Pope Francis 'Excommunicates Priest Over Views On Gay Marriage And Women'

Pope Francis

The media and some Catholics have been atwitter over recent remarks by Pope Francis that the Roman Catholic Church needs to be less obsessed by gays, abortion and contraception.  Some have naively believed that perhaps Francis' remarks denote a change in Church policy and dogma.  As this blog has noted before, actions speak far louder than mere words.  Hence, look at Pope Francis' recent actions: he has excommunicated a priest because of his support for woman priests and gay rights.  As always, hypocrisy and duplicity are the main hallmarks of the Church hierarchy.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post:

An Australian priest has been excommunicated by the Vatican over his liberal views, according to reports.

Greg Reynolds has reportedly been both defrocked and excommunicated over his support for women priests and the gay community.

The excommunication document - written in Latin and giving no reason - came directly from Vatican under the authority of Pope Francis, who just recently said that the Church focuses too much on gays and abortion, International Business Times reported.
Father Reynolds told Australia's The Age he had expected to be laicised (defrocked), but not excommunicated.

"In times past excommunication was a huge thing, but today the hierarchy have lost such trust and respect," he said.

"I've come to this position because I've followed my conscience on women's ordination and gay marriage."  "The Vatican never contacted me, and it gives no explanation."

One as a priest can rape and sexually molest children and youths and not be excommunicated.  Support women priests and gay equality and one is toast.  That fact speaks volumnes - none of it good - about the moral bankruptcy of the Catholic Church.  Hopefully, Fr. Reynolds will view his excommunication as a badge of honor.  Personally, I do not understand how a truly moral person can remain a member of the Catholic Church.

Priest Plans to Defy the Vatican’s Orders to Stay Quiet on Gays and Women

In a move that it would be refreshing to see more Roman Catholic priests and laity take, the Rev. Tony Flannery (pictured above), a prominent Irish priest, is refusing to knuckle under to the Vatican's demands that he uphold the Vatican's position that women should never be ordained as priests and that he adhere to the Vatican's anti-gay and anti-women orthodoxy.   Not surprisingly, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - a/k/a the Inquisition - is really pissed off and has its panties in a huge knot.  The reality, of course is that in the Church's earliest days women did hold high office and the Church's absolute ban on contraception is of relatively recent invention.  The New York Times has an article that looks at the Vatican's efforts to shut down a conversation that needs to take place if the Church is going to avoid sliding into further irrelevance in Ireland (and elsewhere in the western world) in the future.  Here are excerpts:

DUBLIN — A well-known Irish Catholic priest plans to defy Vatican authorities on Sunday by breaking his silence about what he says is a campaign against him by the church over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings. 

The Rev. Tony Flannery, 66, who was suspended by the Vatican last year, said he was told by the Vatican that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality. 

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

In the letter, the Vatican objected in particular to an article published in 2010 in Reality, an Irish religious magazine. In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.” 

Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.”

He believes the church’s treatment of him, which he described as a “Spanish Inquisition-style campaign,” is symptomatic of a definite conservative shift under Pope Benedict XVI.  “I have been writing thought-provoking articles and books for decades without hindrance,” he said. “This campaign is being orchestrated by a secretive body that refuses to meet me. Surely I should at least be allowed to explain my views to my accusers.” 

In reply to an association [of Catholic Priests] statement expressing solidarity with Father Flannery, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith denied it was acting in a secretive manner, pointed out that Father Flannery’s views could be construed as “heresy” under church law, and threatened “canonical penalties,” including excommunication, if he did not change his views. 

The Vatican's obsession with silencing Flannery are in sharp juxtaposition to the Vatican's failure to take meaningful steps against those who harbored and protected sexual predators within the clergy.  Indeed, in another Times article, details are provided about how German priests carried out sexual abuse of minors for years.  Here are highlights:

BERLIN — A report about child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, based on victim accounts and released by the church this week, showed that priests carefully planned their assaults and frequently abused the same children repeatedly for years. 

The church’s credibility regarding its commitment to an impartial investigation suffered a fresh blow last week when the bishops canceled an independent study into the abuse scandal amid allegations by the independent investigator, Christian Pfeiffer, that the church was censoring information. 

The church insists that it remains committed to carrying out the independent study once a new investigator can be found. Even if the church should produce a report, observers note that it will be a challenge to undo the damage caused by Mr. Pfeiffer’s allegations. “It’s not even about the damage to their image so much as it is to their trustworthiness,” said Andreas Holzem, a professor of church history at Tübingen University.

The reported assaults were clustered largely in the country’s heavily Roman Catholic regions along the Rhine River to the west and throughout the south, including Pope Benedict XVI’s home state, Bavaria. 

Germans were further outraged by reports this week that two Roman Catholic hospitals in Cologne had refused to carry out a gynecological examination on a 25-year-old suspected rape victim. An emergency doctor who had helped the woman told the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the hospitals cited ethical objections to advise women on unwanted pregnancies and on steps that can be taken to prevent them, like the morning-after pill.

Meanwhile, the Church Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel for Priests

Maybe it is because gays no longer need to hide within the priesthood, or maybe it's because more and more young Catholics recognize the hypocrisy, corruption and rot at the heart of the Church's leadership, but whatever the cause, the Roman Catholic Church is desperate for priests and is now importing priests form Africa among other places to fill the void. From my experience growing up Catholic, the vast majority of Catholic priests have no clue whatsoever on issues faced by modern American families or the strains experienced by married couples with families. Instead, they think they have it tough living with a housekeeper, possessing more funds to spend upon themselves than most married men, and having church women kiss their asses and look after them. And that's priests born and raised in the USA. Now, because nearly no one wants to go into the priesthood and because the Church excludes woman, married men and normal gays, the Church has resorted to importing foreign born and raised priests who will be even less competent to counsel their American parishioners. One can only hope that in time this type of idiocy will be the harbinger of further declines in Catholic Church membership - loss of members and money are the only thing that registers with the Vatican. Would that the Episcopal and Lutheran Churches would begin a marketing campaign to disaffected Catholics. Here are highlights from the New York Times on the importation of priests:

*

Father Oneko [from Kenya] is part of a wave of Roman Catholic priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America who have been recruited to fill empty pulpits in parishes across America. They arrive knowing how to celebrate Mass, anoint the sick and baptize babies. But few are prepared for the challenges of being a pastor in America.

*

Father Oneko, 46, had never counseled parishioners like those he found here at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church. . . . . To the volunteers at St. Michael’s, it was clear that Father Oneko was out of his element in many ways.

*

In fact, the flow of priests from the developing world to Europe and the United States amounts to a brain drain: most of those developing countries have far fewer priests in proportion to Roman Catholics than the United States does. Father Oneko’s situation in Kenya, serving 12 parishes simultaneously, was not unusual.

*

Father Oneko arrived at St. Michael’s on the heels of a Nigerian priest who had been helping out temporarily. Father Oneko said he was unnerved to hear that the Nigerian had not been a resounding success. Parishioners complained that they could not understand his accent.

*

He did not tell the parishioners that in Kenya and Jamaica, he had been a charismatic Catholic, participating in faith healings and leading Masses with spirited singing and clapping that lasted for hours.