“You can’t just build your own church,” Johnson says.
What a stupid comment! Of course you can. You just can't make it into a parish willy nilly. I have a couple of wealthy friends who have just gone and "built their own Church" on their property.
69 posted on 01/11/2004 6:11:45 PM PST by Hermann the Cherusker
The tradition of maintaining a private chapel has a long history in the Catholic Church. The major qualifications are whether the patron can afford to keep a priest on retainer and that the priest is in good standing. The status of the Malibu church really rests upon the priest, not upon Mr. Gibson. And I don't believe the priest's name has been made public.
To NYer and Salvation: Like Land of the Irish and nickcarraway, I have never heard that Mel's father Hutton -- or Mel -- attends an SSPX church. In fact, in the one Hutton Gibson book I have read (Time Out of Mind), he seems to have serious differences with the SSPX. Post #12 certainly offers no evidence associating the Gibsons with the SSPX.
(Not that there's anything wrong with attending SSPX Masses.)
Canticle_of_Deborah and Snuffington are correct that it is Mahony whose Catholicism should be examined under a microscope. Gibson's craft is acting and film-making; examine how well he performs and directs.
And I agree with Land of the Irish, welfareworker and Snuffington that this Kevin Johnson seems to be clueless.
NYer: I think it's a bit ironic that you invoke the Ambrosian liturgy. Did you know that we would not have the Ambrosian Rite today if it were not for irregular and clandestine performance of the Ambrosian liturgy, as well as open resistance against the pope by priests and laity when Popes Nicholas II and St. Gregory VII (and others) tried to abolish the Ambrosian Rite?
In this case, the people were right to resist, disobey and defy an attempt by the pope to break a tradition of the Church handed down from time immemorial.