Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois last year faced excommunication from the Vatican because of his decision to take part in the ordination of a women as a priest.
After taking part in the female ordination, he was given a certain amount of time to recant his role or be excommunicated but he refused and it was assumed he was subsequently automatically excommunicated after that time had elapsed.
Well one enterprising columnist Gary Stern from LoHud.com called the priest and boy did he get an earful. Firstly, Fr. Bourgeois doesn’t consider himself excommunicated.
Bourgeois told me that he has not heard from the Vatican since the fall. Not a note, an e-mail, nothing. So he is continuing to celebrate Mass and baptize babies.
“I have not gotten anything saying I am defrocked,” he said. “I continue to be a Catholic priest in good standing.”
Hmmm. Two months ago, Maryknoll’s superior general, the Rev. Edward M. Dougherty, issued a statement saying that Bourgeois had been “automatically excommunicated” when he did not meet the Vatican’s deadline to recant.
I contacted Maryknoll this week, and they were taken aback that Bourgeois disagrees.
“We are surprised and are saddened that his actions may present an obstacle in the path toward his reconciliation with Church authorities,” a new statement said. “We are still hoping that he will reconsider his position and be reconciled with the Vatican, a hope that they also have expressed.”
Seeking clarification, I faxed a note to the Vatican press office. No response so far.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would not touch this one.
Just for clarification, as of Dec. 10th of last year, Maryknoll considered Father Roy Bourgeois excommunicated, according to the National Catholic Register which wrote that day:
Q. Does Maryknoll consider Father Roy Bourgeois to be excommunicated?
A. “We believe that he has been excommunicated. This was done by the CDF, not by us.”Q. As of today, Dec. 10?
A. “Yes.”Q. Have you heard from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about it?
A. “There has been no direct communication from the CDF regarding that.”Q. Then why do you consider him excommunicated?
A. “Because he was given 30 days to recant his actions, and he had responded saying that he could not recant those actions, he has been excommunicated at the end of that” period of time.
But just yesterday Bourgeois was quoted in a piece about a protest group supporting Catholic female ordination in a separate newspaper account in The Monitor in which he is introduced as “Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and founder of School of the Americas Watch, an activist group that monitors U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.”
All I can say is that this is a situation begging for clear closure. Someone better get this squared away because there very well may be an excommunicated priest celebrating Mass and baptizing babies which may not be valid (or at least licit.) The Church owes it to the people to straighten this matter out.
But not content to leave well enough alone, Bourgeois upped the ante again in speaking to the columnist from LoHud.com in comparing the Vatican to the Ayatollahs in Iran.
But bombastic language and Bourgeois are well acquainted. In the past, Bourgeois has compared himself to Rosa Parks and said that because he’d been a priest since 1972 he was owed a sit down with the Pope to convince him of the correctness of women’s ordination. Here’s what was written this week by the LoHud.com columnist:
When I spoke to Bourgeois this week, he compared the Catholic Church’s unwillingness to ordain women as priests to the Iranian regime’s authoritative approach to crowd control.
“We, as men, claim this divine right to interpret the will of God, and it’s similar to what the ayatollahs are saying,” he told me.
What!?
Bourgeois then added that he believes the Vatican is guilty of “outdated sexism” and a “sin” for their failure to follow Bourgeois’ lead in ordaining women. Bourgeois said: “The exclusion of women is a grave injustice and a sin…This is a movement whose time has come. It’s not going away.” And nor does it seem will Bourgeois anytime soon.
Update: Welcome Spirit Daily readers. While you’re here please feel free to check out some other recent stories.
Mass for Clunkers
I Am A Fishy American
The Miracle at Woodstock.
HT Pewsitter
August 11, 2009 at 8:31 am
Infiltration
The crisis facing the Catholic Church in the United States and the abominable state of the seminary system goes beyond mere incompetence; it bears the mark of intentional orchestration. Mr. Manning Johnson, a former official of the Communist Party in America, gave the following testimony in 1953 to the House Un-American Activities Committee:
"Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin… the communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through the infiltration of the Church by communists operating within the Church itself. The communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions and the religious makeup peculiar to this country. In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to communist purposes…. The policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our communist expectations." – Manning Johnson
In the early 1950s, Mrs. Bella Dodd provided detailed explanations of the Communist subversion of the Church. Speaking as a former high ranking official of the American Communist Party, Mrs. Dodd said: "In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within." She stated that she alone had encouraged nearly 1,000 youngsters to infiltrate the seminaries and religious orders. The idea was for these men to be ordained and progress to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops. A dozen years before Vatican II she stated that: "Right now they are in the highest places in the Church."
"Yes, my child, I want you to let the world know that our seminaries were not pure. Many had entered for this very day to try to destroy the Faith and the Church of My Son. You must know that the Eternal Father will not permit this. The world is fast hurtling to a baptism of fire.” – Our Lady of the Roses May 17, 1986
August 11, 2009 at 8:43 am
THE EXORCISM OF NICOLA AUBREY
By Father Michael Muller, C.Ss.R.
It is indeed a remarkable fact that, as the devil made use of Luther, an apostate monk, to abolish the Mass and deny the Real Presence, in like manner God made use of His arch-enemy, the devil, to prove the Real Presence. He repeatedly forced him publicly to profess his firm belief in it, to confound the heretics for their disbelief, and acknowledge himself vanquished by Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. For this purpose God allowed a certain Mme. Nicola Aubrey, an innocent person, to become possessed by Beelzebub and twenty-nine other evil spirits. The possession took place on the eighth of November, 1565, and lasted until the eighth of February, 1566.
Please Read the rest on line under the heading..
August 11, 2009 at 8:48 am
"And why, My children, will this great War come about, the war to end all wars? Because of man's sin! In your country, My children, in your seminaries in the United States and Canada, My children, and the world, you have professors now so steeped in sin . . . they who call themselves My Son's chosen priests, they are vile sons of satan who are now rationalizing sin! There shall be no rationalization placed upon sin. The commandments shall not be looked at objectively and given to excuses, or reasoning to condone sin! No, My children, it is the minds poisoned by satan that spread this filth and error, this distortion of doctrine, this distortion of Tradition, and this distortion of your Faith! Awaken, pastors, from your slumber! Can you, O bishops, not spare but the little time to look into your seminaries? I say but one expression to you: they have become hell-holes of error and heresy! Clean out your seminaries, My bishops!” – Our Lady of the Roses, October 2, 1976
August 11, 2009 at 9:45 pm
A legally ordained priest I think because of his ordination has the power to lead the faithful to Christ or to lead them to Lucifer.
This Mark of Ordination goes with him even across the veil.
At death he would have two, baptismal and ordination
Using his ordination in a sacrilegious celebrations then it's like giving the blessed Eucharist to be trampled.
He can still celebrate his priestly duties but has to be in accordance with the teaching of the church, but nevertheless he would have an account to settle, thought his blessing would still be valid….but that's me!
August 13, 2009 at 5:14 pm
This is so depressing. When I was a little girl, I wrote a letter to Father Bourgeois in prison. I remember being completely confused about why a priest would be imprisoned, and I was very sad. I didn't understand anything about his political views or lovely things like his participation in the "ordination" of women.
It breaks my heart to see priests destroying themselves and their faith, and leading others into sin.
How very, very sad…