"Reverence the Resistance" (from The Heart of the Matter)

A beautifully moving reflection from my smart new sister-in-law on the upcoming ordination of her younger brother.

Source: http

The Canonical Fate of Raymond Lahey

In a very rare move, the Holy See has decreed that Raymond Leahy, disgraced former bishop of the Diocese of Anitiginosh, Nova Scotia, has been dismissed from the clerical state. The brief press release from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops lays out clearly and succinctly the canonical effects that this administrative action carries:

According to Canon 292 of the Code of Canon Law, the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state has the following effects: loss of the rights and duties attached to the clerical state, except for the obligation of celibacy; prohibition of the exercise of any ministry, except as provided for by Canon 976 of the Code of Canon Law in those cases involving danger of death; loss of all offices and functions and of all delegated power, as well as prohibition of the use of clerical attire. Raymond Lahey has accepted the Decree of Dismissal, which also requires him to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in reparation for the harm and the scandal he has caused, and for the sanctification of clergy.

This is, thankfully, a very rare circumstance indeed that the Church is dealing with: a bishop found guilty of a grave public crime in both the civil-criminal and canonical spheres of jurisdiction. While we are all too familiar with similarly distasteful examples involving priests, when the offender is of episcopal rank the situation is exceedingly delicate for the Church, although not for the reasons that the average person, jaded by the decades of cover-ups and paper shuffling, would expect. The greatest fear with a disgraced bishop is that, if so inclined, he could “go rogue” and begin ordaining men as priests and even bishops without approval, creating a potentially messy schismatic situation with potentially long-lasting ramifications. Such ordinations outside the communion with the Bishop of Rome would of course be gravely illicit, and would bring immediate ecclesiastical penalties upon all involved. But, at the end of the day, they would most likely still be valid ordinations.

So I find it a fitting arrangement that the decree for Lahey has stripped him of all privileges of his presbyteral and episcopal state, but has re-iterated the obligations he assumed at his own ordination: to live celibately, to observe perfect and perpetual continence, and to pray faithfully the Liturgy of the Hours, in his case with the special intention of reparation for his failings and their impact on the entire community. It has a very old-fashioned ring to it, but he really has been directed to live out his days in prayer and penance. And I for one cannot see a better arrangement the Church could have made in this sad case.

The Vicariate Forane (The Parish in Canon Law, part 6)

I would be hard pressed to think of a term that is less familiar to us in the North American context. But it is potentially relevant to this topic, and should at least be laid out beside the other possible arrangements for parishes and the structural provision of pastoral care. The second half of c. 374 reads:

§2. To foster pastoral care through common action, several neighboring parishes can be joined into special groups, such as vicariates forane.

From the standard commentaries on this canon, the reader can learn that vicariates forane are also called deaneries, but little else is said. But at least we know the word deanery, so we know what we are talking about now. It is also evident from the text of the canon that, while the division of each diocese into territorial parishes is required by the law, the supra-parochial division of the same diocese into larger groupings is completely optional. But it is possible that this notion, when it is applied in dioceses, is extremely underused.

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One or More Parishes, Multiple Parish Priests (The Parish in Canon Law, part 5)

The notion of a small group of priests being put jointly in charge of the pastoral care of one or more parishes is another provision that was new of the 1983 Code, although not without long precedent. It should be noted that this canon is not describing a parish with a pastor and one or more associates/parochial vicars. What is described in c. 517, §1 is a group of priests who are all, as a group, each given all the rights and responsibilities of a parochus, while none of them is specifically the parochus (although one must be the moderator, who coordinates the joint pastoral activity and is responsible for reporting to the Diocesan bishop on behalf of all the others). While it is a new addition to the current legislation, it is also one that has seen very little application in practice. With a seemingly-ever-dwindling supply of active priests being stretched farther and farther, an option that involves multiple priests living and working together in the same place has — perhaps understandably — not appeared to be a solution to many of the pastoral planning problems facing bishops in recent years.[1]

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Judged by the links in my list

I am still absolutely small potatoes on Twitter — I’m nowhere close to even one hundred followers, and I don’t see that changing dramatically anytime soon — so when someone starts following me, I have time to take notice. This morning the notice caught my eye as soon as I opened my email inbox:

“ifollowHATE (@ifollowHATE) is now following you on Twitter!”

I was a tiny bit taken aback by this, and clicked to see the profile for this charmingly-named account: this consisted of a brief statement of opposition to the proposed marriage amendment to the state constitution in North Carolina (a state I have never come close to visiting). Not sure exactly what I had posted to put me in this individual’s social media crosshairs, I posted a wry comment, which was replied to in short order:

Ah, I see. So it wasn’t anything I had said, but rather some account among the three hundred nineteen that I follow that this person had branded with the lazy label of “hate group” for their stance on this matter. Well, as I observed in direct response, that is a system of sorts, so whatever works for him or her.

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Back to work

As I sit at my desk in my private office at the diocesan Pastoral Center, I stare at the open case file in front of me. It is the end of my second week back at work, the work I will be doing for the rest of my foreseeable life, and I am struck, over and over again, by how much I have forgotten over the course of the just-finished school year. I am not surprised by this, but it is disappointing and more than a little discouraging. I am not as young as I once was, my mental acuity is certainly not what I could hope for, and I am confronted, not for the first time, by just how hard it is going to be for me to really master this new undertaking, to dig deep into this vast body of new knowledge and hang on to what I find there.

I am not an idiot by any stretch. But I am tired, and pulled in many directions, and worst of all I am undisciplined - in almost every area of my life, but most especially in my academic habits. But I cannot and will not let this new direction in my life come to naught. I am excited by my studies, and I am deeply committed to the work I am going to be doing. But I need to take the time and energy now to slow down and reinvent myself and how I operate, to break down long-held bad habits and build up new and better ones. I need to dig in and struggle to be the canonist and scholar and minister of the Church’s justice than I know I am called to be.

The never-ending tide of misinformation

This tweet is a perfect example of the sort of thing that makes me bang my head against my desk:

I have no doubt that this is probably a well-meaning person, justly outraged, who is merely parroting what she has just heard from some source or another. But I am pretty sure that in three years of studying canon law, I would have noticed if the Code actually contained anything even remotely resembling this. 

In all seriousness, however, confusion and misinformation like this make a truly heart-breaking and tragic situation, and its long-festering aftermath, that much more difficult to address and to resolve. I cannot fault the anger and pain directed toward the Church in these times, but I can and do fault those who muddy the waters and confuse the credulous.

Many Parishes, One Parish Priest (The Parish in Canon Law, part 4)

What has been commonly referred to (in the United States, at least) as ‘clustering’ parishes is usually an application of c. 526 §1, which allows the diocesan bishop, in the case of a shortage of available clergy, to make the same priest the parochus of more than one parish at the same time. The text of the canon itself is quite clear that this is a provision for what is still seen by the legislator as an exceptional case:

A pastor is to have the parochial care of only one parish; nevertheless, because of a lack of priests or other circumstances, the care of several neighboring parishes can be entrusted to the same pastor.

This was not envisioned by either the Code Commission or the legislator as becoming the norm, but as an accommodation that would be available should circumstances require it. It is no secret, however, that circumstances have required it on a vast scale in the years since the promulgation of the Code, to the point that it is difficult to consider this arrangement as even nominally exceptional anymore. It should be noted that the canon specified neighboring parishes, for obvious practical reasons.

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Possible New Models for Parishes (The Parish in Canon Law, part 3)

Our earlier comments are not intended to imply that diocesan bishops have simply sat still on pastoral planning and parish staffing while the world changed around them: far from it. As populations have dwindled or shifted, and numbers of available clergy have declined nearly everywhere, bishops across the United States (and elsewhere in the world, too) have moved to make real and sometimes drastic changes to the internal structures of their dioceses, and to how they provide pastoral care for the souls committed to their care. There are a number of very different options that have been pursued in different places; in the next few installments of our series we will attempt to sketch the outlines of these different canonical configurations along with their strengths and weaknesses where applicable.

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Is the Inevitable Correction to the American 'Annulment Machine' Finally Near?