Saturday, April 4, 2009

Grounds for removal

Rich Leonardi has alerted us to a press release issued by the Diocese of Madison explaining Bishop Morlino's dismissal of a pastoral associate from one its parishes.

The release is written in Q&A-format and, as Rich writes, "[it] reads like a pastoral letter on the role of catechesis and catechists at the parish."

One section in particular caught my eye.  It reads as follows (my emphasis):

Q:    Was Ruth fired because of her involvement with Call to Action?

A:    No. Ms. Kolpack's involvement with the group “Call to Action,” which was not clear until hours after her termination, was not a part of any discussions regarding Ms. Kolpack's departures from authentic Catholic teaching.

       Call to Action is noted, however, for their own serious departures and denials of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church. Associating with such anti-Catholic groups as Call to Action, Catholics for a Free Choice, Women’s Ordination Conference, FutureChurch, CORPUS, DignityUSA, and many others, would certainly be grounds for removal of someone charged with passing on the Church’s teaching, which these groups openly reject.

       Likewise, it seems disingenuous that anyone associated with these groups would commit themselves to teaching what they themselves don’t believe. Again, however, this was not the case with regard to Ms. Kolpack, as the diocese was unaware of any association prior to her termination.

It seems that in the Diocese of Madison being a member of the Women's Ordination Conference will get you the boot.

In DOR, however, it will get you your own parish to run, complete with a special installation Mass presided over by the bishop himself. 

See here for details.

3 comments:

Mary Kay said...

Except for Catholic for a Free Choice (that I know of), all the groups listed are active in the Rochester diocese.

Mike Shea said...

Mary Kay,

Yes, were quite progressive around here, aren't we?

Of course we don't have very many priests and most of those we do have are rapidly approaching retirement, we've been losing our church-going members at the rate of some 3,000 per year since at least 2000, and we're closing parishes and schools left and right.

But we are progressive!

Anonymous said...

"But we are progressive!"

And to some, that's all that matters.

Those folks want an "inclusive" Catholic Church, but they don't want any orthodox or traditional Catholics to be a part of it. We're forced to attend ghetto churches in the city because its clear we're not welcome in their suburban parishes. You have WOC nuns and ex-nuns telling you to go fertilize other communities, priests telling you to stand and receive Communion in the hand, and other priests who go on a lengthy diatribe about how he would never offer the Latin Mass in response to a simple question to see if he would be interested. Inclusive? Progressive? More like discrimination against Catholics who love their faith.

And our Bishop wonders why we have no priests. The solution will come to him when he looks in the mirror, or maybe in the giant reflective jacuzzi in the back of his Cathedral.

~Dr. K