Canon Lawyer: Bishops Have Authority Over the Word "Catholic"

This article comes from the In the Light of the Law blog. --------------------------------------- Lisa Fullam's dangerous advice should be ignored When informed that the Vatican would oppose him, Joseph Stalin shrugged and asked “How many troops does the pope have?” To the dictator, the only views that mattered were those backed-up by men with guns. Lisa Fullam has offered authorities at Catholic Healthcare West / St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix similarly myopic, even dangerous, advice when she suggested that, because the word “Catholic” is not copyright-able, the enterprise should continue to call itself “Catholic” despite Bp. Thomas Olmsted’s threatened prohibition of such use, and simply “let the canonical chips fall where they may.” Apparently Fullam believes that, since men with badges will never show up to enforce a cease-and-desist order (that will never be issued) by a civil court regarding the word “Catholic”, Catholic hospital officials need not worry about bishops tossing a few “canonical chips” their way. I strongly suggest that St. Joseph's seek advice from another expert. If the only criterion for authentic Catholic conduct is “what Church rules are enforceable by civil courts?”, then there won’t be much left of Catholic codes of conduct. Thank God. I don’t want states being the final arbiter of what is acceptable Catholic conduct and what is not, and I would hope that Fullam doesn’t want that, either. But if Fullam’s point is that a bishop’s authority over the use of the label “Catholic” is, absent state enforcement options, nugatory, then she needs to study up on some elementary canon law (and ecclesiology, for that matter). A bishop’s authority over the use of the word “Catholic” is reflected in, e.g., 1983 CIC 216 and 300, and those norms just get the conversation started. Canons 1319 comes next to mind, but an exploration of those options goes beyond what I can cover in blog post. Fullam’s nonchalance about ecclesiastical authority notwithstanding, I suggest that Catholic Healthcare West / St. Joseph's Hospital officials put a careful reading of these and related canons on the agenda for their next meeting. I’m pretty sure that Bp. Olmsted has them memorized. Read more at thevaticanlobby.blogspot.com

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Homosexual Priest Stole $1.3 Million for Male Escorts, Etc.

By Patrick B. Craine

WATERBURY, Connecticut, July 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A homosexual Connecticut Roman Catholic priest allegedly stole over a million dollars from his parish to pay for various extravagances and illicit activities, including male escorts, report the Waterbury police.

Fr. Kevin Gray, 64, former pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Waterbury, has been charged with first-degree larceny after taking $1.3 million out of parish funds to pay for escorts, hotels, meals out, and clothes.

He carried credit cards for two men on his account – one whom he met at a strip club, the other from an escort service. He paid tuition to Harvard for another man that he met in Central Park.

"Up until this investigation he had an excellent reputation," police Captain Christopher Corbett told Fox News. "The life he was leading in New York City was much different than the life he was leading in Waterbury as a priest. He's certainly an example of someone who was leading a double life."

The priest began taking money when he was transferred to Sacred Heart in 2003. He told police that he “had grown to hate being a priest” and “he felt the church owed it to him.”

The financial discrepancies were reported by the archdiocese on May 27 after Fr. Gray took a medical leave in April and disappeared. He turned himself in to police Tuesday, and was arraigned with bail set at $750,000.

The police affidavit says Fr. Gray told police he is homosexual and that he objects to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.

In a 2005 instruction, the Vatican prohibited admitting homosexuals into seminaries, and warned that "one must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”
The directive has gone unheeded in many dioceses, and has even been directly opposed by some bishops and religious orders. Some commentators have suggested that the instruction was not meant to bar men with homosexual tendencies, but merely those with an immature sexuality.

But Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone reaffirmed the teaching in 2008, in a letter to the world’s bishops, insisting that the ban on admitting men with homosexual tendencies to seminaries applies universally.


Homosexuals Not Permitted in Any Seminaries, Reaffirms Vatican
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052009.html

Vatican Officially Releases Document on Homosexuality and the Priesthood
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05112903.html

Extracts From Official Release of Vatican Document on Homosexuality and the Priesthood
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/051129a.html



Link to article...

Church Law is only Applied only to Traditionalists

The Munich Canon Lawyer has pounded the Society of Pius X with the pan according to the letter of the law.

(Trier kreuz.net) On 18 January, Munich canon law professor, Fr. Stefan Haering (50) held a lecture against the Society of Pius X.

This was reported on the Trier diocesan web page on Monday.

The defense of the paper which was in April by the Emeritus Canon Law and Rector of Trier, Prelate Peter Kramer (67).

Another Theology?

Fr. Haering imputed to Pius X, a "a wide ranging clear and static picture of the Tradition of the Church".

They tend therefore, to be frozen in the Tradition "in the year 1962". The Society was in reality founded first in the summer of 1969.

Father Haering correctly recognizes, that the Society is a bit more than only about "the love for the old form of the Liturgy". He proceeded to explain: "It devolves upon the rejection of the Second Vatican Council."

In reality the Second Vatican Council itself made clear, that it wanted to pronounce no new teachings.

The Society rejects Ecumenism, the Collegiality of Bishops and Religious Freedom - mentions Father Haering some of the pastoral concerns of the Pastoral Council.

The greatest Church law is the Salvation of Souls?

Further the Benedictine said, that the Society in canonical sense has no jurisdiction (Rechtpersoenlichkeit). Still further intoned the Benedictine: "They can not be represented as a Society (Gruppierung) of the Catholic Church."

Father Haering grounded his judgement with the canonical decision on the Society in 1975 and the illegal Consecrations of 1988.

In this view the ecumenically fanatical priest in any event must maintain, that the Orthodox and Protestants as well have no jurisdiction (legal standing/jurisdiction) in a canonical sense -- even newly formed religious Communities don't have this.

Furthermore the Father imputes to the Society - the outdated language of the Vatican bears -- an "indisputable schismatic stamp"

Only Old Liberal Grievances are Tolerable

Furher on he describes -- in a right plump historical misrepresentation -- Pope Paul VI (+ 1978) as "good Father and Shepherd", who has "shown the way to return".

Which way that had been, the Benedictine doesn't say.

Later he maintains -- throughout without naming any examples --, that the Vatican "is silent but doesn't condone" over alleged grievances of the Society in order not to endanger reintegration:

"Under this general consciousness and the order within the Church, the authority of the Church can be mistaken for weak and arbitrary" - explained Fr. Haering, from whom no similar public complaints about the "De facto" suspension of Church law in the Diocese is known.

The lifting of the Excommunications against the Society of Pius X the Canon Lawyer named only one time, when excommunications are rare, a "free grace from the Pope."

"Pope Benedict managed the Church in an unusual way, he acts as it were as a religious teacher and is not strictly oriented by the law as a judge."

The Church cannot discuss with the Society - Father Haering explained despite the current discussions:

"Otherwise the tail wags the dog."

Holy Father on Saint Inflation

Benedict applies a gentle brake to saint-making

DESMOND O'GRADY, ROME
December 21, 2009


Mary MacKillop's canonisation will take place under Pope Benedict XVI's policy of restoring solemnity to canonisations.

His approach differs from that of his predecessor, John Paul II, who tended to cancel the distinction between beatification, in which a person's accession to heaven and ability to intercede for others is recognised, and canonisation, in which one becomes a saint.

He believed that as many nations as possible should have their saints, to correct the impression that heaven is populated by Italians, and that they should be as contemporary as possible.

He also believed that lay people and married couples should be canonised to balance the shoals of saints from religious orders.

The result was that he beatified and canonised more people than all his predecessors of the previous four centuries. Joseph Ratzinger, before becoming Benedict XVI, complained publicly that the inflation of saints was devaluing the currency.

John Paul II held many of the ceremonies in St Peter's, but Benedict XVI has encouraged beatifications at local level by bishops of the place where the person died rather than holding them in Rome.

For beatification, one cure for which no scientific explanation can be found is needed, but for canonisation the requirement is a second miracle which must occur after the beatification.

It did not seem a great difference to John Paul II but Benedict XVI has a different perspective.

He has the more traditional view that beatification is a papal concession to allow veneration of the beatified at the local level but that canonisation involves full papal authority in endorsing veneration throughout the church universal.

When Benedict XVI visits Britain early next year he is expected to beatify the 19th-century convert from Anglicanism John Henry Newman, an eloquent defender of the rights of conscience who is much admired by Benedict XVI.

Some candidates are blocked in the saint-recognition process for decades while evidence is gathered or miracles are awaited.

It is exactly a century since the archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Moran, left Mary MacKillop's deathbed expressing the conviction she was a saint.

Evidence began to be gathered in Sydney in 1925 but the case only reached Rome in 1973.

In contrast, 17th-century reformer Pope Innocent XI was on hold for 267 years. He was beatified in 1956.


Source: http://pascendi2.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=4091311

Good News Roundup! Pope to Revise 83' Code of Canon Law

It has been mentioned that in addition to working out some of the details of meeting the Anglicans and moving them in an orderly fashion to the Barque of Peter, there is talk about a revision of the 1983 Code of Canon law, which is in great need of revision, clarity and decisiveness.

More proof that liberalism is evil and does nothing but leave behind a wasteland like what T.S. Elliot warned us of. What's even "better" is that this was once one of the most Catholic places outside of the Archdiocese of Rome and Holland (another place liberals had their way with). Trenchent and malevolent liberalism was fueled into this most Catholic region like a persistent nerve agent whose purpose it was to make it so poisonous to Catholics that one couldn't be found anywhere, except perhaps in crowded SSPX Chapels in remote and hidden recesses in lonely Quebec.

Milwaukee Archbishop tells cultural Catholics they can't be pro-abortion, pro-contraception and Catholic.


Wyoming Bishop withdraws and leaves open yet another possibillity for another woman Bishop. That's good.

Diogenes Sounds off on Highly Placed Clerical Homosexuals

Diogenes sounds off again about the issue of homosexuals in the priesthood and in this case, the episcopate. He notes the way one of Bishop of Antigonish Raymond Lahey's defenders, Archbishop James Weisgerber, who objects that Bishop Lahey shouldn't be tried in the court of "public opinion", is not being honest with us. This dodge sounds suspiciously familiar. It is an attempt to appeal to good-natured fair play all around. Bishop Weisberger thinks it's just about a man's sexual "preference", one which he doesn't seem to think will produce an "affective maturity" contrary to canon law.

We'll try to add to what Diogenes has suggested by saying that one might detect a heterodox and dangerous (depending on his place in the hierarchy) individual when he attempts to drag out platitudinous emotional appeals to fair conduct, which don't stand well in the face of existing canon law. A canon law which they disingenuously attempt to sidestep and ignore with the predictable results we've seen thus far that go hand in hand with heterodoxy, declining parish enrollments, embarrassing criminal cases, divestment and a "vocations crisis".

Diogenes also points out that Homosexuals are not to be put in positions of authority as rectors of Seminaries. It's a good rule because no one normal will want to deal with an emotionally immature and obsessive man with an "affective" disorder. Is it any wonder that the crop of clerical homosexuals has procured for us such a ramshackle Church in America?

Death and the Connivance of Cremation

It's time for autumn and time to reflect on the last things, heaven, judgement, purgatory and hell. We have many obligations, but above all we need to obey the commandments as we prepare for death. One meditation might be to take some time and think about your funeral arrangements. Don't let Father Flapdoodle get involved and mess things up, and don't let your relatives send you to a crematorium where your body, which has received many benedictions and graces in itself, will be tossed into an enormous blender. It's one of those situations where you have to hold your nose and pretend that no one has said it's ok to be cremated. It's never been a Christian custom to be cremated, it is for pagans to do that, and more important, it's not all that expensive if you avoid the state-mandated vault or get put in a family crypt, or better yet, get buried inside the church itself. This article, by a secular journalist in the Philippines, asks his countrymen what they think. Thank God that the Philippines is still Catholic.

Belonging to a Christian nation, Filipinos have been accustomed to burying their deceased loved ones the traditional way because of the belief that the soul of the departed will continue to be with them even after death.

Aside from this, Filipinos believe that the burial site is a corporeal link between the departed loved one and the family members left behind.

That's why many Filipinos still prefer traditional burial since a buried body means the physical presence of the person they would love to cherish and remember.

However, over the years, traditional burial has been overshadowed by the growing number of people preferring to cremate their loved ones as a way of honoring their dead because of financial consideration. For them, cremation is also “more economical” in the long run.

We Respond:

Cremation was once forbidden by canon law, and like a lot of things that have changed in the last 40 years for arbitrary and unreasonable reasons, we don't understand it, and it doesn't seem that anyone is going to explain it to us either. We do believe that those in charge have done a poor job of explaining things. But we like how the journalist tries to give significance to the rite of burial by referring to local and presume ably pre-christian attitudes about burial.

For your perusal, here's the old canon law of 1917:

Canon 1203: "The bodies of the faithful must be buried, and cremation is reprobated. If anyone has in any manner ordered his body to be cremated, it shall be unlawful to execute his wish."

But, in line with the proper feeling of a Catholic conscience and the previous canons and customs of the ancient Church, the best answer is given by this interviewee,

Stephany Andem, 22, of Quezon City, said she wants her body to be buried the traditional way also because of her Catholic faith.

The rest of the article is here...

Of course, Gary North gives good advice, he's recommending that you buy an inexpensive coffin and do whatever you can to make your funeral inexpensive so as not to provide too large a burden on your heirs. The average American funeral runs at an exorbitant price, around $14,000 and that's if you don't want to fly people out to come and be part of it.

One cost-cutting gesture, in addition to not embalming if it's legally permissible, is to find a cheap coffin which you can get here at Trappist Coffins.