Category: Canonical

Charles Wilson of the St. Joseph Foundation devotes his December newsletter to an article about the parish as an institution, the relation of the parish to the diocese, and the standing of parishes in civil law. He also gives an overview of parish-related cases appealed to Rome, and the apparent fact that there really is no reliable canonical remedy for most bad administrative decisions. But that doesn’t stop him from helping people seek remedies to the extent possible.

The Pope met with Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of Saint Pius X and Cardinal Castrillon (Congregation for the Clergy) today. Papabile is watching the story. Since Pope Benedict has wanted to extend permission for the old rite more broadly, doing so at the Synod on the Eucharist in October may make a reconciliation easier.

Ever since I co-authored More Catholic Than the Pope with Patrick, people have asked me what to look for when evaluating a new religious movement. Here are twenty signs of trouble to look out for.

AP reports on an effort to stop some deceptive attempts at ministry:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has started screening priests who celebrate Mass aboard cruise ships to prevent unqualified clergy from ministering to Catholic passengers.
The bishops have approved more than 650 priests to work on cruise lines in a process designed to weed out unsuitable candidates such as clergy who were suspended in the church’s sex abuse scandal or those who have left the priesthood.
Priests who apply for the program, which started a year ago, must have their bishops’ approval and are subject to yearly review. All dioceses conduct their own background checks on priests, said Doreen Badeaux, secretary general of the Apostleship of the Sea, a Catholic ministry devoted to seafarers.
Celebrity and Holland America lines are working with priests approved by the Apostleship, while other cruise lines continue hiring clergy privately or using agencies such as Rent-A-Priest, a group that provides former, now-married priests who are no longer authorized to conduct Mass.
Eventually, the bishops hope all cruise lines will adopt a more thorough screening process for clergy.
“It wasn’t being regulated by the bishops’ conference and they weren’t doing background checks on these guys,” said the Rev. Sinclair Oubre, president of the AOS-USA, a chaplains’ organization affiliated with the Apostleship of the Sea. “Since we started this, some of the cruise lines have become more alert.”

AOS-USA National Director Fr. John Jamnicky writes in the organization’s December newsletter:

We continue to hear complaints from Catholics who take cruises on Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, Princess, and Carnival; that some of the priests that celebrate Catholic Mass and introduce themselves as Roman Catholic Priests are in fact […] schismatic priests, suspended priests, former priests, or just plain impostors.

My latest from Planet Envoy…
What Every Catholic Apologist Should Know About Canon Law
I BIT MY TONGUE AND RESISTED the urge to fire off an angry email. Reading through an on-line discussion board for budding Catholic apologists like myself, I had come across a message written more with an excess of zeal than with a correct understanding of canon law. Granted, the offending message was written with the best of intentions, and I also admired the offending author as a competent biblical apologist when it came to defending the Catholic faith against Protestant challenges. Nevertheless, this apologist’s competency with the Bible didn’t extend to the Code of Canon Law. And the question had come, not as an attack upon the Church, but from someone sincerely seeking to return to the Church.
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