Almost Christmas, but the news don't stop!
BY JD FLYNN – 20 DEC 2022 –
Credit: Silly Symphonies, Walt Disney Productions.
Hey everybody,
Today is Tuesday of the fourth week of Advent, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
We’ll talk about Advent after the news, I promise. And since a lot of the news we’re reporting right now is difficult, I’m eager to get to the Advent talk. But first, let’s get through the news.
Priest for life?
My phone blew up on Saturday evening, as I started getting texts from across the country, asking about breaking news that Frank Pavone, long-time director of Priests for Life, had been laicized by the Vatican.
Pavone is a well-known figure. And friends - even those who don’t follow much Catholic news - wanted to know if it was true, and what it meant.
Indeed, Pavone has been laicized - dismissed from the clerical state - after a process initiated by his bishop, conducted by the Dicastery for Clergy, and approved/confirmed by Pope Francis.
Sources close to the case confirmed to The Pillar that the priest was laicized through the “special faculties” extended by Benedict XVI to the Dicastery for Clergy, which exist to help address the problem of priests who persist in some kind of scandalous disobedience of ecclesiastical authorities.
Sources also confirmed that Pavone’s ordinary, Bishop Patrick Zurek, initiated the case, apparently after years of frustration regarding his efforts to exercise the oversight and authority entrusted to bishops regarding their priests.
The Holy See itself cited Pavone’s penchant for disobedience in its brief statement on the matter, noting that even during the “special faculties” process, the priest had the opportunity to demonstrate deference to his bishop, and did not.
Pavone didn’t see it that way. After CNA broke the news of Pavone’s laicization, the priest took to a live-streamed video on Twitter, to explain that in his view, the laicization was basically the culmination of decades of persecution he claims to have faced in the Church, because of his pro-life advocacy. He has also suggested that he does not accept the decision, and continues to present himself in clerics, as “Father Pavone,” and arguing - somewhat mysteriously - that the U.S. bishops were informed of his laicization, but he wasn’t.
Here at The Pillar, we put together yesterday a comprehensive explainer, detailing the backstory, the canonical process, and the state of play — and it’s the most thorough, accurate, and clear coverage on Pavone that you’ll find, anywhere. Read it here.
But I wanted to mention the way the Pavone case has already become a contentious inkblot in the American ecclesial polity, and what that portends.
Sources close to Pavone have told me they’re not at all surprised by the laicization decision — they say the priest had grown increasingly erratic in recent years, increasingly bitter, increasingly partisan, and increasingly disconnected from them, as he stepped headlong into the world of “Stop the Steal” and further disconnected from the life of the Church, which is at the heart of a priestly vocation.
And indeed, if you’ve followed Pavone’s career closely in recent years, it seems obvious that his dysfunctional relationship with Bishop Zurek could not stand, that his efforts to transfer incardination were fraught with problems and laden with secrecy and suspicion. The priest has seemed to hit one ecclesial conflict after another, even while moving to Orlando and setting up shop for Priest for Life somewhere along the Intercoastal Waterway.
Eventually, that had to come to a head - and one can conclude that would have happened even apart from the ecclesiastical and secular politics through which many people view Pavone.
But for many Catholics, Pavone’s persecution narrative rings true — trust in U.S. bishops is low among many practicing Catholics, and trust in Pope Francis is even lower. Many Catholics see a priest with whom they align politically, who speaks often about ending legal protection for abortion, and they believe the conflict isn’t over “obedience” but over institutional disdain for a pro-lifer they regard as courageous.
In short, there is a real swath of Catholics who see Pavone as the latest “canceled priest” - not disciplined justly, but politically persecuted, and by the pope himself. Pavone, in recent days, has encouraged that view.
Suspicion that Pavone is being canceled is buoyed by the emerging scandal of Fr. Marko Rupnik at the Holy See, and by a mounting number of high-profile clerical abuse cases which seem to have been handled badly — and by financial scandals like those of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, reported by The Pillar last week.
Add to that the crisis of the Church in Germany and other parts of Europe, where even bishops and cardinals seem to have permission to say things contravening Catholic doctrine, on matters of sexual morality especially, with impunity. And many Catholics believe similar impunity is extended to U.S. priests who seem to push for changes to Catholic doctrine, or flout it, and without discouragement from ecclesiastical authorities.
And on top of that is the perception of many U.S. Catholics that the Holy See, and many U.S. bishops, are completely unwilling to engage President Joe Biden on the issue of abortion, even as his positions have gotten more extreme since Roe v. Wade was overturned. For many Catholics, this is a scandal.
Some Catholics ask: “Why should we trust that Pavone is being treated justly, when we see so many failures of justice in the life of the Church?”
The perception of inconsistency makes the claim of persecution seem, to many Catholics, more plausible.
There are, indeed, real questions to be asked about many of those issues — even if, as we explain, they don’t necessarily imply injustice, or even Vatican selectivity, in Pavone’s case.
Most people who tell me they’re not surprised by Pavone’s laicization are themselves fairly conservative, and some of them are quite critical of the Francis papacy. But they have in common a lot of inside-baseball ecclesial experience, which informs their view of Pavone, and their long expectation of his eventual fall.
But for other U.S. Catholics, Pavone’s laicization seems like the culmination of a Francis papacy with which they disagree on a lot of fronts, and in which they are discouraged in the faith.
They see little reason to trust the situation is otherwise — and they are angry.
At the same time, there is a group of Catholics in the U.S. who perceive that Pavone has gotten his comeuppance for his support of Trump, and - also reducing the entire affair to politics - are perfectly happy to advance that Pavone was laicized because he lined up behind the Orange Man. That’s also not the truth of the matter, and it’s another form of reducing all questions of Church life and governance to partisan politics.
Of course, the question - often - is how many people are really thinking about these things? Is that phenomenon limited to a group of extremely online Catholics who pay close attention to these things, and hold strong opinions about them? Are most people thinking about this at all?
Well, last night I played cards with a group of friends who are practicing Catholics, but most of them not working in or around the Church, and most of them not major consumers of Catholic news — not all of them even read The Pillar, if you can believe it, let alone follow the machinations of Catholic Twitter.
Several of them asked me immediately about Pavone. They wanted to know why a pro-life priest would be in trouble with the pope.
Their impressions of Pavone were largely formed in less turbulent days of Priests for Life — they had the general impression that he was America’s leading pro-life cleric, and thus, it seemed suspicious that he would be laicized abruptly.
Several said they are broadly distrustful of the pope, and generally inclined to believe Pavone had gotten a raw deal — and they wanted to know why. It was, in short, a scandal.
So what’s the situation? A laicized priest who says he’s persecuted, an extremely online crowd absolutely convinced that’s true, and a broader body of practicing Catholics generally inclined to believe that something about the situation is amiss.
What will that lead to? It probably means that Pavone will feel emboldened to continue holding himself out as a cleric, wearing clerics, calling himself Father, and maintaining a large social media presence, in defiance of the Church’s authorities.
I don’t think he’ll fall off the radar as did the disgraced Fr. John Corapi a decade ago. Corapi needed a television platform to maintain his audience. Pavone has hundreds of thousands following him on social media, and he can broadcast to them whenever he likes.
He’ll likely do so with a sympathetic and generous audience, many of whom will continue admiring his pro-life convictions, and regarding him as the sort of courageous person who says what others won’t.
All of that will continue eroding both the trust in and moral authority of bishops — as Pavone seemingly will continue as a Catholic voice on abortion, an outspoken political provocateur, and the leader of Priests for Life — which seems to give him an ecclesiastical approbatio.
He will maintain the loyalty of many practicing Catholics, and will likely grow increasingly dismissive of the bishops - while insisting on his desire to be faithful.
It was created in a kind of perfect storm, and it will likely end as a wound to the Church’s unity — with Pavone as another member of the influential alternative social media magisterium, and its influence on the life of the Church in the U.S. strengthened.
Anyhow, you can read our explainer here. We aimed t
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