Excommunication of Predator Clergy?

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Crusader13

Crusader13

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Prof Hahn’s Speech

I agree with Prof Hahn and I understand the reasoning behind the excommunication. I think the punishments that have been handed down thus far are hardly punishments at all. Which is part of the reason we are in this mess. I think those who are found guilty should be excommunicated from the Church and not just laicized.
 
The problem is almost no priests have been “convicted” of sexual immorality. Certainly not McCarrick yet. Even if those few priests who have been convicted went to confession, and followed through on. their penance, their excommunication would have been lifted now…even if they are in prison. The Church has never relied on the State for advice on excommunication or other penalties. Bad precedent.
 
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If excommunication is designed to not be punitive but instead send somebody a wake-up call to stop the behavior that is separating them from the Church (as discussed on Canon Law Made Easy blog )
and the person has already stopped the behavior, as presumably McCarrick has now that he’s living in seclusion in some abbey,
then what purpose does the excommunication now serve?

It might have made a dent if they’d actually done it when the guy was running around creeping on seminarians.

Doing it now just looks like “we’re going to boot you out because you disgraced our Church and we don’t want to be associated with you”, which, if the man has repented, is not how the Catholic church approaches sinners.

Hahn seems to be going on some scriptural interpretation of what excommunication is used for, rather than the canon law interpretation of what it is used for.
 
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commenter said:
The problem is almost no priests have been “convicted” of sexual immorality. Certainly not McCarrick yet. Even if those few priests who have been convicted went to confession, and followed through on. their penance, their excommunication would have been lifted now…even if they are in prison. The Church has never relied on the State for advice on excommunication or other penalties. Bad precedent.
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I don’t know if you’re referring to priests in the present or over the last few decades, because several priests have been “convicted” both in the secular courts and within the Church.

I think the aim of Prof Hahn’s speech wasn’t to address the details regarding canon law or the application of the excommunication, but rather to show that simply calling for a clergy member to be laicized doesn’t go far enough and excommunication should be considered instead.

For example, the two priests down in Miami who were caught having sex in public. This is a clear case of “sexual immorality” and I think excommunication would be a fitting a response. On one hand they are stripped of their priestly functions and any repentance on their part will come in time, should “THEY CHOOSE” to be reconciled to the church, but their ability to ever become a member of the clergy should be stripped permanently.
 
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Crusader13 said:
I think the aim of Prof Hahn’s speech wasn’t to address the details regarding canon law or the application of the excommunication, but rather to show that simply calling for a clergy member to be laicized doesn’t go far enough and excommunication should be considered instead.
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Excommunication is a canon law penalty. How are you going to apply a legal penalty without taking the law governing the application of said penalty into account? Makes no sense.

It sounds like Hahn is saying, “Scripture says some people are just too evil to be members of the Catholic church.”
Which again, is not how the Church deals with sinners, particularly after they have stopped doing the sin and it’s in the past.

By the way, given that the article is saying Hahn wants to do this because he’s concerned about McCarrick’s salvation, how does separating a former sinner (again assuming McCarrick isn’t creeping on seminarians or altar servers any more cuz he’s old and locked up) from the Church help his salvation?

How does Hahn even know if McCarrick has repented or not? For all we know he’s made lengthy tearful confessions and promised to never do it again and been absolved and is doing daily penance. If he’s doing all that then there is nothing further that excommunication could do to help his salvation.
 
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No, he did not say that. He fully acknowledged your earlier point about the purpose of excommunication. There does seem to be a flaw in his argument, on the other hand, his point that reducing him to laity as a punishment does not seem to speak well as to the laity.
 
I repeat: How does Hahn know if McCarrick has repented or not?

Did he telephone him? I presume Hahn didn’t receive details of the man’s last 10 confessions or anything.

From the article:
The point of excommunicating “this immoral man” is not “to get even” or even primarily “to purify the Church” but for “the man’s salvation,” Hahn said. He turned to the Second Letter to Corinthians (2 Cor 2: 1-9) to point to the “result of this excommunication.” The sincerely repentant sinner can now be welcomed back with joy, “for that was the whole point” of the punishment.
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If McCarrick is already “sincerely repentant” which may well be the case, we don’t know, then he belongs right in the Church, though certainly not as any sort of bishop and maybe not even as a priest and probably best left in the secluded monastery.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
If excommunication is designed to not be punitive but instead send somebody a wake-up call to stop the behavior that is separating them from the Church (as discussed on Canon Law Made Easy blog )
and the person has already stopped the behavior, as presumably McCarrick has now that he’s living in seclusion in some abbey,
then what purpose does the excommunication now serve?

It might have made a dent if they’d actually done it when the guy was running around creeping on seminarians.

Doing it now just looks like “we’re going to boot you out because you disgraced our Church and we don’t want to be associated with you”, which, if the man has repented, is not how the Catholic church approaches sinners.

Hahn seems to be going on some scriptural interpretation of what excommunication is used for, rather than the canon law interpretation of what it is used for.
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I agree in part to what you’re saying. In the case of McCarrick, there was hardly any punishment/penance of any merit that was imposed on him. Which is why so many of the laity have expressed their anger and frustration. I think many are tired of hearing about a member of the clergy being sentenced to a life of prayer and penance for their crimes, yet being allowed to remain in the clergy and retire in seclusion while still living in some well to do abbey, sends the wrong message.

I can’t speak to what Prof Hahn knows or to whether or not McCarrick is fully repented. Yet, this is the same logic that was used by so many of the hierarchy when dealing with clergy members who were caught in sexual abuse or immorality. It’s a precedent that has been maintained for decades and to simply leave them in the church has proven to be an abysmal failure.

It sounds like you’re trying to generalize SIN and since the Church wouldn’t excommunicate an adulterer or a thief, then excommunication shouldn’t be applied to any sinner. I feel that what was being talked about is in reference to members of the clergy who have power and influence, not to mention sympathizers who have covered up or ignored their crimes. These men need to be removed from the Church and excommunication should be applied and as I said above, their excommunication wouldn’t need to be permanent, but it could be more impactful in bringing about a proper show of repentance.
 
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Yes, that is the flaw in his argument. My point is that he acknowledge quite specifically the purpose of excommunication, he did not come close to implying “Scripture says some people are just too evil to be members of the Catholic church”. And his point that, in a sense, simple laicization is an affront to the universal call to holiness seems valid. Its sort of the same logic that you are using against excommunication: oh, there are people who are too evil to be clerics, but its just fine for them to be laity. I don’t quite buy into it, nor his call for excommunication (for the same reason you specify), but lets present his arguments accurately.
 
I’m not sure we have the full picture of what is being done to McCarrick now, penance-wise. I would think that the fact that he’s been deprived of his former globetrotting, influential lifestyle and is now disgraced and living in what for him is a reduced circumstance amounting to house arrest is already some penance right there. We also don’t know if he’s being required to fast or give himself 10 lashes a day or do something he really dislikes doing.

I would agree with Hahn about the excommunication if it was done while McCarrick was still committing sins that were at least semi-public - insiders seemed to all know he had a problem and sought to keep him away from seminarians. It’s a bit late now that he’s presumably no longer sinning, to kick him out just to make people feel better that the bad man was punished.

I read the St. Paul scripture as suggesting that bad people may need to be rooted out for the good of the community, to keep the evil from spreading. If you’ve got the guy essentially locked up where he won’t be sinning any more or has no opportunity to do so, he’s not going to be spreading evil in the community. The early Christians probably didn’t have the ability to do this in St. Paul’s day - you had to banish someone into exile on an island, there wasn’t a nice convenient abbey to lock him up in.

Perhaps it would be better to make him do a public penance like hiking in his bare feet to a pilgrimage site in bad weather while eating only bread and water, like in olden times. The press would certainly have a field day with it and it might appease the public who would also be allowed to yell “Evil Sinner!” at him as he passed, although casting stones would be verboten.
 
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And I think therein lies part of the problem. In refence to what you said regarding McCarrick and his penance/punishment. Whatever has been done to him or imposed on him, has not been made public. Other than his life of prayer, penance and seclusion. Yet, here is a man who’s had tremendous and far reaching influence, especially among the USCCB. There are others who have tried to disassociate themselves from him, but few have come forward and outright condemned his actions or his ability to rise to the level of influence he attained. Now, in my own opinion, I’ve seen very little call for reform or action among the USCCB, but I’ve seen quite a bit of downplaying and the “every man for himself” routine. The level of abuse and coverup didn’t just materialize within the last few years, but it’s been shown that members, very powerful and influential members, have worked hard to protect and dismiss much of the abuse that has now been coming to light.

I say this only to illustrate that leaving clergy members, like McCarrick, in place only hurts the Church’s ability to weed out and fight this cancer that has plagued it for so long. By a similar comparison even Harvey Weinstein was stripped of his standing and fired from his own company and banned from several other organizations within the film industry. If he received the same punishment as McCarrick, he would still be allowed to come to work, but he could no longer make any direct decisions, yet I’m sure his influence would still be felt among those in the industry.

Or for example the two priests who were caught having sex in Miami, in public no less. Should they be excommunicated? Or is it better to leave them in the clergy, but just order them to repent and pray and fast for however long. I would argue that they should at minimum, be defrocked and removed from the clergy permanently.
 
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How was McCarrick “left in place”? He has been essentially put away, out of the public eye.
He might face legal process.
I’m not sure how he is still exercising any influence while being locked in an abbey in public disgrace. I haven’t seen any supporters of his storming the place trying to get him out.
Are you thinking the Pope is still taking his phone calls from there?

The only possible “influence” I can see the guy having at this point is influencing a whole lot of Church officials that they need to take steps to prevent this kind of high profile embarrassment from occurring again.

As for the two priests caught having sex in Miami, they’re already presumably out of their parishes and that was pretty much the extent of their “influence”, so it’s not like they are going to run around influencing the Church.

I would presume their bishops will have a meeting with them and based on that will determine whether they get sent away to rehab (they may well be mentally ill or drug-addicted to have done such a crazy thing), laicized, or what. If they are having illicit sex every week and think it’s fine and plan to keep doing it, or otherwise disobey their superior’s orders, they could get excommunicated.

The posts on this thread are just showing me that people are frustrated with the fact that they are not seeing a public punishment for priests and bishops they are angry at for doing bad things, not being holy, bringing disgrace on the church, adversely affecting people’s faith, etc.
I can understand concern/ anger about letting such a priest/ bishop continue exercising public priestly faculties because that perpetuates the harm.

But once the guy is out of the public ministry for good, and assuming we ourselves aren’t his victim (and our kids, close friend etc were not his victim), then his punishment isn’t our business. It’s the Church’s business. If we are victims and want legal recourse then we go through the justice system, not the moral penalization system.

Once the threat is removed for good, we need to pray for these people and let it go. Otherwise we’re just getting all worked up over stuff we have no control over and we are in a sense “casting stones”.
 
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But why leave them as a member of the clergy at all. Whether or not they have direct contact with the laity in public ministry is irrelevant. Even within the military you can be dishonorably discharged, with no rights or benefits that would be afforded to veterans who have served their full enlistment. Yet, the Church quietly places these members away so they can still collect some monetary compensation or benefits.

The reason I am against this, is because history has shown, time and time again, that priests who were removed from public ministry and banished to isolation have popped up years later in some other function involving the laity and often times around children. And why??? Because some other Bishop or Cardinal, who is sympathetic or often times, committing the same atrocities, quietly reinstates them, until they once again get busted doing the same thing as before. That is exactly why we are in this mess after decades and decades of priests being bounced around and not REMOVED from the CHURCH.

Leaving them as members of the clergy, doesn’t work! They need to be removed!
 
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The term “reduced” to laity is a poor translation, only a little better than this:
Priest: “The Mass is ended”.
Congregation: “Thanks be to God”.

The reality is someone is being returned to their former state of Life.

By the way I don’t support having disgraced priests go to a monastery, unless this were a temporary recommend by their confessor, confidential, for a specific spiritual purpose. No one else besides the bishop would know about it.

The purpose of the monastery is poorly understood even in the best of times. We need them now at full steam, more than ever.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
McCarrick’s 88 years old. The only place he’s likely to “pop up” in the future is when he pushes up daisies at the graveyard.
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McCarrick is the lone exception because he’s had his face plastered all over the news and social media. Yet, I’m willing to bet that had the secular media not broke the story of the two priests in Miami, they would’ve probably been sent to “rehab” as you suggested above and then sent across the country to some other parish in some other function. I don’t want these mean in charge of teaching the laity nor entrusting the care of the Church to them. Which is exactly why homosexual men are not to be admitted to the seminary and yet here we are today.

The problem is that an unknown number of priests have slipped through the cracks and unfortunately are known only by their accusers and those who covered for them. They are nameless clergy who only surface when an attorney or news agency cracks open a decades old case and pulls their names from some hidden file. Its a cesspool and the levels of corruption go all the way to the top. So something needs to be done and the status quo of leaving these predators as members of the clergy so they can live out their days in seclusion needs to come to an end and if excommunication is a possible solution, than I am in favor of it.
 
Keep in mind the great majority of these men are ALLEGED predators. Very few were convicted of anything. In recent decades dioceses, and many non Catholic institutions, paid out settlements to avoid the possibility much larger settlements if it went to court.

In my diocese close to 100 priests have named by the media covering the last 60 years. Exactly 2 have been convicted. In the Pennsylvania grand jury, which got media coverage equal to Watergate, I have read that 2 are likely to be charged, which does not ensure 2 convictions. Given the media coverage, if they do get a conviction it may get overturned
 
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Also, keep in mind that the two priests who were caught having sex in the car were consenting adults. They committed a crime of public lewdness, but their choosing to have consensual sex with each other wasn’t a crime. Doesn’t sound like they were “predators”.
 
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because several priests have been “convicted” both in the secular courts and within the Church.

End prior post

I’m not sure how how a priest or layman gets “convicted” in the Church. A diocese, or the Vatican, can determine a man is no longer capable of serving as a priest, and yes, they should have done this far more often in the past.

But they have no ability on their own to determine this man molested that boy, or that this priest is an offender.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Also, keep in mind that the two priests who were caught having sex in the car were consenting adults. They committed a crime of public lewdness, but their choosing to have consensual sex with each other wasn’t a crime. Doesn’t sound like they were “predators”.
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Someone who leads another into sin is a predator. Not in the eyes of secular society, but who trusts secular society?
 
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