Canon 1370 says:
A person who uses physical force against a cleric or religious out of contempt for the faith, or the Church, or ecclesiastical authority or the ministry, is to be punished with a just penalty.
Note the distinction: if you use force against a priest out of contempt for the faith, that’s a punishable offense under church law. But if you slap him up-side the head for some other reason — for example, because of his obnoxious arrogance toward the Faith and the faithful — well, the canon doesn’t restrict that at all.
Today’s candidate for an attitude adjustment is Rev. Thomas Quinlan of Virginia Beach. For starters, here’s a profile from the Virginian-Pilot. He seems to be out to give his congregation entertainment: a Mass to compete with the Jerry Springer show.
In 1974, a Time magazine profile quoted him calling his parish “spiritual white trash” who casually drop into Mass to “fill up at God’s gas pump.”
Quinlan shocked more than a few Catholics when he rode down the center aisle of the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception on a police motorcycle, blue lights flashing, for the Palm Sunday procession.
Jaws dropped, too, when he dressed for Mass on one occasion as Superman, on others as the Grinch or the Blue Angel. And when he led the nearly all-black congregation to Suffolk to re-enact the trial of Nat Turner on Good Friday. And when, at a wedding in 1989, Quinlan went into detail about the sexual imagery invoked by the long, narrow candles used for the liturgy.
Really, do such tasteless stunts still go on? Are there really priests who think that shock and slapstick are the way to reach black Catholics?
The pitiful thing about this guy is that he plainly has some good intentions and some correct observations, coupled with a lot of error, and all of it delivered in a manner that a nearby pastor has called “crude and arrogant”. For example, about half the points in his advice on proper conduct during Mass are correct, while the rest are rubbish.
(Thanks to Mark Sullivan.)