Inquisition’s heavy hand remains ready to strike

COMMENTARY

The treatment of former Toowoomba Catholic bishop Bill Morris, sacked last May by the Pope, shows that the Inquisition is alive and well in the Catholic Church – only the rack is missing.

The secret denunciations by a tiny minority of self-appointed orthodoxy police in Toowoomba, the secret Vatican investigation, the secret judgment – with the accused never even knowing who the accusers are or what they have charged, let alone getting a chance to defend himself – the absence of any appeal, the denial of natural justice and the flouting of canon (church) law are all classical Inquisition tactics.

The unfairness and cruelty were driven home by two recent independent reports into the removal of Morris – one by an eminent jurist, Queensland Supreme Court judge W.J. Carter, and one by a leading canon lawyer, Melbourne’s Father Ian Waters.

They concluded that Morris was denied procedural fairness and natural justice. Carter wrote that the treatment of Morris was “offensive” to the requirements of both civil and canon law, while Father Waters found that the Pope had breached canon law and exceeded his authority in removing Morris without finding him guilty of apostasy, heresy or schism (which alone justify such action) and without following the judicial procedures canon law requires.

Carter found that an unsigned document from the Vatican to Morris in 2007 requiring his resignation showed “an appalling lack of evidence and particularity”, “demonstrable errors of fact” and decisions “by high-ranking church officials more likely based on gossip and hearsay” than evidence.
“One could not imagine a more striking case of a denial of natural justice,” he said.

Morris’s real offence was to suggest the church might consider discussing whether it might ordain married men or women, given the critical and worsening shortage of priests. Even a statement as tentative and careful as this had to be crushed, it seems.

This heavy-handed manoeuvring is a long way from what the church purports to stand for: love, mercy, truth and justice. All that seems to matter to the hierarchs, whether at StPeter’s in Rome or St Mary’s in Sydney, is obedience and loyalty.

The church’s leaders know it is losing a generation in the West. They seem not to care how much the ordinary, faithful Catholics in the pews and pulpits, doing the church’s works of mercy, are discouraged and distressed, or how cynical it makes those watching.

The fact that a bishop wears a red hat (cardinals) or red shoes (the Pope) is no guarantee that he is not a bully, blinkered or Byzantine.
Historian Paul Collins says not only is the Inquisition alive and well – after all, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Morris co-executioner William Levada, was once known as the Holy Inquisition – but that it is worse than the original Roman Inquisition, founded in 1542 by Pope Paul III to counter Protestantism in Italy. That, at least, had very clear procedures and was considered a model of jurisprudence in the Europe of the time.

What of Australia’s 42 Catholic bishops, who promised to represent Toowoomba’s Catholics when they visited Rome for their five-yearly ad limina visit last October? One or two helped engineer Morris’s removal, others may have supported it but most – well aware of what a travesty it was – were cravenly supine (as Collins put it).

They promised to raise the subject during their visit to the Vatican. They did so, meeting the cardinals and among themselves. Back in Australia, they put out a statement saying they accepted the removal and would extend fraternal care to Morris.

What could the bishops have done? Early and strong public statements of support for Morris would have made the Vatican act far more carefully.
But, according to progressive Catholics, the damage was done 13 years earlier, when Australia’s bishops were excoriated about the state of the church in Australia during their 1998 ad limina visit to Rome. That was the time to stand up and repudiate the criticisms; the pattern is set now.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the leaders of the church who demand trust are callous in destroying it. Their medieval attitudes to authority seem very distant from the biblical teachings of Christ and much closer to the Pharisees, whom Jesus accused of laying heavy burdens on people’s shoulders without lifting a finger themselves (Matthew 23:4). If the church leaders want the faithful to trust them, they should show themselves to be trustworthy.

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Towson priest charged with indecent exposure

A Towson priest has been removed from duty at the Church of the Immaculate Conception after being arrested last week on indecent exposure charges.

According to a police report of the incident, Mark Stewart Bullock, 47, was at Bush River Books & Movies, an Abingdon adult store on the 3900 block of Pulaski Highway, the night of Jan. 16, when two deputies, investigating complaints of indecent exposure, discovered him nude from the waist down in a movie theater inside the shop.

Bullock was sitting on a couch with “his pants completely off,” stated the report, which went on to state that “Bullock was not wearing any underwear and [was] exposing his penis.” He was sitting in a public area where store customers could see him, sheriff’s deputies said.

The deputies instructed Bullock to get dressed and charged him with indecent exposure, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum fine of $1,000 and three years in prison, police said.

Bullock could not be reached Sunday. A court date is set for March 6.

In a letter to parishioners, Rev. Joseph Barr said the Baltimore Archdiocese removed Bullock’s “faculties to function as a priest and initiated an investigation to learn more about the incident” as soon as officials were made aware of the arrest.

Bullock has been ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation, and he is no longer allowed to celebrate Mass publicly or to present himself as a priest, the letter said. The removal from the ministry is indefinite, it added.

“He will no longer reside at the parish rectory and is not permitted to attend or participate in any parish or school functions,” Barr noted in the letter.

“I realize this information may be shocking and painful for you to hear, which I sincerely regret,” Barr wrote. “However, in the interest of transparency and out of an abundance of care for this parish and our community, I wanted to share this news with you directly and ask for your prayers for Fr. Bullock and for our parish.”

Barr could not be reached Sunday, nor could a spokesman for the Baltimore Archdiocese.

The arrest appears to be Bullock’s first, according to online court records. He lists the church’s address, on the 200 block of Ware Ave., as home.

Monica Worrell, a spokeswoman for the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies routinely look in on adult bookstores to ensure they are complying with the law. This particular shop was drawing more traffic than normal, according to community members, who had voiced concerns at a council meeting, leading the sheriff’s office to investigate.

“Throughout the course of doing that, we found violations of law,” Worrell said. Several arrests were made, she said.

Complete Article HERE!

Disobedient priests plan global movement

A parish priest who encouraged clergymen to be “disobedient” towards the Vatican plans to go international.

Helmut Schüller of the Preachers’ Initiative said yesterday (Sun) that “2012 will be the year of internationalisation”. Schüller – who previously headed Caritas Austria – said the Austrian Roman Catholic Church should “finally take members seriously”.

Schüller criticised the Vatican due to its conservative approach towards key topics of the 21st century and said the institution resembled an “absolutist monarchy”. The head of the parish of Probstdorf in the province of Lower Austria stressed that his initiative “receives a lot of approval from Catholic reform movements all over the world.”

Schüller claimed some weeks ago that the Preachers’ Initiative currently consisted of 370 members. He said yesterday there were no plans for further talks with the highest representative of the Roman Catholic Church of Austria, Viennese Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn. The archbishop condemned the word disobedience as a “term of fight” last month. Schönborn said it was “burdened with a negative connotation”.

Schönborn said it was not true that he opposed all kinds of reforms of the Church. He admitted that there was the need to rethink certain decisions and opinions but also made clear that he was against the crucial points of Schüller’s agenda.

The Preachers’ Initiative, which was established more than half a year ago, calls on the Vatican to allow priests to give Holy Communion to people who married a second time at registry offices after getting divorced following church weddings. The group also says women should be allowed to become Catholic priests.

Austria is one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most significant strongholds in Europe. Around 5.4 million Austrians are members of the Church. The number of people leaving the Church declined by 32 per cent from 2010 to 2011. More than 58,600 people quit their membership last year. Around 65 per cent of adult residents of the country are part of its Catholic Church – down sharply from 1981 when the same applied to 84 per cent.

The budget of Austria’s Catholic Church was strained in 2011 due to declining membership numbers meaning receding financial support but also compensatory payments to victims of sexual and physical abuse. The Church paid 6.4 million Euros altogether to 456 people who came forward to inform special commissions dealing with the issue that they suffered abuse at boarding schools and other institutions run by the Church.

The Church was also in the news recently due to discussions over whether it should be allowed to charge people who left it. Maximilian Hiegelsberger of the Austrian Association of Farmers’ section in Upper Austria said the Church could tax everyone regardless of whether they were members or not. Hiegelsberger argued that every resident of the country benefited by the Church’s activities in some way. He also made aware of abbeys’ positive effects on the domestic tourism industry.

The Social Democrats (SPÖ) rejected his appeal while St. Pölten Diocese Bishop Klaus Küng said it was an idea worth discussing in his opinion. Hiegelsberger is a member of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) which has formed a federal government coalition with the SPÖ since 2007. The SPÖ emphasised it would not support his initiative. The party branded Hiegelsberger’s suggested post-Church membership fee as a “forced charge”.

The Austrian Catholic Church generated 394 million Euros with the so-called Church tax in 2010. The sum Church members have to transfer depends on their salaries. Unemployed people and everyone with a comparably small income do not have to pay anything.

Complete Article HERE!

Ex-priest keeps the faith

Unable to deny his feelings, Father Jim resigns to be with the woman he loves

Like many Roman Catholic men who feel called to the priesthood, the Rev. Jim Hearne wrestled with whether ordination was right for him.

The youngest of seven in an Irish Catholic family, he saw the joy of family life firsthand and never could quite extinguish the desire to one day have children of his own. But spurred to help stem the priest shortage and strengthen the integrity of the cloth, Hearne donned a priest’s collar in 2005 at age 25.

Now he wonders if his six years in the pulpit as “Father Jim” might have been preparation to become Jim, the father. After a six-month leave of absence from St. Giles Roman Catholic Church in Oak Park, Illinois, Hearne decided not to return to the pulpit, but to stay in the pews and pray to one day start a family of his own.

He has no intention of turning his back on Catholicism. Rather, he wants to be more faithful to the church he calls home, and faithful to his feelings.

Hearne has fallen in love.

“To stay and bear and grunt it out I think would be unfair to God,” Hearne, 32, said during a recent interview at his childhood home in Dolton, Illinois. “It would be unfair to the people of God and would be unfair to me. … Perhaps God just wanted me to be a priest for six years. It’s odd. It’s weird. It’s mysterious. That’s our God.”

Hearne’s decision has sent a ripple through the Oak Park congregation, where many parishioners bemoan the Catholic Church’s celibacy requirement and the scarcity of men who want to become priests. Allowing priests to marry would bolster the dwindling ranks, many believe, and enable committed Catholics like Hearne to serve both God and family.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Francis George said he wishes Hearne would reconsider.

But Hearne’s tale is not about a loss of faith or a clash with church hierarchy. It’s about a man who believes he is following God in an unexpected direction. While he already misses his ministry, he does not resent his church for prohibiting priests from marrying. Celibacy is not necessarily a bad idea, he says.

“I think the spiritual quest or journey is our attempt to understand, freely receive, embrace God’s entering into our life out of pure love,” he said. “Am I to have a family? What kind of work will I do? Will I be seen as an outcast by other members of the clergy and even the cardinal for having left the ministry?”

Hearne doesn’t speak in simple sentences. He delivers sermons. After all, he spent most of his life training to become a priest.

That journey began at the bedside of his dying mother 21 years ago. As he waited for his six older brothers and sisters to arrive at the hospital, priests rotated in and out of the room, offering prayers and comfort to the 11-year-old son and his father.

Hearne believes he saw the best of the priesthood that day.

“I really saw God shining through all those people in a way I hadn’t before and thought: ‘Maybe I could do that. Maybe God is calling me in that direction,’ ” Hearne said.

His older brother John saw Hearne’s vocation then, too. While most of the siblings were angry with God for taking their mother at age 50, their youngest brother remained upbeat, he said.

“When I look back, my brother was probably the strongest of all. We all knew there was something there,” said John Hearne, 45, of Dyer, Indiana. “I believe he saw something that we didn’t: faith.”

Jim Hearne enrolled at Mount Carmel High School, an all-boys school run by the Carmelite religious order.

He later enrolled at St. Joseph College Seminary at Loyola University, where for the first time in years he attended classes with the opposite sex.

Several fellow seminarians disregarded the prohibition on dating and eventually dropped out of the program. Hearne adhered to the rule, but it was a challenge. When he reached Mundelein Seminary for his graduate work, a veteran clergyman offered some words of wisdom that helped. Every priest falls in love during the course of his priesthood, the clergyman warned.

“You praise God in those moments,” Hearne said. “Just because you have the blackandwhite collar on doesn’t mean you stop having feelings. That’s what he really got across. Now it’s what you do with that love that will determine your course of action.”

Just as seeing the best of the priesthood propelled Hearne toward the vocation, witnessing the worst of the clerical culture by the time he was ordained further fuelled his commitment. While he was still enrolled in Mundelein Seminary, the sexabuse scandal erupted in Boston and spread nationwide.

“It was going to be on my generation of priests to try and somehow, some way restore trust and integrity to the priesthood, remembering that [the] majority of priests are doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Hearne said.

As an associate pastor at St. James Catholic Church, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and also at St. Giles, Hearne was popular with young people and heavily involved in the youth ministries.

But as the young priest immersed himself in the daytoday demands of priesthood, he realized he was lonely.

“They can teach you all they want” about celibacy, he said. “You can read all the books about it that have been printed – volumes and volumes. Until you live it and experience it, it’s a far different thing.”

To protect her privacy, Hearne won’t say much about the woman he fell for. But he does acknowledge that it’s serious.

“A man doesn’t leave the priesthood just to date,” he said.

His brother John made sure of it, interrogating the woman the first time they met, to make sure she was equally committed and understood what his brother was willing to give up for her.

Jim Hearne emphasizes that he has “crossed no moral boundaries,” and he still upholds the church’s teaching on chastity.

Unable to deny his feelings any longer, he met with the cardinal last July and requested a leave of absence. Falling in love was not a legitimate reason to leave the priesthood, the cardinal told him, before granting him six months to give his decision more thought.

“Jim is a very fine man. He’s a really good man,” George said. “I hope with God’s grace that it will work out.”

The cardinal also warned him that if he left the priesthood and became a layperson once again, he could not immediately marry in the church – a source of heartbreak for Hearne, who wouldn’t want to marry anywhere else.

In a letter to parishioners at St. Giles, Hearne assured them that misconduct had not spurred his sudden departure. He also assured them that they had not forced him to leave.

“Please know that you have done nothing wrong,” he wrote.

“I love God. I love my faith. I love you. And it is because of this love that I need to do this for myself.”

Complete Article HERE!

Priest who fathered child removed from New York church

A newly installed Roman Catholic priest has been removed from his suburban New York parish after church officials on Thursday said he secretly fathered a child while attending seminary.

The removal of Reverend Casmir Mung’aho, 34, from his post at St. Stephen the First Martyr Church in the Orange County town of Warwick, New York, comes two weeks after the resignation of a Los Angeles assistant bishop who admitted he had two children.

Mung’aho was asked to step down after officials learned he fathered a child in a consensual relationship with an adult woman during his first year of seminary school, Bishop Dominick Lagonegro said in a statement.

While Mung’aho was removed from the congregation in Warwick, it was not yet clear whether he will remain a priest or be defrocked by the New York Archdiocese, said archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling. He said officials had yet to discuss with Mung’aho what action will be taken.

“Father never revealed this to our bishops or seminary authorities, which he certainly should have done,” Lagonegro said in a statement.

“Given the need for Father Casmir to address this matter and reflect on his responsibilities in a very serious way, his assignment to St. Stephen’s is now ended. Please pray for him, as well as for the mother and the child whose lives are so precious.”

The Catholic Church requires celibacy from its priests.

When asked how the church found out about the young child, the Rev. Michael McLoughlin, St. Stephen’s pastor, declined to elaborate to Reuters.

“We’re all sad and we’re all praying for him,” McLoughlin said. “Everything is out there now and other than that I have nothing to say.”

Attempts to reach Mung’aho were not immediately successful. According to his biography published in the New York archdiocese’s official newspaper last year, he grew up in Tanzania and came to the United States about six years ago. As a child, he had always dreamed of becoming a priest.

“The support and respect for the church in general is very high,” he said in his biography. “I see myself here being a model. It’s being an example every day.”

Mung’aho graduated from St. Joseph’s Seminary school in Yonkers, just north of New York City, last year before taking a position at the church in Warwick, a town about 60 miles north of New York City.

Earlier this month, Gabino Zavala, an assistant bishop of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, resigned after admitting he had a secret family and the two teenage children he fathered were living with their mother in another state.

Complete Article HERE!