Roman Catholic Church spent $2 million to defeat marriage equality

by David Zimmerman
According to a new report released by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Roman Catholic Church spent approximately $2 million in an effort to defeat marriage equality initiatives in the four marriage ballot states of Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington this election cycle. An updated HRC report, available HERE, provides a snapshot of just how much money the Church, along with its close ally the National Organization for Marriage(NOM), poured into campaigns aimed solely at depriving LGBT Americans of dignity and respect.

In Minnesota, the Roman Catholic Church spent upwards of $1.3 million, funding nearly 25 percent of the failed attempts to write discrimination into the state’s constitution. The Church’s funding included hundreds of thousands of dollars from dioceses across the country. The report also highlights the Roman Catholic Church’s donations to states where voters affirmed marriage equality – more than $100,000 in Maine; well over a quarter-million dollars in Maryland; and $307,000 in Washington.

Despite voters rejecting the anti-LGBT agenda financed by the Roman Catholic Church and NOM, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently re-committed to fighting against equality for LGBT Americans. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone – a leading anti-LGBT voice within the Roman Catholic Church and one of the chief architects of Prop 8 – said the Church must continue funding discrimination because people “don’t understand” marriage.

The report breaks down publicly reported in-kind and cash expenditures from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Knights of Columbus, and NOM to the four ballot states. Final campaign figures from Maine and Maryland will be available in the coming weeks.

Complete Article HERE!

Dissenting Minnesota priest calls for archbishop’s resignation for defending marriage

BY KIRSTEN ANDERSEN

A Minneapolis-area priest has called for the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt after the archbishop supported Minnesota’s effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex “marriage.”

Fr. Michael Tegeder wrote a letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune oh Thursday requesting that Archbishop Nienstedt “prayerfully consider stepping down from his office.”

Fr. Michael Tegeder did not defend heterosexual marriage.
Calling Nienstedt’s support for the marriage amendment a “misguided crusade,” he suggested that the archbishop’s resignation would be “healing for our state” and “would show some magnanimity on [Nienstedt’s] part.”

Tegeder has long been a dissenter from Catholic teaching on the issue of homosexuality. He and the archbishop have clashed repeatedly over the issue.

Last year, Fr. Tegeder refused to comply with Archbishop Nienstedt’s request that all priests read a “marriage prayer” at Masses, asking God to grant the faithful “courage to proclaim and defend your plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman.

The priest has since spoken to his parishioners and numerous media outlets about his opposition to the marriage amendment, prompting Nienstedt to send him a letter warning him that he may be stripped of his ministerial privileges if he continues to speak in defiance of Church teaching.

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Fr. Tegeder did not relent In June, the priest gave an interview to the liberal City Pages in which he criticized the archbishop for his stance in favor of the gay marriage ban.

“Nienstedt is just so rigid about these things,” Fr. Tegeder said. “But, you know — just let go of it. What are we trying to defend?”

Just a few weeks before Minnesotans voted on the marriage amendment, the priest sat for another interview, this time with the Star-Tribune.

The interviewer described him as angry and emotional, alternately pounding on the table and breaking down in tears.

He wore a rainbow button and talked about how it hurtful it was to see “sweet, sweet” homosexual men being taunted. He again had harsh words for Abp. Nienstedt, claiming that the archbishop’s attempt to silence his pro-homosexual speech was a sign of “moral bankruptcy.”

Archbishop Nienstedt “is saying he knows what’s best for Minnesota,” Fr. Tegeder told the Star-Tribune. “Well, he just got here. He’s in over his head. We don’t deserve him, and he doesn’t deserve us.”

The archbishop first arrived in Minnesota in 2001 when he was assigned bishop of New Ulm. He has served continuously in Minnesota since then.

It is unknown whether Abp. Nienstedt will proceed with removal of Fr. Tegeder’s ministerial privileges, in accordance with his prior warning.

Calls and e-mails to the Archbishop’s office requesting comment were not immediately returned.

Complete Article HERE!

Catholic Bishops Get Their Ass Kicked By Their Own Flock

Election results all across the country couldn’t have been worse for our boys in the fuschia beanies. All their bigotry, all their hate, all their efforts to manipulate the election in favor of the Republicans have come to nought. All their money was wasted on an indefensible campaign. And I think it is safe to say that the election results shows, that once again, they are on the wrong side of history.

These insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf and power-hungry crusty old men have been given the drubbing they so richly deserve. Now we must take the lead. Let’s redouble our effort to take back the church! Hurray for all the courageous Catholics who voted for justice, goodness and Gospel values.

A word to my brother clergy of whatever rank in the Church — you have an important teaching role in our faith community. We’re fine with that. We look to you for guidance. We hope you will continue to share your faith with us in as passionate a way as you see fit. However, your position in the Church does not give you license to shame, humiliate. denigrate or in any other way bully anyone else of conscience for their faith commitment. Let your teaching and leadership be by example, not by harassment.

You must know that you are dangerously close to being completely irrelevant for the vast majority of the people you have been ordained to serve. Let this election be a wake up call to you. Show us some humility and a modicum of humanness and we may once again embrace you as our leaders. But remember, you will have to earn our trust. Because as it stand now; you are morally bankrupt.

LA priest on leave for advocating gay marriage

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles has placed Father Joseph Palacios on leave from ministry because of his promotion of same-sex “marriage.”

Tod Tamberg, director of media relations for the Los Angeles archdiocese, confirmed to CNA Sept. 20 that Fr. Palacios was put on inactive leave in June.

Because of the mutually agreed upon leave, he is unable to say Mass or distribute the sacraments, may not wear a Roman collar, and cannot in any way present himself as a priest in public.

Fr. Palacios is a founding member of Catholics for Equality, a group which advocates for same-sex “marriage” and other social benefits for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals.

He has identified himself as “a gay man and a celibate gay priest.”

According to the National Catholic Register, he will be on inactive leave as long as he remains politically active. In a Sept. 10 interview with the paper, he said he does not present himself as a priest when promoting same-sex “marriage.”

However, in a Feb. 2011 panel discussion called “Same Sex Marriage in the United States: Where We Are as a Nation,” hosted by the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, he appeared in a priestly collar and was introduced as “Father Joseph Palacios.”

During the event, he said that the Washington, D.C.-based Catholics for Equality are trying to portray support for same-sex “marriage” as a pro-life position, adding that “pro-life means pro-gay.”

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, has publicly stated that the organization is not legitimately Catholic and Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the military archdiocese has made the same judgment.

Fr. Palacios is a priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, but has identified himself as an ex-Jesuit to the Cardinal Newman Society and elsewhere. He was ordained for the archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1987. He then entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1992, but left the Society in October 2004 without having pronounced final vows, according to the California Province of the Society of Jesus.

“Apparently, he was transitioning into the Society of Jesus at that time,” Tamberg said.

“It appears that he did not profess final vows in the Jesuit Community and remained (a) priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” the archdiocesan spokesman added.

Fr. Palacios is not identifiable as a priest on the Catholic for Equality’s website. He is described only as “Dr.” He holds a Ph.D in sociology from University of California Berkeley and attended St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, Calif. He was ordained for the archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1987.

Complete Article HERE!

Catholic priest faces excommunication after launching new parish

A Milwaukee-area Catholic priest sanctioned this year for indirectly violating the seal of the confessional now faces excommunication after launching a new parish with a breakaway diocese a few miles away.

Father David Verhasselt, once a popular priest at St. Catherine of Alexandria Parish in Oconomowoc, was named pastor this month at the newly founded Holy Name of Jesus Evangelical Catholic Church in nearby Ashippun, taking at least some of his former parishioners with him.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Verhasselt will be given an opportunity to reverse his decision and would incur “immediate excommunication” if he does not.

Verhasselt has declined repeated requests to be interviewed. But the Chicago-based Evangelical Catholic Diocese of the Northwest said he withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church in accordance with canon law.

“For the record, the Roman Catholic Church cannot declare a former member of its body ‘excommunicated’ after the fact,” it said in an email to the Journal Sentinel. “We are currently residing within the 21st century.”

Verhasselt’s departure is forcing a gut-wrenching decision for at least some of his former parishioners, many of whom still believe he was unjustly accused of breaching the confessional. Do they stay at St. Catherine’s or follow Verhasselt to his new spiritual home outside the Roman Catholic Church?

“I’m on the fence. I’ve been Roman Catholic and gone to church all my life. But I also love Father Dave,” said June Sawant.

“He’s the most wonderful man, so kind, so caring . . . he was born to be a priest.”

Those who follow a schismatic priest could face excommunication themselves, depending on the circumstances, according to canon lawyers. But that is unlikely to occur without a clear warning from the archbishop, said Father James Connell, a canon lawyer and former vice chancellor of the archdiocese.

No such warning has been issued.

Excommunication bars one from receiving the sacraments; it does not strip one of membership in the church, according to Connell.

“And the door remains open to repentance,” he said. “There is always the hope that they will return.”

Verhasselt had been on leave from St. Catherine’s since April 2010 after allegedly violating the seal of confessional, a charge many of his supporters believed was trumped up as the result of an ongoing feud with a priest in another parish.

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki found Verhasselt guilty in March of an “indirect” violation – betraying the sin, but not necessarily the sinner – and sentenced him to a year of prayer and penance.

Verhasselt’s appeal to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was pending when he resigned to join the Chicago-based Evangelical Catholic Church, a small, dissident denomination not in communion with Rome.

Founded in 1995, the Evangelical Church has 17 parishes or missions in the United States and Ireland, according to spokesman Bill Morton.

It bills itself as “a welcoming community of faith rooted in the Catholic tradition,” but it breaks with Rome in key areas, including ordaining women, allowing married and gay clergy, and in offering the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples.

Morton said Northwest Diocese Bishop James Wilkowski reviewed the documents involving the charges against Verhasselt and found no evidence of a breach.

Wilkowski presided over an Aug. 4 Mass in which Verhasselt professed his faith in his new denomination, and he is expected to complete the process of incardination by the end of the year.

Complete Article HERE!