Unpriesting the priest

Bernadette Howell, Spiritual Health Practitioner - December 10, 2024

Breaking silence. Confronting clergy abuse.  

My thanks to all those who connected, concerned for my wellbeing after my recent hit and run accident. Thank you for your care and concern. I am well, and gratefully, suffered no injuries.

I did find myself smiling at the black humour of one blog reader who wrote to say:

“Shame on the people who did not stop to ask how you were. As to the driver who refused to stop and admit to his fault and exchange details, there can only be one answer to such a character, the driver must have been a Catholic priest!”

The driver could well have been. 

Who knows. 

I do recall once being in the parking lot of the archdiocese and seeing a car pull in with a personalized license plate which displayed only the word “Father”. It quite saddened me that displaying one’s ‘title’, whatever one’s profession, was so important to the driver of that car. Mind you, such a license plate would have made it a lot easier for me to identify my hit and run driver to the police!

My thanks also to the reader who commented on the symbolism of the four advent candles and shared: 

“God’s longing that we have ‘hope, peace, joy and love’ becomes enfleshed today in the justice and compassion called for in the four matters you name (honesty, predator-free environments, justice and law-abiding leaders). If we neglect the compassionate justice that these four call out for, then it seems we are saying no to God’s invitation that we continue to make God incarnate here and how.”

It is so true…how can we speak of living out God’s love without living and seeking out matters such as honesty, predator-free environments, justice and law-abiding leaders?

Allow me to move into this week’s blog with its title “unpriesting the priest”. 

Unpriesting the priest is a phrase shared with me earlier this year in correspondence with one of the monks and priests up at Christ the King Seminary.

Each Sunday, my husband usually attends a nearby parish called Christ the Redeemer, located in West Vancouver. 

He recently returned one Sunday to tell me that the parish priest there, a young man by the name of Fr. Paul Goo, was being shipped out to Rome for a few years, to serve in the English-language section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. He would be gone by January.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, it is thanks to Benito Mussolini that the Vatican has the status of a foreign state. Arising from the agreement Mussolini made with Pope Pius XI in 1929, the Vatican City became a foreign state with the status of a country, and the Pope with diplomatic privileges. 

Vatican officials are granted certain immunities.

Sadly, the Vatican has been known on many an occasion to use such diplomatic privileges and immunity to its advantage by preventing certain damming documents relating to clergy abuse from ever getting into the public realm. 

It has also provided protection and citizenship for the likes of people such as the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law who, following his resignation as the Archbishop of Boston, Pope John Paull II then appointed to a post in Rome as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. So many were up in arms that this disgraced Cardinal was being protected from potential criminal prosecution with this privileged move; shielding him from harm when he never once shielded or protected a child from the harm and sexual abuses of predator priests under his care.

The Secretariat of State, according to a recent B.C. Catholic article, is the office that represents the Vatican in “international law, in diplomatic relations and for the conclusion of treaties.” 

This Vancouver priest, Fr. Paul Goo, is no doubt being groomed for future church politics and promotion such as Montreal born priest Fr. Frank Leo was also groomed early on in his career. Fr. Paul Goo, who served for a period of time as a faculty member at Christ the King Seminary, is now being sent to work for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. We wish him well in his new role…

I am reminded however, that it was this very office, the Vatican Secretariat of State, that as recently as October of this year, 2024, tried to undo the laicization of a certain Fr. Ariel Alberto Príncipi, a former diocesan priest convicted of child sexual abuse while in Argentina.

I’ve never heard of a defrocked priest being reinstated and allowed to become a priest again!

Marie Collins, an Irish advocate and campaigner was most vocal in her anger that this would be allowed by those working in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State office, using their privileged powers to reinstate a priest abuser of children. 

Thankfully, it was Archbishop John Joseph Kennedy (also Irish) as head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) disciplinary section who declared void the September order from the Secretariat of State and rescinded the laicization in “one of the most controversial public clashes between Vatican departments in recent times.”

Speaking to the Irish Catholic media service, Marie Collins said that:

“Within the Vatican there is a great emphasis on authority and power and obviously somebody thought that they had enough authority to overturn something that the disciplinary department had set in place. No decision like that should ever be changed unless there’s new evidence or an appeal and the whole case is re-judged and re-examined.” 

She went on to say “I’m 100% behind Archbishop John Kennedy because if his department has decided that that is the appropriate sanction then it is not up to anyone else to undermine that decision. At the end of the day the safety of children is at stake and that’s what the processes are there for, and nobody should be allowed to interfere with that.”

It certainly is extremely concerning that internal politics and power plays at the Vatican nearly allowed a priest abuser to be put back into ministry. 

After all, it was following a “years long canonical process that ended in June 2023” that this abusive priest was found guilty of multiple counts of sexual abuse. 

It sends shivers down my spine to read that the defrocked priest in question was involved in ‘charismatic healing circles.’ 

I first heard the words “the healing power of God’s touch” by the Oblate priest who used these very words before then sexually assaulting me, a priest known for his ‘charismatic presence and touch’. 

As to reversing a defrocking and laicization, Marie Collins questions: 

    “Where is the transparency? 

    Why did it happen? 

    Who gave instructions that it should happen? 

    What has changed from the decision that he was deserving of being laicized to now he’s not?” 

But of course, the answers to these questions lie in the realm of the secret, the privileged and the powerful inner circles that sadly are a part of the Office of the Secretariat of State and an office which this Vancouver priest will now join. 

I hope and pray that Fr. Paul Goo remains true to honesty, ethics and doing the right thing as he joins the ranks of those who work there, some who believe reinstating a defrocked predator priest is 'an okay thing to do'.

As for the predatory abusive priest, “According to testimony, Príncipi would lay his hands on various parts of the body, including the genitalia of young teens, while praying for the individual to be cured of homosexual tendencies” reports the UK Catholic Herald. 

Principi continues to claim his innocence and says there was no sexual intent behind such intimate touching. 

And so, its okay to touch intimate body parts of young people under the auspices of prayer?

What is of interest in this case is the internal politicking that has been going on between different Vatican departments.

The UK Catholic Herald reports that: 

“Given the tit-for-tat between the Secretariat of State and the Dicastery for the Faith, which for centuries have battled one another for supremacy in the Vatican system, it’s understandable why many observers have concluded this is another chapter in that long-running rivalry.” 

Hmm. Long running rivalry? 

How many viewers of the movie ‘Conclave’ thought that the internal politicking and back-biting between cardinals was fantastical and unreal? 

Not so at all!

I think many people need to wake up the realities of what goes on at the Vatican but also behind the closed doors of bishops’ and priests’ residences as well as the seminaries. A lot more than just holy talk and “listening to the movement of the Holy Spirit” that’s for sure…

Since Pope Francis alone has the authority to overrule any decision made by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) in any clerical abuse case, it stands to reason that the pope very likely was initially involved in the decision to reverse the laicization…albeit that decision was then reversed back again. 

And so, just to be clear in case anyone is left confused, Fr. Ariel Alberto Príncipi who appeared to have a fondness for fondling and touching young men’s genitalia while supposedly “praying away the gay” in them is, for the record, still a defrocked and laicized priest. And will remain so. 

To all those sexually abused by a priest, it is my own personal opinion that such priests should all, automatically, be defrocked. 

For example, and I take just one example, it seems very unjust that Placidus Sander was never defrocked. 

Requests were made, but like the motorists who ignored my hit and run accident not willing to acknowledge the crime just committed, Church officials and monks in Placidus’ community up at Westminster Abbey were happy to keep driving on by, protected in the bubble of their own vehicle: the clerical state and the privileges that come with this.

I share with you the words of the Prior of Christ the King Seminary who, earlier this year, explained his version of defrocking or laicizing (..whichever phrase it is you prefer to use). 

He wrote: 

“Defrocking (or as we say, "laicizing") a priest does not cause him to stop being a priest but only to cease ministry, precisely so that he does not harm anyone or give scandal. Since P. Placidus is dead, he obviously cannot do either of those things.”

Really??

I’m sure we all agree that removing any priest from ministry helps to ensure he is not put in positions of power where he can access, abuse and cause harm to children or vulnerable adults. 

But so that he no longer can “give scandal”? 

Is this what Church leaders still care about? 

We’re talking about a man who, under the guise of his ‘priesthood’ and his monk’s robes was raping, and harming children for life. But his confreres are concerned about ‘giving scandal”?

But it’s okay now folks. Because he’s dead and so “he obviously cannot do either of those things” anymore.

Strewth…

Sadly, I suspect that people who uphold and wish, above all, to protect the reputation of the Catholic Church, and to prevent scandal, have no concept of what most ordinary folk think and believe. Nor can they comprehend how most ordinary people view the act of ‘defrocking’. 

I prefer the phrase ‘to defrock’. 

It reminds me of when, each year, I take down the Christmas tree, stripping it of all its decorations and baubles and tinsel and taking it back to its bare essential outline and form. 

An undecorated human being... 

Why is it that we decorate priests so much with embroidered silk and lacy underrobes and fancy hats of different kinds? This was not Jesus at all…

I prefer the term defrocking because I find the phrase 'laicization' to be a derogatory one. It describes "reducing the priest to a lay state” (poor man…) and that the priest now has to become one of us now, a mere lay person. 

A priest giving a lecture on defrocking once said that the priest will “never be a layperson in the way that rank-and-file Catholics are”. And this apparently because he will always retain his spiritual mark given to him when he first became a priest. 

But doesn’t 'the Lord giveth and take away'? 

"The Lord certainly giveth and taketh away' an awful lot of things in our lifetimes but it’s amazing how this man-made rule about the privileged role of priesthood overrides everything. 

And how we lay folk are considered mere “rank and file”…

Many, as I understand it, see defrocking akin to the process of dishonorable discharge from the military; where a person is stripped of their title, their uniform, their rights and their benefits. It’s a form of punishment for serious misconduct and let’s face it, harming children is not only a ‘serious’ offense, but also a criminal offense. 

There should never be talk about removing a priest from ministry so as to “avoid scandal,” but rather the act of defrocking a priest as an action assuring the public that Church leaders are in agreement that this man did horrendous wrongs, was accused of serious felonies and deserves to be punished for his heinous behaviours. 

Let’s forget about ‘posthumous defrocking’ for now, something D.H. called for back in his May 28th 2024 statement, though not as a specific term of his settlement agreement. 

‘Posthumous defrocking’ is indeed a moot point so let's just focus on the ordinary defrocking of a priest who is alive and still breathing… 

Back in August of this year, the Prior, Benedict LeFebvre, went on to try and explain to myself and two others on copy as to why one would never be able to defrock Placidus even if were still alive. 

Or why, to use his term, no one would ever be able to have him “unpriested”.

Benedict tried to helpfully explain. He avoided use of that phrase “an indelible mark,” the apparent mark that supernaturally makes a priest a priest. Instead, he wished to be helpful by sharing an analogy. 

However, the analogy made no sense to me, but I share it here with you as perhaps it may make sense to you… and perhaps you will see it the way that Benedict and, I have to assume, his community of monks, and indeed all priests, see it.

“To use an analogy” wrote Benedict, “if the father of a family is abusive, you can get a court order to prevent him from coming near his wife and children, but he doesn't stop being their father biologically. You can't "unfather" him. He has passed on his genes to his children. To say he is not their father would be denying reality. Similarly, here, P. Placidus can't be "unpriested".

Hmm… ?

Alas, I see no ‘similarly’. 

Do you see the connection between a biological father and a priest? 

You may want to reread that paragraph again… 

What Benedict says about biological fatherhood is indeed true. 

A biological father will always be who he is, and his DNA and genes are indeed passed onto his child. 

But there is no remote comparison between a biological father, who through physical sex, union and bodily exchange, creates a child with another person, and a celibate priest who, theoretically speaking, shares no sperm with another being, remains sterile all his life, and becomes a priest by ‘supernatural’ means. 

‘Unfathering’ a biological father and ‘unpriesting’ a priest are not even remotely connected. 

The trouble is, and putting this Catholic theology aside, one should be able to “unpriest” a priest! 

But because the Catholic Church, steeped in its own patriarchy and abiding by rules men formed centuries ago based on what they believed God was telling them at that time, such a rule still exists. 

Just as the rule for celibacy still exists and which recent articles report, is in fact, truly rare to find. 

One recent article (December 6, 2024), written by Gene Thomas Gomulka, himself an ex-priest after serving 30 years in the priesthood and even elevat, shares that “according to (Richard) Sipe, the percentage of priests believed to practice celibacy throughout their entire lives is only 2 percent”. https://substack.com/home/post/p-152669291

(More about this in a future blog….)

But for now, the Catholic rule is that one cannot ‘unpriest a priest’, even a pedophile priest or a priest murderer…

The notion of ‘forever priesthood’ in the Catholic Church sadly takes precedent over justice, over truth, over societal norms and over rank and file Catholics. 

Curiously, I found an interesting twist on the “indelible mark” phrase that is so well used when attempting to describe what makes a priest a priest.

Reading up about dishonorable discharges in the military, the website called Military.com has an interesting article on this topic titled “Dishonorable Discharge: Everything You Need to Know” 

Says Phil Carter, an Iraq War vet and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, when speaking to the Associated Press in 2015, he describes dishonorable discharge as follows: 

"It's an indelible mark of their service that follows them for the rest of their lives— into the workforce, through background checks, social relationships, and it precludes them from getting the kind of support most veterans enjoy." 

Ha! So even the military are using this term “indelible mark”?



But the military are not using this term as a spiritual term that gives supernatural rights but rather as a definitive action and an outward sign, stripping that person, marking them for the rest of their lives because of the harm and horror they have caused representing their country. 

To recap, In the military the ‘indelible mark’ of dishonourable discharge is seen as a form of justice. 

In the Catholic Church, the ‘indelible mark’ offers power and privilege to the priest and it overrides any form of dishonourable discharge or justice.

And that is the end of that! Apparently, one cannot “unpriest the priest”!

Till next week,

Bernadette