I call to your attention a group that had been formed called Coalition For Cancelled Priests.
There are, it is said – and I believe it – hundreds of cancelled priests in these USA, languishing in limbo. There are various reasons why they were cancelled and each case has a couple of sides. However, in a great many cases these men are disappeared for the convenience of autocrats bureaucrats rather than for the true good of souls, in particular the soul of the priest himself.
It is an issue that is close to my heart for obvious reasons.
Right now the case of Fr. Altman is pretty dominating the narrative about this and sucking all the oxygen out of the room for other priests who have been dealing with being cancelled for a heck of a lot longer than he has been.
Let’s not forget these men.
The Coalition For Cancelled Priests (CFCP) could be a godsend for some of these good men who have been sidelined and, often, ruined by their bishops.
There is a “Contact” form on their site. Consider asking what you can do to help.
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Wisconsin seems to be a hotbed of cancellations.
“disappeared for the convenience of bureaucrats rather than the true good of souls.”
Many of our bishops have gone so far off the rails to the point where the salvation of souls is no longer paramount.
I ask this again: can Bishops from other dioceses negotiate a trade and bring them in to their jurisdictions? Seems if you’re a Bishop and short a few two or three dozen priests this would be a good solution.
And also I am ashamed at the Bishops that would do such a heinous and cowardly thing to a priest that is speaking Christ’s Truth. I know I should pray for their souls…but. Just. Can’t.
[It is a perilous gamble to choose a place just because of the bishop. Bishops come and go. What can happen, and often does, is along the lines of Exodus 1: surrexit interea rex novus super Aegyptum qui ignorabat Ioseph. Eventually there can rise up a “new pharaoh who knows not Joseph”. That said, it could be that were a priest’s back up against the wall, his bishop torturing his living guts or maybe having cancelled him, and another bishop were to reach out and say, “If you don’t want him, I take him!”, that could be the Digitus Dei moving Father on the great chess board of Providence. A priest would have to give such an offer strong consideration. But, are there bishops in these USA willing to do that? I wonder. It would take some fortitude, because he might come under criticism by – *gasp* – other bishops. It’s complicated.]
The Diocese of Rockford, IL has been prolific in cancelling priests since the Bishop arrived. All the cancelled priests are listed with a PO Box address, so they are known as the PO Box priests! There are quite a few over the last few years, all of them traditional leaning. The latest cancelled priest in this diocese is Fr James Parker. I believe he was finally the tipping point for this diocese and it finally got some publicity. In addition, the vocations pipeline has all but dried up in this diocese as a result. Why would anybody become a priest in a diocese where the Bishop has a penchant for cancelling/punishing those who may inconvenience him. The question is – how can we cancel a Bishop? What can the laity do?
[Cancelling a bishop. What would that be like. It is hard to say. Apart from closing the wallet on him…. I wonder. In NYC when an police officer was murdered, the awful mayor expressed sympathy for the murderer instead of the cop. When the mayor showed up at the funeral, the rank and file of the officers turned their back to him. It is non-violent. I suppose also making sure that Rome is informed, with meticulously accurate documentation, the odd things the bishop does.]
@ aptak
Perhaps a letter to your bishop might help or at least let him know your dissatisfaction. Would it be practical to consider travelling to the next-door diocese or to an extradiocesan order?
About other priests taking in a cancelled priest, Fr. Z says:
But, are there bishops in these USA willing to do that? I wonder. It would take some fortitude, because he might come under criticism by – *gasp* – other bishops. It’s complicated.
I imagine that there has been a long, quiet, but NEARLY hard and fast rule to not do this, but one that is nowhere in law. And only “nearly” hard and fast, not absolute. Arguably, one reason for it (say, back in the first half of the 20th century) to prevent BAD priests from being kicked out of one diocese, lying about why, and getting in with another diocese. (There may have been some over-sensitivity to not “disclosing another person’s sins” here.)
But such a reason is almost certainly without good foundation: any bishop should be well-prepared to explain, to any other bishop who asks, why he canned Fr. N. At a minimum, any priest without a definite assignment should either be explicitly under some punishment or given some sort of official green light to leave. There should be no “limbo” nonsense.
As far as bishops having courage: while I admit that the degree of yellowness in the livers of our current crop of bishops is astoundingly high, I find it difficult indeed to believe there cannot be found one or two QUITE willing to defy the other bishops (imagined, not proven) antipathy, and a handful more near retirement and too ill to be advanced to some bigger diocese who can no longer feel threatened by the displeasure of other bishops. I could be wrong about this, but just going by the variation of human hearts and motivations, it would seem likely there are a few. The alternative would seem to imply that not only Francis, but even Benedict and JPII uniformly, unerringly picked only pusillanimous priests to be bishops! Which, given that they weren’t trying to, would be an astounding (reverse) accomplishment.
I suspect that either we WILL actually seem some cancelled priests being picked up as under a free agent draft by other bishops, or there is some other, undisclosed reason that prevents it. (Something undoubtedly nefarious.)
I was at the Coalition meeting for Fr. James Parker where Fr. Altman generously pledged a large sum of money raised for him for the Coalition. I know he is more well known but he is doing everything he can to help the others like Fr. James Parker and Fr. John Lovell and so many others.
I feel like I know about these suffering priests because of the case of Fr. Gordon J. MacRae, a wonderful and holy priest, who has been suffering outrageous and unjustly in prison for nearly 3 decades. https://beyondthesestonewalls.com/
Sometimes I just weep when I think of these priests who must feel so alone and abandoned simply for being good and holy priests. Okay, mostly I weep, but sometimes my blood just boils at the outrageous treatment they have received.
God bless our priests!
p.s. I’m so happy that you spoke up, Fr. Z. We are so grateful for your priesthood.
A couple of observations:
It’s only a matter of time before bishops start getting cancelled. It will start with auxiliaries but eventually has to spread to diocesan bishops and even archbishop. We even have at least one arguably cancelled cardinal already and possibly another in the works. Granted, they probably deserve it, but that is not necessarily a criteria, as we have seen. And we already have several cardinals without portfolio such as Cardinal Burke, so cancelled bishops are hardly something that could never happen. Revolutions eventually consume their own.
One reason why a cancelled priest may not be able to be accepted by another diocese is that excardination and incardination must happen simultaneously, so we don’t have any “freelance priests” not answerable to anyone. All the priest’s current ordinary has to do is to refuse excardination, and a bishop who wants that priest is stuck, unless the priest or the bishop has the stomach and the resources to mount a canonical challenge. While canons 270 and 271 state that excardination can be refused only for just cause, we all know that in practice such decisions are difficult to challenge even if unjust. As long as the receiving bishop does not have the required authorization letter, a transfer is not possible.
The other issue is that while many of these priests appear to be justified, a bishop may be hesitant to accept someone who might well turn on him the moment they have a disagreement– even if he likes the priest or believes him to be justified. I’m sure most bishops own enough stock in antacid manufacturers without having to acquire more. Leaving the problem on someone else’s desk is so much easier. I can think of at least one priest who moved from one diocese to another and then got into a tussle with his new bishop, which makes one wonder whether the problem was the priest and not the bishop. What I suspect is that many times the real issue is not principle but personality. There are people who have trouble getting along with their allies much less their enemies.
“Right now the case of Fr. Altman is pretty dominating the narrative about this and sucking all the oxygen out of the room FOR OTHER PRIESTS (emphasis) who have been dealing with being cancelled for a heck of a lot longer than he has been.”
Agreed. I think the way his story has been told recently is partly focusing too much on him individually, instead of referencing his case as just the latest example of cancelled priests, reflecting the Crisis in the Church. And I think Fr. A. would probably agree with that observation.
Let’s also please not forget the MILLIONS (millions!) of LAY CATHOLICS ALSO CANCELLED by those Modernist Bishops, for the last 50 years, for being orthodox, pious Catholics, living out their own Catholic vocations, in particular those Catholics endeavoring to preserve tradition. For every single priest persecuted by those bishops, there are thousands of laity also persecuted. TOGETHER with them.
All of us faithful Catholics have been “cancelled” in one way or another. Lord have mercy.
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“Right now the case of Fr. Altman is pretty dominating the narrative about this and sucking all the oxygen out of the room for other priests who have been dealing with being cancelled for a heck of a lot longer than he has been.“
Perhaps the Holy Spirit is working through Fr. Altman’s high profile case in order to put a face onto this “cancelled priests” problem, and therefore, help other (unfairly) cancelled priests out? I personally believe that thanks to Fr. Altman’s case, it is now more than ever that other cancelled priests have a real chance at correcting the injustice they have been subjected to.
In our benighted diocese our parish priest was cancelled because he let it be known that he didn’t favor the homosexual cabal that ran our diocese. Their playbook was right out of Goodbye Good Men. They sent him to a psychiatrist who told him there was nothing wrong with him and who expressed his puzzlement about why the Priest had been made to see him. The cabal kept trying to persuade him (they had no cause to force him to go) to go to a Priest counseling center in another state “for a rest.” The center treated Priests with sex abuse or substance abuse problems. The purpose was to “dirty him up” to make sure that if he tried to move to another diocese no other Bishop would want him because of the “flags” in his personnel record. Unfortunately, even with our new Bishop, the same guys are in charge.
Some priests have been cancelled because they preached orthodoxy, stood for traditional liturgy, defended traditional morals, etc. etc.
This isn’t always the case. Sometimes there is more going on. For example, I’m not convinced that Fr. Altman’s bishop is an evil man. I’m also not convinced that he was “cancelled” for championing traditional morals and liturgy… but rather his rather bold and vocal condemnation of multiple bishops and very polarizing secular political views…such as condemning anyone who has chosen to get vaccinated.
I think there are many humble, quiet, holy priests out there who have been “cancelled” because they truly are orthodox and courageous and traditional… but most of them don’t get any lime light at all.
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As to cancelled bishops, see Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano, of Paraguay. Not that I was happy about it.
God bless faithful priests, and those few bishops who are faithful.
TWF wrote: “…very polarizing secular political views…”
So, if Fr. Altman and other unpersoned priests had turned their altars into a shrine for a drug-abusing criminal who threatened a pregnant woman with a gun, pranced around like James Martin SJ, threw a tantrum after Pres. Trump held up a Bible and visited the St. John Paul II Shrine, frolicked with socialists and abortionists, donated to CCHD and PICO, and generally spewed rancid leftist ideology, then those clergy should also be dismissed.
[Is this when we start shouting “RACIST!” at you?]
*chuckle* I’ve been called worse, and in multiple languages.
This reminds me of the time a few years ago in Central America when one fine day a colleague and I were walking down the street of a coastal town minding our own business when a local entrepreneur of happy herbs stepped out of a doorway and greeted us, intent on a sale. He had the ubiquitous machete strapped to his side and was holding a large trash bag (no, really, a large Hefty bag two-thirds full). He informed us of the superior quality of his horticulture skills, the splendor of the local climate and fecundity of the soil, and suggested we sample the merchandise. We politely declined and continued on our way. He scowled, “What’s the matter? You racist?” “No, we’re alcoholics.” For a second he considered being angry, then he grinned and we parted on good terms.
Meanwhile back in these United States, the racists, hopped up on the opiate of Marxism, are at it again, this time going after Natural Law:
https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/14/calling-the-natural-law-white-nationalism-is-racist-period/
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One reason why a cancelled priest may not be able to be accepted by another diocese is that excardination and incardination must happen simultaneously, so we don’t have any “freelance priests” not answerable to anyone. All the priest’s current ordinary has to do is to refuse excardination, and a bishop who wants that priest is stuck, unless the priest or the bishop has the stomach and the resources to mount a canonical challenge.
Andrew, thanks for this concrete detail.
I wonder whether there is any canonical obstacle to a bishop inviting in a cancelled priest not to incardinate him, but just to employ him. You know: give talks. Give a retreat. Say some masses. Run a center for X. Teach in a college or seminary. A priest can do an awful lot without being incardinated.
And, if the priest’s home bishop has not taken the step of suspending his faculties, the priest could (for the inviting bishop) hear confessions, witness marriage vows, and assist a pastor. Could even “assist” a parish that, you know, doesn’t technically HAVE a pastor (no, no, not as “pastor” or even “parish administrator”, just saying masses and organizing stuff and answering questions and baptizing infants and 99% of the actual WORK of a pastor, but just temporarily helping out! without any official position.)