Posted on 04/27/2012 8:57:37 AM PDT by marshmallow
BELLEVILLE -- The Rev. Bill Rowe said Wednesday he will not go quietly into forced retirement, even if his only avenue of appeal is to Cardinal Raymond Burke in Rome, who has already told Belleville Bishop Edward Braxton to get rid of the Mount Carmel priest.
"There have been so many people who have supported me and said that what was happening was right, I feel that maybe I have to just let Bishop Braxton complete the course to remove me and say I fought the best fight I could."
Rowe, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Mt. Carmel, drew national attention through his practice of ad libbing parts of the liturgy that are said during the Roman Catholic Mass.
The liturgy was recently revamped to reflect earlier Latin versions, a move by the Vatican that has received criticism from some Catholics. It is supposed to be followed word for word.
Braxton could not be reached. He has a policy of not commenting to local media.
However, during a meeting with Braxton on Tuesday at the Chancery in Belleville, Rowe said he was told that if he didn't go, he would be removed. Straying from the strict wording of the liturgy was only one of the accusations. In an email, Rowe said Braxton also brought up two marriages that Rowe said he officiated over as civil unions, even though the divorced people involved had not received formal annulments from the church.
"The parties got divorced and were going to marry others and they asked me if I would at least do a civil marriage," Rowe said.
"They knew I couldn't do the regular thing, so in both cases the gesture to keep them within the fold of the church was better than forcing them to go somewhere else."
Braxton, according.......
(Excerpt) Read more at bnd.com ...
I know a number of Catholics who claim they are former altar boys...Are they lying???
Sounds really odd...A Baptist minister can't conduct a baptism without a body of water...It would be unbiblical...
A Baptist minister would have no trouble explaining the Lord's supper which btw has nothing to do with water baptism...
To me, it sounds more like this man actually knows God and has a personal relationship with Him...He's comfortable carrying on a conversation with God instead of just repeating repetitious, meaningless prayers put out world wide by a religion...
Cardinal Law was fully investigated by the state attorney general of Massachusetts and by the district attorneys in ALL FIVE of the counties of the Archdiocese. He gave evidence before two grand juries. The state attorney general, after several years of horrible press and intense scrutiny, concluded that Law had not tried to evade investigation and had not broken any laws.
Upon turning 80 last November, Law became ineligible to participate in any papal conclave or to hold any Curial memberships, and was replaced as archpriest of Sta Maria Maggiore by Archbishop Santos Abril y Castelló
The fact is that, incredible as it may seem, criminal charges have never been lodged against Law, and nobody has requested his extradition. If you've got actionable facts that the prosecutors don't have, why don't you forward it to the prosecutors and make sure charges are pursued? I, for one, am all for the criminal indictiment of anyone, laity or clergy, againt whom there is credible evidence and probable cause.
Then on the basis of successful criminal prosecution, you can talk about ecclesiastical penalties. The fact that the Vatican removed Bernard Law from leadership of a powerful Archdiocese, and put him in charge of managing Sta Maria Maggiore with no pastoral authority, tells you that they followed with exactitude where the evidence led. They concluded that he made serious errors of pastoral judgment, which is quite different from personal moral corruption or crime.
Why would you presume lying as opposed to any other explanation? Prior to 1983 all altar servers were boys and were frequently referred to altar boys (not alter boys).
Canon 230 of the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983 allowed local ordinaries to permit girls and women to so function as altar servers. Not all have done so.
Because you don’t know what you’re talking about, since Cardinal Law does NOT reside in the Vatican. Cardinal Law was found guilty of nothing other than bad management, and was “fired”. For that bad management he was removed from his post. When he was made Cardinal, he was, as all Cardinals are, assigned to be pastor of a nominal parish in Rome, which, in modern times, has virtually no congregation; it is a historical parish only. Being an archbishop, he was replaced de facto by a “parochial vicar” to look after this Roman parish; such a vicar in this case served as little more than a museum curator. When he was relieved of his duties, he defaulted to his other job, that of pastor of the Roman church. It happens to be a splendid-looking church, but not terribly cushy.
Absent heresy or established crime, they basically “threw him upstairs” where His Inadequacy could do no harm. My personal opinion is that Law is a bad man. He cowed to pressure from the national media when they hailed as a hero a man he should have known to defrocked: the subject, in fact, of the “Me and Julio” verse “When the radical preacher come to get me released/ Well we was all on the cover of Newsweek.” (Yes, Me and Julio is about buggery; Mickey Mantle had no idea.)
But there’s no proof that Cardinal Law did anything illegal, as affirmed by five grand juries. Nor did Cardinal Law profess a heresy, or schism, or apostasy. And priests have rights, even bishops whose defense is stupidity.
>> Sounds really odd...A Baptist minister can’t conduct a baptism without a body of water...It would be unbiblical... <<
Yes, exactly. But the prison had no place fitting to baptize the man. So, filled with the Holy Spirit, the Baptist minister began to defend the validity of this man’s salvation. And because it was the Holy Spirit, he did so not by preaching the heresies of the Baptists, but, to my amazement, preaching the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
And you are right; according to the Baptist Church, the Lord’s Supper has nothing to do with water baptism. But in the Catholic Church, it is the means by which a penitent (one who has received the remission of sins) signifies his belonging to the Church, by willingly sacrificing his own intentions for those of Christ; it is the fulfillment of baptism, the third Rite of Initiation.
Incidentally, I don’t hold that the man was saved through the Grace of the Catholic Church, since the communion was, in fact, invalid, since the minister was not an ordained priest. But I do believe he received the sacrament of desire, which is also salvific, of those who are obstructed from the Catholic Church, making all the more prophetic sounding the minister’s words that “those who are here cannot join the Church which Christ has established by means which create the outward signs we are used to seeing, but just because we can’t see the signs of Christ’s work, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.” (I’m paraphrasing from memory, which is probably influenced by my own Catholic vocabulary.)
Maybe you can explain why the DA in Boston didn’t seek an indictment of Law?
The distinction between altar and alter has flown over that BB rattling around in your grape.
Agreed. He’s not a flamer, at least. But then I never perceived Cdl. McCarrick as one until I met him.
**if you don’t do the liturgy word for word, you’re fired; but if you do an alter boy, we’ll just move you to a different church...**
They get sidelined for that too.
Why are you bashing Catholics when most of the pedophilia occurs in Protestant Churches and in schools?
Do either of those cases mean that a competent DA shouldn't prosecute theft? We'd all agree that theft is a lesser crime than murder, I think. Should the law wink at thieves because some murderers get off without punishment?
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