After declining to recant his very public support for women's ordination, Father Roy Bourgeois has been dismissed by the Maryknolls. The N.Y. Times reports that he was notified via a letter signed by the superior general and the general secretary of the Maryknoll order in the United States, which said his dismissal was necessary because of his “defiant stance” in opposition to church teaching.
" 'Your numerous public statements and appearances in support of the women’s priests movement continues to create in the minds of many faithful the view that your position is acceptable to our Church,' the letter said, adding that Father Bourgeois had caused the church 'grave scandal.' "
Father Bourgeois' case will now be considered by the Vatican for possible "reduction to lay status." He has hired Father Tom Doyle, best known for his work on the church's sex abuse crisis, to represent him at the Vatican.
UPDATED (h/t Dan Horan): NCR's Tom Roberts is reporting that the NY Times got the story wrong on Bourgeois and that he has received a "second canonical warning," not a dismissal. The July 27 letter gives him another 15 days to recant and includes an opprotunity to defend himself against a dismissal from Maryknoll.
1. NCR is reporting that Fr. Bourgeois is claiming the NYT piece is incorrect because he has not yet appealed the dismissal. See "Bourgeois: NY Times Story Incorrect."
2. Little coverage has been given to the complexity of the reason(s) and process of dismissal. The popular focus has been on Bourgeois's stance on women's ordination, but his dismissal is actually a result of disobedience in religious life. See this post for more on this: "The Real Reason Roy Bourgeois Was Dismissed"
I cases like this, I always remember a quote from Cardinal Newman, recently beatified by Pope Benedict XVI. In a letter to the Duque of Norkforld, chaper 5, he wrote, and I quote:
“I add one remark. Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.” He continues discussing and presenting his arguments in his writings on the issue of conscience and personal responsibility facing God. And he has been beatified...
This happened many, many years before Vatican II and its proclamation of the primacy of conscience.
No human being, regardless of status, can with certainty assess the depth of Fr. Roy's conscience, as he ponders his religious obedience to the Maryknoll Order and to God's. Difficult choice if they conflict.
Let's pray for all involved.
THen why did they kill Jesus?
Lord Acton of England once said (in reference to Pius IX) - ''Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.''
What did prophets look like within their cultures?
History is full of such examples of renegades providing the needed push - renegades who include Jesus Christ, who was tortured and killed - a renegade who posed such a threat to the religious leaders, and by extension, the Roman leaders, that he was executed also. But, it didn't work, did it? He was dead, but the truths he proclaimed have lived on. This can be seen with many renegades. Ghandi - both a religious and a civil leader, assassinated. People like Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers (all of whom knew they would be killed if they lost), and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, who risked jail and in some cases death, to name just a few well-known examples. There are many in Catholic church history as well - people who were investigated, silenced, censored, sometimes even excommunicated, some turned over to the state for execution after being found guilty of heresy (Galileo saved his skin by partially recanting what he knew to be the truth and still had to live under house arrest the remainder of his life; as a condemned heretic, Joan of Arc was denied communion before she was burned at the stake with the blessing of the church) - generally ''exonerated'' after their deaths, and some later called ''saint'' by the church.
Let's hear it for the renegades who are brave enough to stand up and push when most prefer not to rock the boat, preferring safety and comfort instead, even when they know that there are injustices out there that cry out for someone to DO something (But not me, Lord. It's too risky.....Let the Father Roys of the world go out on those limbs that the princes in Rome will soon cut off. I am too comfortable the way it is now to take any risks. Let someone else do it - the renegades).
"When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without any thought of God at all. They do not even pretend to go by any moral rule, but they demand, what they think is an Englishman's prerogative, for each to be his own master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one's leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a word against his going to perdition, if he like it, in his own way. Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a licence to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will.
"Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will."
I have read Cardinal Newman's discussion on conscience, and his whole history of conversion to Catholicism, and certainly did not understand his discourse to be reflected in the paragraph you quoted. Quotatiosns are always, in some way, out of context. The life experience of the peson's quoted and the time in history when they were written needs to be taken into account. Maybe we shouldn't use any reference or quotes from persons who can't any longer clarify themselves...
The primacy of an informed conscience, notwithstanding, is documented and effective even to this day, since Vatican II.
Let's end this argument here. A blog it is not the venue to change other people points of view or intrpretations.
Men gave their obedience to men, and permitted evil to continue, and due to this misguided obedience to men and to an institution, created thousands of young victims of rape and molestation who might have been spared if these bishops had but remembered that their obedience must be to God, not to men. Perhaps they, including Cardinal Ratzinger himself, should be reminded what a younger Joseph Ratzinger had once written, before he had spent too many years in Rome, perhaps clouding his vision and conscience.
“Over the pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one’s own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism”.
Joseph Ratzinger, 1967
(in: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II )
Clergy must continuously remind themselves that their obedience must be to God - not to men. To put men, and their ''laws'' above God's law is a form of idolatory.