www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News French Priest thrown out of parish (has a girlfriend)

No, Cardnial Sepe was ordained a Bishop at the age of 49 in 1992 after having been a priest for 25 years. He was born in 1943. Pope John Paul II created him a Cardinal in 2001 at the age of 58, one of the youngest Cardinals at that time.

I know there are a few Bishops who were ordained younger than 40, particularly outside the U.S., but not that many.

Ooops!

Who is he?

Google

Dr. Eric. So what. Gay sex seems to have been the rage in many religions (including Catholics). what does Ted haggard have to do with me? Never heard of him until just now. Google Romans 1 and Titus 1 to learn what isn't preached these days - in many churches.

Eddie

Perhaps someone (a Latin priest or a Canon Lawyer?) could clarify:

Precisely when and how does a Latin priest make a vow of chastity?

As for this poor fellow, the problem is that he continued ministering after the affair began. Everyone naturally became dependent upon him as the pastor, and now the Latin Church is the bad guy for his breach of discipline? I think not. He knew what he was committing to at ordination as a Latin.

Personally, I think mandating celibacy for Latin priests is a terrible practice. I wish it would change, but I know it will not. As Andrew alluded to, in the popular Roman mind it is seen as a concession to "liberalism".

God bless,

Gordo

If the priest is secular--i.e., he has not taken vows as part of a religious order/community--then he "promises" chastity in the initial parts of his diaconal ordination. He signs a written version of this promise on the altar before the actual ordination to the diaconate begins.

If the priest is part of a monastic community, he will make a "vow" of chastity at his final profession--i.e., his profession of perpetual vows.

How are things going Gordo? You home yet?

I try to say as often as seems reasonable that diocesan priests do not take vows. They agree to be obedient to their bishop. Ordered priests take vows.

The thing that strikes me in this situation is that these are two people for whom real chemistry is not at all in doubt. They've been together a long time so I think it probably was real and serious attraction that turned into genuine love.

The odd thing to me is that a love story is turned into an argument over Church discipline.

Has it struck anyone that this could just as well have happened to a married priest?

Well it could have and my guess is that it does happen in fact.

So the married state of the priest is really not at all the issue here.

What is at issue is what someone in this thread already mentioned.

This priest put the soul of the woman he loves at grave risk so that he could fully partake of the romance and the companionship and the lusty exuberance of a real live love affair. A joyous thing but hell on wheels for a committed Christian.

What if rather he had fallen in love with the woman and she with him and they together, quietly over time, had shown the entire region there in France, what it is to love and live a committed life, true to all promises, joyful even in its sacrifice.

Their very lives could have witnessed to all:
This is how one truly loves.
This is how one truly keeps commitment.
This is how one walks in the bloody footsteps of Christ and is filled to the brim with joy and inner peace that comes with the virtues that we all extol.

What a lost opportunity this was. A great opportunity just tossed into the dustbin of common law, when it should have been a heartfelt and deeply human witness to God's law.

Forget the photo-op for the celibacy war.

Mourn the wasted lives instead and the moment of grace badly used.

M.

My thoughts, exactly. Well said !

The issue here is not priestly celibacy, whether it should be mandatory or optional.

The issue here is that this man willfully, wantonly and persistently broke his vows for 22 years. If he couldn't keep his vows, he should not have taken them in the first place, or he should have left the Roman Catholic priesthood. There are other Churches which allow their clergy to be married; if he felt the need to be married and clergy, he could have served there. Instead, lamentably, he freely chose to break his vows for 22 years, and he lived a lie, and he corrupted others (his mistress and his supporters) by falsely teaching them by example that this was ok, and he caused a scandal to the Church. For all of this: Shame on him. And: Lord have mercy.

-- John

You leap to a conclusion that you don't have enough data to back up and presumption is, morally, an objectively sinful act.

You have NO idea whether any or all of the people involved in this story thought that what was happening was "ok.'

None of us have access to those details and you do no one any good by delivering a judgment that is in its greater part, speculative.

If you are going to be so hard line with this priest's behavior perhaps you might take the same hard line with your presumptive behavior...or is that a "lesser" sin?

Mary

Mary,

Back across the pond, yes. Good to be home as always...

I think you have put it beautifully. The issue was not fundamentally their love for each other, but how that love when expressed romantically flowered into sin and scandal.

It is the same tragic theme played out in Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago. The Western world falls pray to a romanticized view of life and the passion of forbidden eros, when in fact authentic Christian love (agape) suffers a different form of passion - the passion of kenosis...the ordeal of the covenant oath and the cross.

These two people have created their own tragedy. Let us see if perhaps God's mercy can transfigure their past and turn their future into something beautiful for God.

For their penance, I would have him defrocked and send them both to separate monasteries (as lay brother and lay sister) to live out the balance of their lives in penance and prayer.

I won't hold my breath, however...but wouldn't that be a fitting end?

Gordo

Glad you are safely home!

It's funny I was thinking about this last night. It is still not too late for them to bear public witness to love within each of their states in life.

If I was his bishop and if the two of them promised to truly live as brother and sister in the same village, then I would put the priest back in service and allow the two of them to do what they should have done all those years ago. Love one another, help one another and forego the conjugal right that does not belong to their respective states in life. In that way they could bear a public witness and not some private shame.

M.

Nothing new for priests in these mountainous/rural areas of Europe but here is a good priest in a loving relationship with a good woman, not the traditional village priest womanizer. No one should be surprised about what is a common situation in Alpine villages, or was in the past. Reminds me of the stories of have heard several times of the "red haired priest and the large number of red haired children in the village", sort of a European urban legend.

Maybe in 1210 or 1550

Bravo! ROFL!

But you say that as an Orthodox?

Gordo