The Gay Catholic Priests' Blog
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— Richard
By Yogev Toby
Archbishop Richard Henning was installed as the seventh archbishop of the Archdiocese of Boston on Thursday. It was a bittersweet ceremony, shadowed by the church’s dark past.
More than 1,400 people, including clergy, religious figures, and prominent Boston community members, gathered at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross to celebrate what some called a surprising appointment.
Henning obtained the role after serving only a little over a year as Providence bishop, to a significantly smaller laity.
The event started with Henning’s ceremonial three knocks on the cathedral door and the greeting of the exiting archbishop, Cardinal Seán O’Malley. The two embraced each other in a hug and entered the building.
O’Malley’s 21-year tenure as archbishop was riddled with challenges following the clergy sexual abuse scandal in which hundreds of children were sexually abused by priests in the Boston archdiocese. These assaults occurred under O’Malley’s predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law, in early 2002. The case—brought to national attention by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation—created hundreds of lawsuits against the Boston Roman Catholic Church and encouraged others across the country to come forward against sexual abuse in their churches.
More than 150 priests in Boston were accused of sexual abuse, Cardinal Law resigned, and the church paid more than $95 million in settlements to victims.
Outside the festive entrance to the cathedral in South End, a group of about two dozen individuals stood with signs urging for transparency and the completion of ongoing settlements.
As Henning prepared to enter the cathedral, Robert Hoatson, a former priest and survivor of sex abuse, called out to the incoming archbishop. “What about the survivors? Are you going to talk with us?” he shouted.
Henning turned and slowly paced toward the protesters.
One of the survivors asked Henning if he would be honest, transparent, and open as an archbishop.
“I’m very sorry, I have to learn. I have to listen,” answered Henning.
In an interview with The Beacon, Hoatson said he was surprised Henning approached the group.
“Normally, bishops and cardinals completely ignore us,” he said. Hoatson was not moved by the brief conversation, and added that it was “more of a public relations thing than coming from a real concern.”
Hoatson is the co-founder of Road to Recovery, a support and advocacy organization that helps victims of sexual abuse of all kinds. He said they have been advocating for transparency by the church, which he said O’Malley did not provide.
While O’Malley swiftly settled many of the lawsuits, Hoatson and other critics said he was still withholding information, including omitting names from a list of clergy accused of sexual abuse.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented more than 1,400 victims of sexual abuse and won the settlement against the Boston Roman Catholic Church, said Henning will “create a new layer of responsiveness.”
Garabedian told The Beacon that Henning “says the right things about clergy sexual abuse, but will not put into place any meaningful programs to protect children or to help victims heal.”
Behind the tall entrance of the cathedral, the crowd welcomed Henning in a roaring applause. French Cardinal Christophe Pierre thanked O’Malley for his service to the church and introduced Henning by reading the appointment letter, written by Pope Francis.
As part of an ancient ritual, members of the clergy inspected the letter for its authenticity. After their approval, Henning marched throughout the halls of the cathedral and joyfully presented the letter to the enthralled crowd. He was led to the “cathedra,” the seat of the archbishop, to officially assume the archbishop’s role.
Henning addressed the church’s wrongdoings in his homily, his first speech as the archbishop.
“This church of Boston, it is, in a very real sense, a wounded church because of the failure to act with compassion and healing,” he said.
“We have seen over these decades a passionate effort to protect the vulnerable, but still we feel the weight of those wounds,” Henning added. “We owe a debt of gratitude to victims, survivors, who tell their story, for they have helped to protect new generations by their courage and by their prophetic truth-telling to us.”
Henning has confronted sexual abuse cases in his former role as an auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island N.Y. The Diocese is in an ongoing legal battle with about 650 abuse survivors, which has reached $320 million in settlements after the diocese filed for bankruptcy.
Even though the Boston archdiocese is under scrutiny, it continues to see an increase in school enrollment, and ongoing ordainment of new priests.
“Kids are still being abused right now,” said Hoatson.
Hoatson said that new cases arrive at his office every week, many of them say they were abused over 30 years ago. He said he recognizes a pattern in which survivors sometimes take years or decades to report sexual abuse.
Garabedian said he is advocating to remove the civil statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases. The law states that civil cases have a three-year time limit per case, which limits ongoing sexual abuse settlements.
“We need to break the silence,” Hoatson added. “Silence is deadly.”
Complete Article ↪HERE↩!
By Soline Humbert
The Catholic Church is bedevilled by sex … the female sex. Church men, who claim a privileged insight into the mind of God, earnestly agonise over what women can be and do. Mostly, what they can’t be and can’t do. Obstat sexus: “her sex prevents her”. It is ubiquitous and overrides Christ’s great commandment “love one another as I have loved you”.
Three years ago the Catholic Church worldwide embarked on what it called a synodal journey, described as the largest consultation process ever, involving in theory at least, every church member. This led to two assemblies in Rome, one last year and the final one which just concluded last weekend.
A 52-page document is the fruit of that process. Each of the 155 paragraphs was voted on by the members, mostly bishops but with some “non–bishops” too, including 14 per cent of women. Women had campaigned long and hard to get these few votes.
All through his pontificate Pope Francis has reaffirmed: ‘That door is closed.’
In September an obituary for American Sr Teresa Kane reminded us how in 1979 she had made worldwide news when she publicly implored John Paul II: “The Church, in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons, must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all the ministries in our church.” Not only did this fall on deaf ears but the closed doors got even more tightly locked and woe to whoever dared raise the issue.
All through his pontificate Pope Francis has reaffirmed: “That door is closed.” Not just to the priesthood. Asked whether a young girl could dream of becoming a deacon his curt answer was “No”.
So it is hardly news when in 2024 the Synodal Document states: “By virtue of Baptism, women and men have equal dignity as members of the People of God. However, women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and roles in all the various areas of the Church’s life. This is to the detriment of serving the Church’s shared mission.”
Women deacons will continue being studied ‘ad infinitum’ in a Vatican commission
The issue of women’s second-class status generally, and their ordination to the diaconate and presbyterate, was raised in many countries during the earlier consultation phases, including here in Ireland, but was filtered out. Any mention of women priests was carefully excised. Out of sight, out of mind.
Women deacons will continue being studied “ad infinitum” in a Vatican commission. This is the 4th commission and the second one under Pope Francis; the first one set up in 2016 never published its findings, and this one, set up in 2020, still hasn’t produced an interim report. No hurry since in any case the female diaconate is deemed “not ripe”.
Women are half of the church but end up being a category, an issue, a problem in a patriarchal institution with ingrained misogyny.
In fact, this women’s issue was deemed too contentious to be on the table at last month’s synodal gathering. Pope Francis entrusted it to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) who will report, if possible, next June.
It doesn’t matter whether one has the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, one must have the same sex
The DDF is an all-male clerical body with 28 consultors, mostly Italian priest theologians and six women. They are studying women saints, mystics, doctors of the church. Dead women, safely canonised, are easier to deal with than live ones, especially those with a calling deemed impossible because “her sex prevents it”.
It doesn’t matter whether one has the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, one must have the same sex.
Coinciding with the opening of the Assembly last month, Pope Francis published a book on women: Sei Unica (You are unique), subtitled: A Hymn To The Feminine Genius. The seven special talents he lists are obviously not needed in the ordained ministries. It’s hard not to cringe at the stereotyping. All the papal plámás in the world are no substitute for equality, justice and an end to discrimination.
When I read in the document its recommendation for more women to be involved in training men for the priesthood, I thought of another woman who had also just died. As a Dominican Sister in South Africa, Patricia Fresen had courageously fought the apartheid regime.
To answer her call she was ordained in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests and ministered as a priest and a bishop
Later when she trained seminarians to deliver homilies, she became aware that as a woman she could never preach at Mass and her eyes were opened to the gender apartheid in the church, which is no more godly than the racial one was. To answer her call she was ordained in the Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement and ministered as a priest and a bishop.
No more walking the synodal pathway hopelessly kicking cans down the road. That gender apartheid must be dismantled now. The Gospel requires it and the Spirit shows the way.
Soline Humbert is a spiritual director and the author of the forthcoming memoir God Calls, Rome Stalls
Complete Article ↪HERE↩!
By
Guam’s Catholic church leadership has known for decades about clergy sex abuses that happened as early as the 1950s, a retired priest said in a signed statement released Nov. 1. The statement was released in connection with civil lawsuits filed by several former altar boys, who allege sexual abuse at the hands of Guam priests decades ago.
He said his only form of punishment for molesting at least 20 boys at the time was to say prayers — as instructed by then-Archbishop Apollinaris W. Baumgartner.
Retired priest Louis Brouillard, now 95 and living in Minnesota, said his sexual contact with children when he was on Guam was known to other priests, including Baumgartner, the highest Catholic leader on Guam from 1945 to 1970. Brouillard served as a priest on island from the late 1940s to 1981.
Brouillard said Baumgartner approached him to talk about the “situation.”
“I was told to try to do better and say prayers as a penance,” Brouillard wrote. “I believe the Catholic Church should be honest and truthful regarding what happened on Guam during my time there.”
Brouillard made a video at his Pine City, Minnesota, residence and signed a written statement dated Oct. 3 in support of a former altar boy’s Nov. 1 lawsuit against him for allegedly sexually abusing him six decades ago.
“I am making this video to reach out to the parishioners of the Archdiocese of Guam, and anyone I may have harmed, to ask forgiveness for action done by me many years ago,” Brouillard said in the statement attached to the lawsuit against him and others.
Leo Tudela, now 73, said Brouillard sexually abused him at a church rectory and during Boy Scouts of America activities in the 1950s. Tudela said the abuse started when he was 13 years old.
Through attorney David Lujan, Tudela sued not only Brouillard but also the Archdiocese of Agana and up to 50 other people who may have a role in covering up, concealing or disguising Brouillard’s sex abuses, among other things, the lawsuit states.
On Aug. 1, Tudela publicly accused Brouillard of sex abuse when Tudela testified in support of a bill lifting the statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases. A few days later, Brouillard, who was called at his Minnesota home, admitted that he abused multiple boys while he was a priest on Guam.
The church and some of its priests on Guam can be sued over sex abuses for the very first time only this year, courtesy of a new law that lifts all civil statutes for child sex abuse cases.
Brouillard, who was ordained as a priest on Guam in 1948, left the island in 1981.
Although church leadership on Guam was aware of Brouillard’s sexual abuse of boys on Guam, Brouillard left island and was allowed to serve as a priest in at least three parishes in Minnesota.
It was only in 1995 that Brouillard was removed from ministry, following credible allegations of child sexual abusethere.
The world’s largest and oldest network of clergy abuse survivors, called the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said Brouillard’s case is not unique.
“He was given what advocates like to call ‘the geographic solution.’ Brouillard was sent as far away as possible so that victims could not find him. He was still paid so that he would keep quiet,” said Joelle Casteix, SNAP’s volunteer Western regional director.
“Abusive priests are dumped in unsuspecting communities so that the priest and his home diocese can escape legal accountability. The fact that Brouillard somewhat admitted his crimes is remarkable. Hopefully, that gave his brave victims some sense of vindication,” Casteix said.
It is also only this year, starting in May, that former altar boys have come forward to publicly accuse priests on Guam of sexually abusing them decades ago. Former accusations against priests were done by relatives of alleged victims.
Current and former members of the Catholic church who have so far been publicly accused of sexual abuse include Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron, who is now facing a canonical trial at the Vatican, Brouillard, and the late Brother Mariano R. Laniyo.
The late priest John H. Sutton, who worked on Guam from 1971 to 1974, was accused in 2015 by a man of raping him repeatedly when he was a student in Texas.
In 2014, the San Francisco Archdiocese in California removed the Rev. John Howard from ministering in the city after he was removed from his post on Guam over allegations he molested two boys four decades ago while serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Tudela is not the only former altar boy who has sued the Archdiocese of Agana and clergy members over sex abuse. Three others — Roland Sondia, Walter Denton and Roy Quintanilla — filed separate lawsuits on Nov. 1 against Archbiship Anthony Apuron, the archdiocese and up to 50 others. They allege Apuron sexually abused them in the 1970s, when he was parish priest in Agat.
Lujan said he is representing at least a dozen more victims of alleged child sex abuse on Guam, and the alleged perpetrators include other priests who were not previously publicly accused.
The second batch of lawsuits involving former altar boys and others is expected to be filed this week, Lujan said.
Brouillard’s two-page signed statement outlines his sex abuse of minors during the more than four decades he was on Guam, holding many positions in the Catholic church.
He managed the Boy Scouts and served as its president on Guam. He was assigned at the Santa Teresita Church in Mangilao. His other job was teaching sexual education to the boys in the parish.
“Looking back now, I realize that I crossed the line with some of my actions and relationships with the boys,” Brouillard said. “During some of the sex education talks, while at Santa Teresita, I did touch the (private parts) of some of the boys and some of the boys did perform oral sex on me. Some of these incidents took place in Mangilao at the rectory of the Santa Teresita Church.”
Brouillard said because of the many years that have passed, he does not remember the exact dates and times or the names of the boys involved.
“There may have been 20 or more boys involved. Other locations where the sexual contact may have happened would be at San Vicente and Father Duenas Memorial Schools,” he said. “At that time, I did believe that the boys enjoyed the sexual contact and I also had self-gratification as well.”
Brouillard said he has come to learn the name of one of the boys he had sexual contact with at the Santa Teresita rectory.
“His name is Leo Tudela. He is from the island of Saipan. I apologize to you Leo and the rest of the boys that I may have harmed. I regret with all my heart any wrong I did to them. I pray for all the boys I may have harmed and ask for their forgiveness and for forgiveness from God,” the retired priest said.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis named on Oct. 31 a successor to Archbishop Apuron, now 71.
The pope appointed Detroit Bishop Michael Jude Byrnes as coadjutor archbishop of the Archdiocese of Agana. As coadjutor archbishop, Byrnes has the right to succeed Apuron if Apuron resigns, retires or is removed. Under church law, bishops are required to resign at 75. Byrnes arrives on Guam on Nov. 28.
Editor’s note: A previously published version of the story named another priest as someone who had been removed by the San Francisco Archdiocese in 2014. The priest who was removed was the Rev. John Howard.
Complete Article HERE!
The Vatican has condemned a right-wing Catholic radio station after a broadcast said the recent earthquakes in Italy were “God’s punishment” for gay civil unions.
The remarks, made on the station Radio Maria, were “offensive and scandalous”, the Vatican said.
A Dominican friar said the quakes, including one in August that killed nearly 300, were caused by sins of man.
He said these included the approval of same-sex civil unions last May.
But the Vatican rejected the remarks as pagan, and said they had nothing to do with Catholic theology.
“They are offensive statements for believers and scandalous for those who do not believe”, said Monsignor Angelo Becciu, deputy secretary of state, who is close to Pope Francis.
Monsignor Becciu said Radio Maria, which has come under criticism in the past for comments seen as anti-Semitic, had to “moderate the tone of its language” and conform to the Church’s message of mercy.
But the friar at the centre of the scandal stood by his description of the quakes as divine intervention.
“Just read the catechism,” Father John Cavalcoli said, referring to Roman Catholic religious instruction.
Radio Maria has published a statement (in Italian) on its website, saying the offensive comments did not reflect the views of the station.
Complete Article HERE!
By
Fr. Kevin Gugliotta
A Roman Catholic priest from New Jersey has been arrested on child pornography charges.
Kevin Gugliotta, 54, of Mahwah allegedly uploaded illicit images from a computer in his vacation home in Lehigh Township, Pa. on July 9, the Wayne County District Attorney said in a news release on Wednesday.
Gugliotta worked at Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Church in Union, but has been removed from the parish, according to a spokesman for the Newark Archdiocese.
He faces 40 counts of sexual abuse of children — 20 counts of possession of child pornography and 20 counts of dissemination of child pornography.
Officials in Wayne County learned about the uploaded images in August and began an investigation. They eventually learned the IP address was registered to Gugliotta’s vacation home.
Gugliotta was taken into custody at a home in Toms River on Thursday. He is in the Ocean County jail awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania.
A nationally ranked poker player, Gugliotta also faces a charge of being a fugitive from justice in Toms River because he failed to turn himself in after being notified that he was being charged.
Before transferring to Holy Spirit Gugliotta spent almost two years at Immaculate Conception in Mahwah, according to his LinkedIn page.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to answer additional questions from NJ Advance Media about why Gugliotta was in Toms River or when he is expected be moved to Pennsylvania to answer the charges.
Complete Article HERE!
While having dinner recently with my former producer, Bernie Lucht, the Montreal Jewish intellectual and onetime head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship intellectual affairs programme, Ideas, he looked across the table at me and asked plaintively why the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops was being so callous with the dying.
Bernie had confused the Catholic Bishops of Alberta and the Northwest Territories with the national episcopal conference. Easy enough to do. What bothered him was the seeming disjunction between Pope Francis’ call for mercy and non-judgmental attitudes toward the marginalised and the position taken by the bishops.
In their 34-page document, Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons and Families Considering or Opting for Death by Assisted Suicide or Euthanasia, the Alberta and Northwest Territories bishops made it clear that their clergy should not engage in the “truly scandalous” behaviour of granting a request for funeral rites or the sacraments by people who have, for whatever reason, chosen to die by physician-assisted protocols.
Nervous public
Physician-assisted dying is now a legal right in Canada following the passage of Bill C-14 in June of this year. As I have outlined in an article in New York’s Commonweal magazine following Royal Assent for the Bill: “Although benign euphemisms were deployed regularly in an effort to make the legislation more palatable to a nervous public, Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, was refreshingly blunt in its editorial position when it observed prior to the bill’s convoluted passing through both chambers that ‘once the new law is adopted, we will be a country whose legislation allows the state to kill its citizens, pure and simple.
People often warn against slippery slopes, but this is no slope. This is a precipice from which there is no return.’”
To be clear, The Globe and Mail was not opposed to the legislation per se as it recognised that Parliament was responding to polls that indicated that the Canadian public was in favour of some form of doctor-induced death with rigorous constraints put in place.
But, not unreasonably and predictably, the Catholic bishops were opposed to the legislation as they considered it “an affront to human dignity, an erosion of human solidarity, and a danger to all vulnerable persons”.
But once the bill was passed and became the law of the land, the Canadian episcopate moved to ensure that Catholic health care facilities were protected from providing services that contradicted their mandate.
To date, they have been successful in achieving that but the Alberta bishops document may have ignited unnecessary controversy, prompting the considerable lobby opposed to exemptions for religiously-affiliated and publicly-funded health care institutions to move toward litigation seeking to revoke that exemption and could well end up in the Supreme Court.
Senior Quebec prelates, like the country’s Primate, Cardinal Gerald Lacroix of Quebec City, and Archbishop Christian Lepine of Montreal, have dissociated themselves from their Western brothers by insisting that their priests will provide funerals for those who choose the now legal medically-assisted dying option and will “accompany people in every step of their life”. By electing a pastoral over a canonical approach, the Quebec clerics have aligned more closely with the Franciscan papacy.
The last time the national episcopate was in very public disagreement was in the early 1980s when a social justice document highly critical of Canada’s fiscal policies and commitment to ‘trickle down economics’ was, in turn, repudiated by then Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto, Gerald Emmett Carter, a close friend of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and several of his Cabinet.
This time the stakes are higher.
Complete Article HERE!
By MICHELLE R. SMITH
An ideological tug of war over the firing of a Rhode Island church music director for marrying his same-sex partner illustrates the confusion that permeates some U.S. Roman Catholic parishes over Pope Francis’s words on homosexuality.
Francis’s famous declaration “Who am I to judge?” in 2013 energized Catholics who had pushed the church to accept gays and lesbians. Now, some gay Catholics and supporters who hoped for rapid acceptance find themselves stymied by many bishops and pastors.
Francis is being cited by both the music director, Michael Templeton, and by Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin, known for taking a hard line on church teaching about marriage and abortion. Tobin has criticized Francis, writing after the pope’s summit on the family two years ago that “Francis is fond of ‘creating a mess.’ Mission accomplished.”
The pope has upheld Catholic teaching on homosexuality, reiterating the church’s opposition to same-sex relationships. But his shift in tone and broad statements about mercy have left a trail of comments that amount to a Rorschach test open to interpretation, say those who have closely followed Francis.
“Pope Francis has not said, ‘Here’s what you should do in a parish where you have a music director who has married his partner of the same sex,’ ” said Rev. James T. Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston College. “Pope Francis is articulating general principles: forgiveness and mercy and not harsh judgment. But how you handle a particular case like this, he has been very reluctant to weigh in on it.”
That means a gay Catholic’s fate depends on his diocese or individual pastor. Templeton, 38, says he was called in last month and fired from the job he held for five years at the Church of St. Mary. The pastor, appointed in July, told him someone had sent him a 2015 Associated Press article that included details about Templeton’s wedding. A representative from the Providence Diocese also attended. At the end of the meeting, disappointed and hurt, Templeton cited Francis.
“This seems truly inconsistent with the teachings of Pope Francis,” Templeton said he told them.
The firing caused an outcry in the parish. A fellow employee resigned minutes after Templeton’s firing. Several lay leaders also resigned and dozens of parishioners have left, including most of the church’s 20 to 30 gay members, according to people interviewed by the Associated Press.
Many cited Francis’s example, saying the firing was in conflict with his declaration that 2016 be a “Year of Mercy.”
The pastor, Rev. Francesco Francese, referred comment to Tobin’s office, and Tobin declined a request for an interview.
Tobin issued a statement to The Providence Journal saying church employees and volunteers are “expected to live in a way that is fully consistent” with church teachings. If a person engages in activity that contradicts those teachings, “that individual leaves the Church no choice but to respond,” Tobin said.
In a later Facebook posting, Tobin defended his approach, citing Francis.
“When church leaders have to respond to situations involving persons living an openly ‘gay lifestyle’ these days, we’re often scolded and told that we should be ‘more like Pope Francis,’ presumably the ‘Who-am-I-to judge’ Pope Francis,” Tobin wrote.
He listed several examples that “critics should also remember,” including that Francis fired a priest who was working in the Vatican upon learning the priest was gay and in a relationship.
In the past few months alone, Francis has made statements or taken actions that give fuel to both sides.
Francis underscored his emphasis on mercy over defending orthodoxy with his first U.S. picks for cardinals, announced Sunday, choosing bishops who have taken a more welcoming approach to gays and others who have felt alienated from the church.
Asked this month about how he would minister to transgender Catholics, Francis responded: “When someone who has this condition comes before Jesus, Jesus would surely never say, ‘Go away because you’re gay.’ ” At the same time, he recently supported Mexican bishops working against a push to legalize same-sex marriage. New Ways Ministry, which advocates for gay Catholics, has documented around four dozen cases during Francis’s tenure where people have been forced from positions in Catholic institutions or faced other negative consequences for reasons such as being in gay relationships or advocating for gay rights.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways, said gay Catholics continue to see problems in places with conservative bishops, such as Providence. Tobin, he said, was interpreting Francis too narrowly.
Before Francis, “people were afraid to even say the words gay or lesbian,” DeBernardo said. “I do think he’s taken an important step that could lead to further steps. I’m not certain, I don’t think he will make a change in church doctrine, but I think he is laying the groundwork for future changes.”
Complete Article HERE!
By Geordon Omand
The archbishop of Edmonton Richard Smith is shown in a handout photo. Smith has previously defended the church’s decision to refuse funerals to some Albertans who have chosen assisted dying.
A proper funeral is far more than an end-of-life celebration for practising Catholics, who believe last rites cleanse the soul of sin in preparation for eternal life in heaven.
But for the faithful questioning whether those final sacraments are available to a loved one who has chosen a medically assisted death, the answer may depend on whom in the church they ask.
Catholic doctrine is unequivocal in its opposition to any form of suicide, but Canadian bishops have taken different positions on whether churchgoers who choose an assisted death should be absolutely barred from having an official funeral.
Some religious experts say the schism is the product of Pope Francis’s arrival at the helm of the Catholic Church in 2013, and his emphasis on tolerance and compassion.
Wayne Sumner, a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Toronto, said a more flexible approach to the granting of funeral rites is in line with Pope Francis’s similarly softened tone on homosexuality, divorce and the ordination of women.
“I think you’ve got some hard-liners here who want to follow the doctrine, and you’ve got some others who feel a compassion for people who have chosen this route and don’t want to punish them or their families any more or unnecessarily,” he said.
In the wake of assisted dying becoming legal in Canada earlier this year, six bishops in Alberta and Northwest Territories released guidelines last month instructing priests to refuse funerals for people who choose assisted dying.
The document describes how physician-assisted death is a “grave sin” and contradicts the teachings of the Catholic church.
Death by assisted suicide and euthanasia are grave violations of the law of God, the document says.
“These grievous affronts to the dignity of human life from beginning to natural end are never morally justified,” it says.
Other church leaders since then have said they would not encourage the absolute prohibition of funerals for everyone who chooses assisted dying.
Emma Anderson, a scholar of Canadian Catholicism at the University of Ottawa, said the division among Catholic bishops follows from Pope Francis’s move to empower lower levels of leadership to make decisions based on local circumstances.
The sometimes contradictory results of such delegation of authority risks confusing church members, Anderson said.
“It can be profoundly disturbing if you’re a devout Catholic to be getting really different messages in Quebec, in Ottawa, in Alberta, in the Northwest Territories,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be a national stance on this issue.”
Not everyone sees the bishops’ views as contradictory, said Michael Agnew, a post-doctoral fellow in the religious studies department at McMaster University in Hamilton.
“It’s not necessarily that there’s a schism over the church teaching, at least in the hierarchy or the leadership of the church,” Agnew said.
“The difference is probably in the tone that’s being used at times and individual bishops’ or priests’ flexibility around access to these services.”
Rev. Marc Pelchat, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Quebec, said the variation among bishops across Canada has less to do with church doctrine on assisted death and more to do with a difference in approach.
Pelchat said bishops in Quebec encourage a more case-by-case treatment for physician-assisted deaths and are reluctant to establish a hard-and-fast rule that ignores individual circumstances.
But the church ultimately opposes assisted death and prefers palliative care, he added.
Douglas Farrow, a professor of Christian thought at McGill University in Montreal, said the difference in direction between bishops is no great surprise.
“Some of them are more theologically astute than others and some of them are more faithful to the church’s teaching than others,” Farrow said.
Church law gives priests considerable leeway to exercise their judgment on a case-by-case basis, he said.
The difference in approach appears to follow some rough geographic patterns as well, noted Arthur Schafer, an ethics scholar at the University of Manitoba.
The strong opposition in Alberta follows the province’s traditional conservatism, whereas the more permissive attitudes in Quebec and British Columbia are in line with the provinces more progressive approaches, he said.
Complete Article HERE!