UPDATE on: Jul 25, 2025 at 18:55
Here’s an interesting tidbit.
From Facebook about one of the social events of the year in Detroit.
Seminarians, priests, benefactors, and friends of Sacred Heart Major Seminary gathered at Huntington Place in downtown Detroit on Thursday, June 12 for the 2025 Archbishop’s Gala.
The Seminary’s biggest fundraiser, this annual event supports the students, staff, and operations at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.
UPDATE on: Jul 25, 2025 at 18:39
GOOD FOR HIM!
My Sacred Heart Major Seminary teaching contract was terminated by Abp. Weisenburger this week. I have retained counsel. Except to offer my prayers for those affected by this news and to ask for theirs in return, I have no further comment at this time. Prof. Edward Peters
— Edward Peters (@canonlaw) July 25, 2025
UPDATE on: Jul 25, 2025 at 17:46
I just learned that the well-known canonist Ed Peters has also been “ecclesiastically euthanized” from his long-held post at Sacred Heart Seminary.
This has a very bad look to it.
I wonder what the bishops who have sent their seminarians to Sacred Heart think about this.
I wonder if any bishops – other than the usual suspects – will consider Sacred Heart, and don’t mean the one at Hales Corners, WI.
I understand that Sacred Heart seminary is a separate legal entity from the Archdiocese and that the Archbp is head of the board. BUT… if he doesn’t want someone there, they won’t be there, and if he wants to keep them there, it is hard to imagine that they would be let go anyway.
Ralph Martin
Eduardo Echeverria
Ed Peters
… no long listed on the faculty. HERE
Pour décourager les autres?
Originally Published on: Jul 25, 2025 at 13:16
In two “daily” posts I’ve written about this. HERE and HERE It deserves its own entry.
Archbishop Edward Weisenburger removed Ralph Martin and Eduardo Echeverria from their positions at Sacred Heart Major Seminary on July 23, both theologians told the National Catholic Register separately. HERE and HERE
Weisenburger has been giving his all to Detroit for about 5 months, since 18 March. In record time, by June, he had shut down numerous Traditional Latin Masses. He has also used raw force to ban ad orientem posture from Novus Ordo liturgies in the archdiocese. Most competent commentators think that is ultra vires since he is effectively forbidding them to obey the rubrics which, also the for the Novus Ordo, are officially in Latin. But, hey, he has power and there hasn’t been anyone around who would try to stop him from picking on priests and the faithful in this way. Now he is having a go at seminarians by removing two highly respected and competent formators.
Ralph Martin has been known for years for his involvement in the charismatic movement. However, he is quite the solid theologian and he has of late spoken with urgency about problems in the Church and signs of the times. If you are interested in his most recent video, check this out. HERE He talks about two kinds of death (one of them is the in popular concept of “sin”). He has called out heresy in high places.
Martin in the NCReg:
“When I asked him for an explanation, he said he didn’t think it would be helpful to give any specifics but mentioned something about having concerns about my theological perspectives,” Martin said in a written statement Thursday afternoon.
“This news came as a shock,” Martin said. “I have contributed much to the seminary over more than twenty-three years. I even helped introduce and lead, up until yesterday, our flagship pontifical degree program, the Licentiate of Sacred Theology Degree in the New Evangelization.”
I can recommend a couple books by Martin.
First, A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward
US HERE
US HERE
Eduardo Echeverria. He declined to comment because of a non-disclosure agreement.
However, he was a contributor to an important book about “sense of the faithful” (sensus fidelium) a topic which goes to the heart of many moving pieces in the Church today including darling issues for those who are striving to undermine teaching on faith and morals. If you want lots of “walking together” and approval of sodomy you will appeal to a false version of sensus fidelium. It is critically important today to know what sensus fidelium is and isn’t. Hint: in order to have the “sense of the faithful” you have to be faithful. Right?
However, that will be unpopular with certain people.
Here’s THE BOOK to read on the subject. It is not easy but it is illuminating.
The Faith Once For All Delivered: Doctrinal Authority in Catholic Theology
This a daring selection of essays by prominent orthodox Catholic scholars published by Emmaus Academic Press.
The book includes a Foreword and Introduction written by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, and an Afterword authored by Robert Cardinal Sarah.
The book was turned down by a couple of major Catholic publishers because of at least one essay/author they were afraid about.
Echeverria’s essay, in the second part of the book, is: “Saint Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine”.
Again, this is an important book and if you are in it, you will probably be hated by who are striving to undermine teaching on faith and morals
The essays in the first part of this collection seek to answer the question, “What went wrong with Catholic theology since the Second Vatican Council?”
Following a brief account of the movement in modern theology from its philosophical basis in Kant and Hegel to the nouvelle théologie and later progressivist theologies of the twentieth century, the writings of Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, and Bernhard Häring are treated as representative of principal problematic trends, and the concept of heresy is surveyed as it has been understood in the past and as it operates in the Church today.
The essays in the second part indicate the way forward for Catholic doctrinal and moral theology, examining and distinguishing the orthodox use of the sources of theology of magisterial teachings, the deposit of faith in its development, the sensus fidelium, Sacred Scripture, and Church councils and synods.
Edward Feser’s treatment of the Magisterium is deeply instructive and was challenging to the direction Francis was taking. The same is true of John Rist’s masterful commentary on contemporary heresies. These essays are especially valuable in debunking the current German synodal way and stand as a warning about the seemingly unending drive for synodality (“walking together”).
It will be interesting to see who replaces them. My money is on recently transitioned Dyna Moore of the Transgendered Daughters of Charity and perhaps Fr. Bruce Hugalot of the Sing A New Faith Community Into Being Faith Community in Libville.
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I am not particularly interested in what Detroit imports into its seminary faculty. I’m sure there is ample supply of what I fear they are looking for.
What I *am* interested in is where Ralph Martin and Eduardo Echeverria will be teaching next. Any place that adopts these orphaned teachers will gain positive marks in my book.
I have a son who may have a vocation, and it scares me. I would need to help him find a decent seminary and don’t know how. I don’t want him to be led into error and sin by the very people who are supposed to be doing “formation.”
And they wonder why there is a vocations crisis!!
While less known than Dr Martin, Dr Echeverria really is a hidden gem for those who have read his work.
In 2022 he hosted a symposium on his book titled “Are We Together? A Roman Catholic Analyzes Evangelical Protestants.”
The talks and Q&A from the symposium are available on YouTube, https://youtu.be/72Gj6co8S4k?si=9YszJXdF6i2yfgKQ
It really is eye opening.
Regarding the precept to “contribute to the support of the Church” — what does it actually command?
If I decide I don’t want a penny going to my diocese — or my parish, from which my diocese can levy money — can I give directly to my priest, with the stipulation that he must use it only for his own expenses?
Alternatively, can I give to the poor (directly or via a Catholic organization, one that the diocese can’t get any money from)?
On a bigger scale: suppose laity from St. Random, which has a great priest but has some heretical bishop, want to support their parish. Can they setup a trust to pay for the parish’s expenses, and include a stipulation in the trust’s deeds that none of the trust’s money may go to the diocese? Could one then urge people to give to the trust instead of directly to the parish?
Lawyers — both civil and canon — I would love to hear your opinions on this.
I don’t know of Dr Echevarria, but do certainly know of Ralph Martin, who evangelized beautifully along with so many others back in Mother Angelica and EWTN’s heyday. Ralph Martin is a gentle, rock-solid lover of Jesus Christ, and he speaks passionately and with great insight about prayer and the christian walk. He draws from the doctors of the church for his theology, so if someone doesn’t enjoy his theology they don’t like the doctors of the church. I must speak freely, Ralph Martin and all deserve a specific reason why they are fired, but they won’t get one, because the obvious reason is these men are faithful Catholics in the sense most of us recognize and that is absolutely not wanted any longer in the Synodal Church. This is “the purge” and it will continue apace because what will stop it? Im going to roll my eyes to the back of my skull when I read how Leo is going to restore the TLM and how nice it is he speaks Latin. Im sorry, gentlemen, please God your great contributions will be seen and picked up in a better location, until then you will be persecuted for God’s sake. I did hear Ralph Martin’s book on prayer, Fulfillment of All Desire is also very good reading.
@Amateur Scholastic
I am not a lawyer of any kind, but I think your dog is on the right track.
I believe there must be some rebalancing of the power between the laity and the bishops. I’m not smart enough to know what that would look like, but I think we have enough evidence to conclude that giving bishops ownership of all the land and all the parishes and every piece of property in the diocese along with, practically if not technically speaking, unlimited power over all matters catechetical, sacramental, liturgical, and theological . . . it hasn’t really worked out to the benefit of either the Church or the faithful.
More should have been done after the terrible abuse scandals. More should be done now. People smarter than I really need to start pondering and shaping this issue because, if left up to the increasingly frustrated average laymen things could get very ugly very quickly.
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Roman Catholics need not apply! It seems we are quickly returning to the bad old days of the 80s, etc. I know for a fact that a number of Michigan diocese were infiltrated to a high degree and it did happen that priests would forego a Sunday Mass so that people would ‘get used to not having a priest’. Yes, this happened. I personally, when visiting relatives, had a ‘Sister’ “do’ the Mass as well as preach with the so-called ‘sacramental minister’ step in for the consecration. The modernists have declared that they want a ‘different church’–you know some sin-nodal thing that winks at sins that do not lead a soul to heaven. Actually, many no longer want manly priests. The purge in Detroit is a travesty: close the booming TLMs with no concern for the families there and fire faithful instructors at the seminary. Will it return to getting things off a copy machine as would happen in the 70s and watch porn and some of those terrible things that were happening at seminaries in the past? Will manly men or those who pray the rosary be rejected–they would not want to subject themselves to the wicked gauntlet anyway. No way in the world would a faithful Catholic send their son to this seminary! A holy vocation needs to find a (at present but no guarantee will stay that way) good seminary or go to the FSSP or ICK. Perhaps, wait for it, the SSPX where they will get Roman Catholic formation. I am beginning to lose hope in our new kinder, gentler, nicer Pope Leo. What does that mean if some ‘different, sin-nodal’ church is foisted upon us?
IMHO – they should all look into coming to Borromeo and St. Mary Seminaries in Cleveland.
These seminaries form and educate young men for service in the Cleveland and Youngstown Dioceses, as well as Order priests.
Bishop Edward Malesic, JD is a very faithful and pastoral bishop. Our seminary was investigated and rid of unfaithful, unwholesome influences nearly 20 years ago under the late Bishop Lennon. I think all three would be very welcome in Cleveland, and our outstanding seminarians would fully enjoy learning from them.
I happen to know that Dr. Martin has a good many family members in the Cleveland Diocese, a couple in my parish, who would no doubt rejoice in his coming home.
Detroit’s loss would be our gain.
@WVC — “I believe there must be some rebalancing of the power between the laity and the bishops.”
Protestants have done all possible combinations of rebalancing of power, and attempts at rebalancing of power are why many of these ecclesial communities exist. The Church of England got its start as a rebalancing.
I can assure you that no attempted form works; all lead to corruption.
The Synodal Path is, itself, an attempt to rebalance power.
The problem is a post VII failure of the earthly Church to understand herself (even though the documents state such) as a hierarchical organism that has a divine mandate. Bishops do not know who they are and what they are about, and thus act in discord. Laity do not know who they are and what they are about, and thus act in discord.
Bishops and priests have little charity towards their flocks, and their flocks have little charity towards the priests and bishops (often deservedly, for who can have charity towards a father that only gives rocks when one asks for bread?)
The solution is not redistribution of power, but great sacrifice and suffering, personal education, personal growth in holiness, rebuilding of social networks, gaining a foothold in local parishes at the catechetical level, and changing the local parishes (it doesn’t take many, but it takes willing to be active and confrontational and non-compromising and lots and lots of volunteering) as well as intentionally building monastic communities, oratories, etc., the lot of it, that break the mononoply of the diocesean system just like homeschooling is working to break the monopoly of public education.
To be a bit crass about it, it will take the sacrifice of a bunch of laity saying, “We are going to outbreed you and intentionally rear our sons to be traditional priests and monks and fathers and our daughters to be nuns and wives and consecrated virgins. We are going to stop hoping that our children have a vocation, but instead raise them so that they can be so. As you took away the Church by failing to catechize generations, we will restore the Church by catechizing generations. We will sacrifice everything for this to be so.”
The only thing that fixes institutional rot in the Church (as proven by history) is radical conformation and transformation to Christ. It is not about power; it is about Him being all in all. If He is not all in all, you will be pretty terrible at being laity, at being priest, at being bishop.
One is left surprised that Janet Smith didn’t get a gratuitous axe “in absentia.”
This news coupled with the restored September 6th “Pride” pilgrimage leaves me deeply concerned, even scandalized.
Will there ever be an end to ecclesial self-destruction?
My Lord, how long?
We can only pray for the faithful in Detroit suffering under this ideological archbishop.
In my opinion, it is evil to sacrifice innocent lives upon the altars of a false ideology.
@Lurker 59
I disagree. The history of the Church is full of different power dynamics between laity and the clergy, the big difference being that the laity used to include nobility and princes and kings in addition to zealous peasants like the Vendee and Cristeros. For a long period of time, it was local rulers who selected bishops and the pope approved after the fact. This is actually what’s going on right now with China, whether folks like the Communist Chinese government or not. So let’s not pretend that the current construct of bishops omnipotent both in all religious as well as secular matters is the only Catholic template to work from.
I do not believe that the only viable answer is “suck it up, buttercup, and breed more children so that maybe yer grandkids might have a decent Church to pray in.” The problem of undefined and unlimited authority in the clergy is not going to go away. Heck, we’re still dealing with problems related to papal authority that go back to before Vatican I. To think we can wait out the problem is to pretend that Arianism would’ve just gone away on its own if nobody ever did anything about it. We have a real and serious problem that needs to be wrestled with, because Pope Francis proved, definitively, that the idea of “Whatever the Pope says or does is Catholic” is not viable. And if there are legitimate limits to the scope of the pope’s authority, then there are also limits to the scope of a bishop’s authority.
I know someone on the faculty, this must be stressful for those that remain.
Taking this kind of action absent serious misconduct this close to the start of a semester is difficult to interpret as anything other than a raw exercise of power, certainly not something in the interests of the faculty (who presumably will have to cover for these 3 unless replacements are conveniently lined up), or the seminarians or the bishops sending their men there.
@Lurker 59
“The problem is a post VII failure of the earthly Church to understand herself (even though the documents state such) as a hierarchical organism that has a divine mandate. Bishops do not know who they are and what they are about, and thus act in discord. Laity do not know who they are and what they are about, and thus act in discord.”
I believe you are essentially correct. The root of this problem is the great error of modernism, which stretches back to pre-reformation thinkers like Marsilius of Padua and Machievelli. In its essence, it rejects the rule of God, and attempts to substitute it with the search for Utopia.
We are called upon to act with virtue and trust in the Lord. ‘Modern’ man seeks to permanently solve the perennial human problems that are a result of our fallen nature by means of social programs, systems, constitutions, and beaurocracies. These solutions will always fail to produce Utopia.
The Church Militant doesn’t need a plebiscite. It needs a miracle.
“…the seminarians or the bishops sending their men there.” are very important elements of this situation. It is unlikely that the Archdiocese of Detroit, under its current, benighted leadership, will be generating enough vocations to keep the place ticking over… the other bishops who have recourse to Sacred Heart would send an impossible-to-miss message if they made other arrangements for their men. It would not even need to be done publicly but it would certainly be noticed… might even be beneficial! Along those lines, I wonder if there is a bishop in the Midwest with the stones (and the cash flow) to found a new seminary – or enlarge his current one. Much easier to start a new team when there are “free agents”* like Martin, Peters, and Echevarria on the “waiver wire”
*pardon the allusions to the sporting world!
One thing that I learned from working in academia is that administrators like to hire their friends. Put a homosexual in a department head position and soon the department will be filled with homosexuals at worst or at best stipends to graduate students will mostly go to homosexuals.
My guess is the archbishop has friends in mind for these positions and it might not be the sort of friendships that will be beneficial to seminarians. That is, we will learn the true motivation by seeing who he hires.
Just wondering which Bishop will actually, in public, “fire” a lay person and tell them to leave the Church. Not a make them feel bad and shamed, but a genuine “leave my church” letter banning them. I understand that is in effect what an ex-communication is…but that wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny or in a Canon Court, so a more “you’re fired” letter.