I’m trimming this post because the points that I want to address are in the first few lines.
It is not a great thing for anyone. However, we don’t know the state of a person’s conscience. Conscience is a sacred space. We can only speak about what we can see. What we saw was a man who taught what the Church believes. We see a man whose superior says has behaved in a manner that is unacceptable. If the superior is right, there is still the question of whether he was comfortable with this or whether this was a struggle for him. I don’t know the answer.
This is a secular priest. He never made a vow of poverty. His community is not a religious community. It is a society like the FSSP, SSPX, Maryknoll, Vincentians, Missionhurst and Opus Dei. They are allowed to make money and keep their money. They have rules about administration of that money. Their personal money is to be administered by a guardian or trustee. Whatever stipend they get from ministry, goes into a common fund from which they give each person an allowance. He said that he never took stipends and no one has said anything to the contrary. Apparenlty, he did work for EWTN free of charge or didn’t charge them for using his recordings. I don’t know if he actually went there or just sent his DVDs.
He did not do anything morally wrong or violate any regulation on this score. He is allowed to make money. We have diocesan priests who are university professors making $80K a year. We have a few who are medical doctors making over $100K a year. The difference is that you would never know. I have a very good friend who is a diocesan priest who has made hundreds of thousands as a university professor and a medical ethics researcher for the Catholic Church. He gets paid very well for that. However, he drives a Honda and he donates a lot of money to Respect Life Ministry.
As long as they don’t cheat, lie or steal, they may charge for everything they do. Free labor applies only to religious. We are not allowed to charge for what we do. That’s why we have contracts with bishops. They agree to give the religious community a fixed amount, regardless of how many men or women are assigned to a project. It’s not a salary.
On the other hand, these secular priests make salaries, but they also pay taxes, all of their FICA, part of the retirement, medical and disability insurance. They pay their own auto insurance, buy their own cars and maintain them. Dioceses do not give them mileage and most diocese don’t even give them a cell phone. They are required to have one, if they have a hospital unde their care.
This is what the superior hopes to correct.
Half of the enemies of the Church are Catholic and the other half are going to find something to gripe about. You cannot lead the Church into scandal. To lead someone into scandal is to lead them to sin. You can scandalize someone and some people have been scandalized. That’s unfortunate.
We must pray for everyone involved here. This is still not over, unfortunately.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
