Category: Canonical

COOL! Just in time for Christ-Mass, Amazon has bundled my two new books, namely, More Catholic Than the Pope, which I co-authored with Patrick Madrid, and Surprised by Canon Law, which I co-authored with Michael Trueman. Purchased together from Amazon, you save over four bucks.

I know, this is another shameless plug for my books; but this being Christmas and I being a doctoral student with two little children…I need the royalties!

Good news: a corrupt religious order has been suppressed!
The bad news: a few years ago, the community’s vision sounded rather promising, and a lot of us were rooting for it.
Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton announced last week that he was suppressing the Society of St. John, a community of traditionalist priests founded with the aim of fostering Catholic culture and the Tridentine Mass.
The Society, founded in 1998, had an ambitious plan to found Catholic villages and a liberal-arts college, but $5 million in donations for those purposes seems to have gone to lavish spending.
The Society even racked up over $2.6M in debts and got then-Bishop Timlin’s agreement to have the diocese co-sign for it. That had to be a sign to anyone with an attention span that something was wrong. For that matter, any Catholic in the U.S. who got their elaborate and attractive fund-raising mailings could tell that money was not being spent wisely.
The game started to unravel when lay supporters noticed they weren’t getting an accounting of where the money was going; it all hit the fan when the two top priests in the group were found to be taking home and sleeping with teenage students from a prep school. Since the members of the Society were all Scranton diocesan priests, the diocese itself is now the target of lawsuits.
Who knew? The story illustrates a bunch of problems we’ve all heard before: immature priests justifying their kinky conduct with a new self-invented philosophy about sex; arrogant clerics who think that they know better than experienced laymen how to run financial matters and practical affairs; a bishop who (although he did a lot of good in other areas) neglected his responsibility to protect the people of God from a few self-indulgent charmers.
But there is good news: the new bishop has done what he can to put an end to it. Thanks, Bp. Martino.
Rod Dreher wrote about the case in ’02, and CWN reported the bishop’s decree last week.
In the meantime, the Society’s website is still soliciting funds.

Sorry for another shameless self-promotion, but Zenit recently interviewed me over my new book Surprised by Canon Law. Although the interview initially began with questions about the book, we soon strayed into all sorts of hefty issues like the legitimacy of children after an annulment, pro-abort Catholic politicians receiving Holy Communion, and the inviolability of the seal of confession in light of the recent sexual misconduct crisis among the clergy. Here’s a link to the complete text of the interview.

In the comments’ section below, Dr. Ed Peters responds to two of my blog entries. As previously mentioned, I greatly respect Dr. Peters as a voice of orthodoxy and moderation within the canon law community. I would also urge you to check out his excellent blog, In Light of the Law.
That being said, concerning the first point, which is my criticism of Dr. Peters’ analogy, I still hold to my initial position but appreciate Dr. Peter’s clarification as to the limits and intention behind his analogy. Concerning the second point, however, I appreciate Dr. Peters’ gentle rebuke and hope he will accept my mea culpas.
That being said, in respose to my criticism of his analogy, Dr. Peters writes:
You are a cruel task-master, driving my little analogy beyond its ability! My point then was simply to show people that gross contempt for a doctrine is not necessarily “heresy” about the doctrine, which is where this discussion was at that time. Remember, even the Devil is not a “heretic”. My analogy has nothing to do with (and hence cannot fail over) whether Kerry has been personally involved in abortion. Kindest regards, edp.
Thanks for the clarification. I apologize if I gave the impression that I thought this analogy was over whether Kerry has been personally involved in abortion. This was not my intention. Rather, like you, I was trying to point out the difference between heresy and contempt for the faith (or denying the Real Presence and committing a sacralege while still believing in the Real Presence.)
As an aside, I was trying to point out that Kerry doesn’t fall under the automatic excommunication of canons 1398 and 1329, par. 2 because to everyone’s knowledge he has never directly participated in procuring an abortion. Thus canon law would have to address his pro-abortion record by some other means. Nevertheless, I still think my initial question remains, namely, is contempt for the faith the same thing as asserting one has a right to carry out an intrinsically evil act?
What causes scandal is not that Kerry has personally participated in an abortion, but that he asserts abortion is a private action with no connection to public morality or the common good. Consequently, he also asserts that the individual has a right to procure an abortion and that as a Catholic politician he has no obligation to limit or work towards bringing an end to the harm done by abortion.
Is this heresy? That’s the question that needs to be explored.
Concerning my second post, in which I speculated Marc was set-up as a scapegoat by the CDF, Dr. Peters responds:
Say it ain’t so, Pete, say it ain’t so! Say you don’t REALLY think CDF/Cole set up Balstrieri as a scapegoat, that it is obvious the Vatican wanted Cole’s letter leaked, and that it planned on consequent deniablity. Say you don’t REALLY think they are that callous, conniving, or stupid. Say yours was just a unguarded exercise in conspiracy theory…
Now that I’ve calmed down, I appreciate you calling me on this one. You’re right. For the record, it wasn’t so much an unguarded exercise in conspiracy theory as a knee-jerk venting of my frustration with how this has played out. I hate seeing the pro-abort Catholic politicians win again while Marc, who sincerely and in good faith tried to do something to address this scandal, watches things blow up in his face because of his innexperience dealing with the media combined with some mistakes on his part that were not committed out of malice.
Nevertheless, I should have shown more prudence than to post it — especially when I don’t seriously believe this whole blowup is a conspiracy by Cardinal Ratzinger or high ranking curial officials. Additionally, Marc understood the risks when he began this venture, and he freely chose to accept them.
…but that, in retrospect, the simpler explanation is to be preferred: that Balestrieri got carried away with Cole’s letter, some Catholic media seized on B’s version as a ray of light in the abortion darkness, and between them they raised a hornets’ nest of confusion among the faithful, that others among us have had to come along behind and try to clean up to the best of our poor abilities.
My honest opinion, and this is just me speaking personally, has nothing to do with canon law, but I think it’s a combination of factors — none of which involves a large-scale conspiracy, but rather an excess of zeal on the part of B, a handful of people within the US hierarchy who reportedly urged him to leak it, and the Catholic media, combined with damage control by di Noia and Cole when more weight was attributed to the letter than what it possessed. I also agree with Rich Chonak that it seems likely there was some sort of miscommunication between di Noia and his assistant with whom Marc had met in Rome, and possibly a miscommunication between di Noia and Cole.
But again, this is mere speculation on my part. As Marc is a friend of mine and I admire what he was trying to accomplish, even though I believed he had a very difficult road ahead of him, I freely admit I am probably not gonna have an objective view of how things panned out. Which is probably why, my knee-jerk initial reaction aside, I now prefer to believe that this whole meltdown is the result of mistakes and miscommunication between several good people acting in good faith (including Marc, di Noia, Cole, the Catholic media) than believe anyone engaged in this affair behaved dishonestly or out of malice.
I’ve been around canon law ministry long enough to experience the truth
of Mgr. Pat Powers’ statement to us as canon law students that “If you don’t
make mistakes, you’re not engaging in ministry.” And thus I want to thank Dr. Peters for calling me out on one of mine, for which I offer our readers my most sincere mea maxima culpa!
On another note, regardless of how things turn out, I think we are further ahead now in terms of using canon law to redress the scandal caused by pro-abort Catholic politicians. Let’s be honest here. Before Marc launched this action, the majority of bishops and canonists questioned Archbishop Burke’s use of canon 915 to deny Holy Communion to pro-abort Catholic politicians. Granted, a growing minority (of both bishops and canonists) supported Archbishop Burke’s decision, however, it was still being called into question.
It is now taken for granted that a bishop can invoke canon 915, and a recent example of a bishop placing a pro-abort Catholic pol. under interdict has also come to light. Additionally, Marc’s broken some new canonical and doctrinal territory that can hopefully be used more efficiently in future against pro-abort Catholic pols.

This weekend’s fuss about the “pro-choice = heresy” letter was three yards and a cloud of dust, but the dust is beginning to settle.
Canonist Marc Balestrieri reports that his version of events and Fr. Gus DiNoia’s version are in agreement on an important point: that Fr. Basil Cole wrote his “excellent and solid” account of the relevant doctrines at DiNoia’s request. Get the details in Marc B.’s press release (October 20).
(Via Dom.)