I'm not sure what that would accomplish.
Why? Because ordination imparts an indelible character upon the soul - he's a priest forever. Nevertheless, Fr. Ramsey believes that would help the faithful.
Father Boniface Ramsey, the Dominican who taught at the seminar of the Immaculate Conception in Newark learning of the homosexual harassment perpetrated by Bishop Theodore McCarrick, and wrote to Nuncio Gabriel Montalvo the day after McCarrick's appointment in Washington, asks the Pope to publicly remove from the now former cardinal from priesthood. Ramsey wrote a detailed memoir published in the American Catholic magazine Commonweal. - Vatican InsiderFr. Ramsey believes: McCarrick’s public removal from the priesthood, not just the College of Cardinals would be an appropriate and generally understandable response to his crimes and sins”. Ramsey knows more than I do, but I think McCarrick's title removed and his exile of penance and prayer is sufficient temporal punishment. Most of us just want to know why no one did anything about it before everything became public, especially since many bishops already knew about his particular exercise of 'corruption'.
"We all know that McCarrick had picked up a flight attendant at the airport".
That said, some of the stuff sounds like a script for a character in a screwball comedy. Especially the following anecdote.
Ramsey reiterates why he was excluded from the college of voting consultants in the Newark seminary: for he spoke in favor of the expulsion of McCarrick’s favorite seminarian, whom the bishop had met on a plane where he was working as steward, inviting him at the time to become one of his seminarians.
Father Ramsey adds a new detail, relating to the fact that "rumorsˮ on McCarrick's habits already in the early 'nineties were known even outside the narrow circle of the Churches of Metuchen and Newark. At least so he deduces from the words that the Archbishop of Louisville, Monsignor Thomas Kelly, said to him on the phone immediately after Ramsey had been deprived of voting power in the seminary: "We all know that McCarrick had picked up someone (the seminarian, ed.) at the airport". The Dominican believes that that "all of us" meant "McCarrick's brother bishops" and that this was "the first sign that knowledge of McCarrick's behavior was widespread among all American bishops". - ibid
He recruited/picked up a flight attendant to enter seminary. Someone needs to remake Going My Way.
It just keeps spirling down. Are we in hell yet? I cannot read his soul so I cannot take a side on defrockment. For now I wash my hands of it all and walk away with my wallet tightly cluched in my hand.
ReplyDeleteThe only way I can handle it is imagining it in a sitcom, SNL sketch, or a screwball comedy. I just paged through FB and became convinced everyone is nuts. Including me. God have mercy! Latest news is that some priest in Iowa molested numerous boys and the diocese covered it up - evidently he had admitted it to his bishop who also happened to be a molester. That's not funny, to be sure, but it is classic 'inmates running the asylum'.
DeleteTerry,
DeleteThis is sad and ugly and scandalous. I cannot blame anyone who walks away from the faith when they reading that such behavior is tolerated.
Iowa diocese covered up priest’s abuse of 50 boys
"The diocese privately revealed Coyle’s past in a letter to a Catholic couple who had been allowing Coyle to live at their Albuquerque home after he was injured in a 2017 car accident. The letter warned the couple, Reuben and Tania Ortiz, that the diocese “cannot condone the risk you take” in allowing Coyle to live with their three teenage children.
“The letter was very scary for us as parents,” said Reuben Ortiz, who had been friends with Coyle for years and was unaware of the extent of his abuse. He said that he confronted Coyle and that the priest could not guarantee that he would be able to refrain from fondling his son. But Coyle had nowhere to go and continued living there until June, when deacons from Sioux City moved him back to Iowa.
“I was up day and night for days sometimes, patrolling my own house,” Reuben Ortiz said.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2018/11/01/iowa-diocese-covered-up-priests-abuse-of-50-boys/
Did not know of the Iowa situation. Certainly there are others yet to come. If the Nov. Bishops Meeting does not produce dramatic actions I will practice my faith without affiliation with a parish. I cannot support the present regime.
DeleteSo you don’t believe the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ? You don’t believe the Holy Spirit is in charge? You remind me of the apostles who deserted Jesus when things got rough, Good Friday always comes before Easter Sunday. If you take your toys and leave now because you don’t want to face the pains and sufferings of Good Friday, you will never know the joy of Easter Sunday.
DeleteOf course ordination is indelible. Laicizing him takes him out from under church control. A private life of prayer and penance will accomplish much more.
ReplyDelete