sounds, not even to Scholastic ears.
Archbishop Milingo, in accepting the authority of the Rev. Moon, became an apostate, as he more or less abandoned the communion of the Church for a non-Christian, pagan religion.
Were he to try to ordain priests or to consecrate bishops, he would no longer be intending to do what the Church does, which is to ordain priests who, in part, will offer the sacrifice of the Mass, and provide absolution to penitent sinners. Once you move over to something like the Unification Church, the very doctrines of the Mass and absolution of sin lose all meaning.
Thus, it isn't that he no longer has the intrinsic capacity to ordain priests or consecrate bishops, but rather that he can no longer intend what the Church does in the sacrament of Holy Orders, because the sacraments are meaningless in his new religious beliefs.
At least, that's how it looks to me.
sitetest
***he would no longer be intending to do what the Church does***
This is consistent with the reasoning behind the declaration that Anglican orders are invalid - that those ordaining and being ordained did NOT intend to do what the Church does. “Doing what the Church does” implies that the one doing believes all that the Church teaches and intends to be obedient, which in the case of Anglican orders they did not believe all that the Church teaches, and in the case of Archbishop Milingo he was totally disobedient.
“’Doing what the Church does’ implies that the one doing believes all that the Church teaches and intends to be obedient,...”
I don't think that's quite so. I don't think that obedience is wrapped up in that, otherwise, merely disobedient and schismatic prelates (Archbishop Lefebvre, again, as an example), would be unable to ordain priests or consecrate bishops. Neither does it require believing all that the Church teaches.
Rather, it's merely about intending to do as the Church does, given the particular sacrament. Ordaining a man into a sacrificial priesthood has no meaning if one is a follower of Rev. Moon.
But a bishop would not "believe all that the Church teaches" if he didn't believe the doctrine of papal infallibility, or that Mary was conceived without sin. Yet, he could still validly ordain men to the sacrificial priesthood, as he might still intend to ordain men to just that.
sitetest
That’s very interesting and it certainly does sound like a solution. It would certainly support the invalidity of Anglican orders, for example.
Another interesting aspect is that even in the case of sacraments (baptism and marriage) that can validly be performed by lay people and Protestants, it is necessary to intend to do what the Church does. Thus, for example, Mormon baptisms are invalid because they have an entirely different belief system, they are not Trinitarian Christians, and they do not intend to do what the Church does.
I’m going off to read the Priestly Pugilist now...thanks!
Thanks. You are correct, some bishops and archbishops are part of the “lavender mafia,” certainly not all, but much more than just a few. These people do all stick together and do promote, hire or cover for one another.
This is true in two areas, each which needs to be addressed a little differently by the Church from the highest levels. One is the topic here, basically diocesan priests and bishops. The other area is certain religious orders, or firmly entrenched groups within those orders, which have become almost like secret homosexual societies.
Given that these orders, the Jesuits for example, are even more “closed societies” than the Church hierarchy, with very little accountability, it will be difficult to reform them without aggressive action.
Interestingly, reform in the Church often comes not from the top, but from the laity. What’s happening is that healthy, normal young men are less and less attracted to the orders that have been perverted, and more men are becoming priests in the newer orders, or more orthodox orders. So the hope is that the aging fags controlling certain orders will gradually (were talking decades here) die, while their orders die along with them.
Another thing happening is there are “undercover” groups in some “bad”orders of faithful, orthodox men who don’t reveal their firm faith (hide those rosary beads) until they are ordained. Their intention is to reform their orders from within, it’s a deliberate and loosely organized plan in some areas, but very difficult to carry out where the insistence on defiance and deviance is pretty heavy-handed.
If this sounds like a weird conspiracy theory, all I can say in this forum is most people have no idea of the corruption, I would not except for family connections. But the sort of priests and people we see on EWTN are countering this evil and we must support them, good priests and bishops, with our prayers and more if we can. And we must refrain from supporting any “Catholic” organization without deeply looking into it to see if it’s still Catholic.
I should have posed I was taught by Dominican Sisters and was raised in a Dominican parish and thus have a strong respect fot Thomism and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Good thread all the way around.
God BLess
Go Dominicans! While some of them went a little overboard in the dread 70s and 80s, the order actually expelled some flakes from their midst (such as the infamous Fr. Fox, Gaia worshipper...) and has managed to hang onto enough good people and sanity that I think some of the Dominican groups have a good chance of coming back. Aside from the Nashville Dominicans, of course, who don’t have to come back because they never went anywhere. The only thing they need to do is find more money to build a larger convent, since they’re bursting at the seams with smart young women!
Years ago, when I first read Malachi Martin's Windswept House, I was was inclined to dismiss it as paranoid fantasy. But the more I observed over subsequent decades, the less inclined I was to dismiss it.
I think we'll be many more decades in cleaning up this mess, and yes, it will be the laypeople who take the lead or who give support to the good priests and bishops in driving this evil out of the Church.
Nice analysis you provided their as you are correct, the fact that he was ordaining priests for the Moonies is defacto not what his consecration as Bishop was for, which is to shepherd a Catholic Diocese in Communion with the Bishop of Rome and ordain men for Holy Orders to administer the sacraments and preach the gospel to the Catholic faithful intrusted into his care.
Still, this “Bound Theory” proposed by St. Augustine has som interesting implications for any situation where a Bishop is about to go into schism and ordain priests for the schimatic group, while at the same time maintaining all other essentials of the Catholic Faith. The Church can remove the Bishop from his Episcopal Consecration for as the article states, nothing as changed, in terms of the Grace given to the man being ordained into the priesthood which gives in the power to act “in persona Christi” , once that same Priest is later made a Bishop. In other words, a priest has all the Grace and power from Christ to administer all the sacraments when he is ordained a priest, no new Grace is given when made a Bishop.
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