Deacon loses job because he remarries and breaks rules

57 comments

• This has all the ingredients for a soap opera film plot—one that would gather votes for an Oscar—heartless, medieval Church symbolically crucifies two, selfless lovers through its arcane sexist machinery.  Maybe Tim Robbins and his gal shadow, Susan Sarandon, could co-star as Frank Gates and fiancee.  And that is what McGrory is writing; and that is how “progressive” Catholics think, their minds rarely rising beyond the level of an Oprah discussion.

  All of the progressive Catholic issues boil down to nothing more than endless junior prom committee meeting discussions regarding their planned rebellion against authority—in this case, the Church replacing adult rules for proper behavior.  And its appeal is precisely to those people who have passed their majority but who remain forever mired not in the world of innocent childhood but pouty, self-pitying adolescence.

• Globe Catholic trashing du jour.

• Now while the deacon violated church rules (and I don’t have much sympathy for him), young Mr. Know-It-All speaks incorrectly when he says

  Of course, permanent deacons can be married before they’re ordained, but if they become single after, they cannot be remarried.

  Since 1997, this statement is not true. A permanent deacon, if widowed, may remarry with the permission of his bishop and the Vatican.

  Details are available at this web address:

  http://www.bostondiaconate.org/remarriage.html

• Nevertheless, the rule remains that a deacon must have the permission of his bishop to remarry. Evidently this one didn’t.

• Yes indeed, he needed permission and didn’t get it, and has no cause for complaint.

• It is not forbidden for deacons to remary and it is just requires that they obtain certain permission. Otherwise if it were so scandalous, they would have been “excommunicated” once they remarried, as priests are when they marry without the Pope’s dispensation.

• Whether or not the deacon did the right thing, and indeed whether or not he did the legal thing, the one thing that cannot be denied here is that the ‘Stupid Committee’ which has met daily since the start of the Boston sex abuse crisis, and exists to make sure the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston gets the worst press it can possibly get on any and every subject, is still meeting and still earning its keep.

  Cardinal-designate O’Malley, however, would do well to heed the columnist’s advice about Lennon.

  For, no matter what’s right or wrong about the deacon’s actions, nothing can alter the fact that Lennon is the most arrogant and ambitious person in the world and Satan’s greatest antidote to the Gospel message ever being believed by the good people of Boston.

• Somehow Lennon has gotten the reputation as the anti-Christ. My experience is not the same.

• I did not call him the ‘anti-Christ’ but we’re just going to have to agree on that one.

• DJP,

  I am not convinced that “priests are excommunicated when they marry without the Pope’s dispensation”.

  Isn’t celibacy a diosocean rule rather than a Church teaching?  Surely a Bishop would be able to chose to allow married priests if he thought it was OK.

  JBP

• One of the worst characteristics of our modern society is that people are not expected to keep their freely given word. Yet giving one’s pledge, word, or vow is based on: “A man’s word is his bond.” Somehow the media—and many gullible Catholics—have nade the Church the “bad guy” for actually having the nerve to expect a man—a priest or deacon—to keep his word and not try to weasel out of it. And if he plays the weasel, to experience some consequences—like loss of position. I know the only thing that is supposed to matter today is a corrupted version of “compassion,” But I think we ought to go back to the “bad, old days” when everyone regarded a broken pledge, a trashing or attempted weaseling out of one’s freely given word—as being the equivalent of a mortal sin, beneath contempt,  and something only very weak, ego-driven men (and very, very poor roll models for the young)—even consider doing.

• So is Lennon going to ‘show the door’ to every person who currently works for the Boston Archdiocese or its affiliates IN ANY CAPACITY and who has divorced, remarried, left the priesthood, fled their monastery or convent, told a lie, bounced a check, missed an appointment, missed Mass, swore, drank too much, played with themselves, played with others, or otherwise ‘broken their word’?

  Perhaps, Domenico, with your ‘not the same’ experience with Lennon, you’d be able to tell us, or maybe even find out for us?

• John,

  A bishop cannot give a blanket dispensation from the law, i.e. he cannot just say that in his (Latin-rite) diocese married men can be ordained.

  Chris,

  Those who have received holy orders are held to a higher standard of behavior and I would hope that any priest or deacon who exhibited similar levels of disobedience would be shown the door. Violating your promise of obedience to your bishop, made ordination is pretty serious.

  While some of the other cases you cite are sins, they are not violations of canon law. It’s a common rhetorical fallacy to lump together a bunch of unlike things to make it seem that the original item is unimportant.

  I’d say the violation of ordination promises is pretty important, especially compared to missing an appointment.

  If you don’t like Lennon, that’s your business. But that’s completely separate from the facts of this case.

• OK, fair point.

  But what you have done (not unlike wiat I did, really, and what you castigated me for) is to say, or at least imply, that ‘breaking canon law’ deserves punishment by giving someone ‘the sack’.

  So let’s remove some of the ‘lesser evils’ from my list, and let’s see if ALL the divorced / remarried people who draw a salary from the Church (in any way – hospitals, schools, rectory cleaners, etc etc etc) are going to be shown the door.

  Will your friend the ‘anti-Christ’ be making such an announcemnt any time soon – after all, the our precious Canon Law is at stake here!!!

• DELETED==
      One big difference today between the breaking of vows or pledges when compared with most other things on your list—is that so many who break their publicly given word use all sorts of justifications for breaking their word and even expect pats on the back (and sometimes getting them) for being a weak person with no backbone when it comes to keeping his word. In fact, the media nowadays usually lionizes and makes heroes of such weaklings (especially if it is the Church to which he isn’t keeping his word)—-with some of the Catholic community
  joining the chorus of reprehensible praise.

• You’re missing the point. The violation of canon law is his remarriage. He wasn’t divorced. As clergy he has higher obligations that don’t necessarily apply to lay people. Yeah, if any clergy disobey their ordination promises, then they should be fired.

  The problem here is that McGrory doesn’t give the whole story. What did Lennon tell Gates was the reason for his dismissal? What was the process that led up to it? Did Gates lie to the archdiocese? Was there prior communication?

  What we do know is that Gates acknowledges that he violated his promise.

• POINT BLANK: SHOULD DIVORCED/REMARRIED CATHOLICS (to make it simple: I mean the ones who ‘cannot’ go to Communion) BE EMPLOYED BY THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON?

• DELETED-  what you are missing here (i think) is that Gates didn’t simply work for the diocese.  He worked for the dioceses AND was ordained to the permanent Deaconate.  THEN he got remarried, breaking his vows to the Church.  (which is why he was fired)  It’s totally different that having a divorced/remarried Catholic layperson work for the Archdiocese.

• People like this are walking soap operas and should no longer be working for the church.  They are a disgrace and a distraction from the mission of the Church.

  People who do not live by the laws of the Church should not be doing ANYTHING formal in the Church, fungolo, except go to Confession til they figure it out and fly right.

• Hey michigancatholic, thanks for clarifying (and putting into words, in such a charitable Catholic-only way) what no one else seems able or willing to – I presume you’ll make your views known to ALL the Catholic employers of filthy disgusting sinners, not just Bishop Lennon (but he’d be as good a place as any to start!).

  Given that Lennon and all the other Catholic employers of filthy disgusting sinners probably don’t read this blog, I wonder how you’re going to get your ‘figure it out and fly right’ message across to them?

• Dunno.  But there’s a lot of us who are plain sick of this corruption in the church. 

  No one is making these people work for the church.  IF they can’t abide by her teachings, they need to take a long hike.

• So what you’re saying is that you’re prepared to talk tough on a blog but do nothing about it in reality?  Or am I REALLY missing something here?

• Apparently you don’t know me, fungolo.  LOL.

• I can only go on what you’ve written here, michigancatholic.

• I’m afraid Bp. Lennon does have a reputation as a hard-nosed guy, more likely to give a problem cleric his walking papers than a helping hand.  That may be an undeserved rep, but it’s there. 

  If I remember right, he was a math major in college, and a fair number of us math types do come across as intimidating or even arrogant personally, and firmly convinced of our rightness.  People who think they’re right all the time can be somewhat annoying to those of us who are.    Vice versa, too.

  But anyway, I’ve only met him once, before his appointment as bishop, and I thought he was an honest guy, if a bit cut-and-dried.

• Yeah I was kind of thinking it’s a shame Benedict XVI didn’t issue a translation in Math of ‘Deus Caritas Est’ – maybe THEN the ‘hard-nosed’ ‘intimidating’ ‘arrogant’ ‘firmly convinced of their rightness’ ‘cut-and-dried’ people would get it: they certainly haven’t so far!

  And whatever else might be said about Richard Lennon: he was up to his eyeballs in the same **** as Bernard Law, having been there in a very senior role throughout a whole heap of the scandalous decision making.

  (Indeed, there is a very serious school of opinion that says Law and Canon McInerney EVEN NOW spend each morning in Rome making the bullets and emailing them back to Boston for Lennon to fire later that day – and O’Malley isn’t even in on the picture!)

  When things like this deacon-sacking come up in Boston as they invariably will, these same issues will be raised: if the Brown Bag (soon to be the Red Hatted Brown Bag) is ever to make any inroads into ‘evangelising’ the place, instead of just selling off its prime real estate (before he’s translated to DC) he really needs to lose Lennon.

  But (and I am sure this question has been asked in the Nunciature before today) where do you put Lennon?

• First warning: No four letter words.

• It’s OK, Domenico, I’m not a deacon.

  You actually can’t sack me.

• You can be banned from posting on this site. No four letter words. I’m not kidding.

• It seems that many of the Permanant Deacons have a very weak formation, heavy on the touchy-feely and short on substance.

• Domenico, you might think it’s THE THING, but I survived a long time before I found this site, and I will, by God’s grace, get by a while when it’s a faded memory.

  Hows about you concentrate a little less on my language and a little more on what we’re talking about?

  Have you, for instance, ever responded as fast (as you did to my 4 letter word) to a scandalous made decision by a bishop? 

  Did you ever speak out as swiftly against the molester-moving bishops Law and Lennon in Boston?

  I’m not kidding, either.

• Then, fungalo, don’t go making assumptions about people you don’t know.

• michigancatholic, any ‘assumption’ I’ve made about you has been based fairly and squarely on what you’ve typed or ‘not typed’ on here.

  I can therefore only assume, from what you’ve typed, that you’re prepared to talk tough on a blog but, from what you’ve not typed, do nothing about it in reality? 

  Or am I REALLY missing something here?  Type something about what you REALLY intend to do about it, and surprise me.

• I’m haviing a hard time understanding what fungalo is trying to say.  If the Deacon makes a promise to not remarry after ordination (my dad made that same promise), then he shouldn’t remarry. The Church will give dispensations to widowed deacons who have small children or have elderly parents who need long term care at home.  This is one of the reasons why my diocese has asked some men with small children, discerning a vocation to the diaconate, to wait until their children are older (we have one class at a time in formation and the period of formation is six years).  The exception to the rule is rare and the language of the law doesn’t seem to allow a broad interpretation of the law (this may be why permission is needed from Rome).

  The case described above doesn’t happen very often.  I know of only two widowed deacons who have left the diaconate to get married and I know of one who is applying to Rome to get remarried because he has children.  The key is to make it clear to deacon candidates what may happen: that your wife could die unexpectedly and be prepared for a life of celebacy.

• Oh well, DELETED, then since I’ve only seen you in print, I could say the same thing about you.  Or anyone in any forum. 

  Big deal.

• michigancatholic – dear thing: my impressions of you are based on what you have written, which is a load of tough talking nonsense, coupled with silence when I challenged you to do something about it.  I’ve looked through my posts and that description, from those posts, does not describe me.

  Father Ethan – my question is simple: is Boston going to demand the same high moral standards (the deacon was sacked from a lay job because of scandal) of its divorced/remarried (excommunicated) Catholics?  Should every diocese?

• You’ve been here, what, five minutes? Read through the last four years’ worth of postings and then tell me whether I’ve criticized bishops. Sheesh.

  You’re a guest at my web site. Act like one. Most of the rest of the people in this thread have spent time here forming relationships and coming to know and respect one another.

  To answer your inane question for a fourth time, clergy have different standards applied to them than lay people.

  Plus learn a thing or two about the Catholic faith: Divorced/remarried Catholics are not excommunicated.

  Maybe the rest of us would take you more seriously if you didn’t act like a jerk and you knew what you were talking about.

• If I understand church law correctly, the deacon’s new marriage is invalid, and the deacon is automatically suspended from the exercise of his office.  (Somebody correct me on this if I’m mistaken.)  Of course to break one’s vows and enter an invalid marriage is a gravely wrong act.

  Furthermore, marriage is not a private matter.  Marriage is undertaken before witnesses, before society at large, and (in the case of Christian marriage) before God and the Church.

  A deacon, like a priest, has a particular obligation to bear public witness to the Catholic faith.  Certainly a deacon’s invalid marriage is not a private matter.  It is a public contradiction of the Catholic Church.  It would be very improper for him or his new wife to work for Catholic institutions.

  More broadly, even lay Catholics in invalid marriages should not work in positions of religious ministry.  People whose family situations are at variance with the Faith are not able to represent the Church with a consistent witness of life.

• DELETED, the reason that this deacon was fired was not because Lennon was a “bad guy,” but because as a worker in a Catholic Hospital, he was excpected to follow catholic teaching. If someone worked at Coke and they had a Pepsi can in their car, their job might be at risk, at the very least they would get a tongue-lashing. The firing of this deacon wasn’t to rid people who stand in Lennon’s way, but to uphold the morals and values of the hospital and Catholic Ideals.

• POINT BLANK ANSWER – No

  In the Archdiocese of Atlanta, those who are divorced and remarried are not allowed to hold any office in the Church, not even usher. They certainly can not be chaplains or catechists. They are not in paid staff positions.

  Those who are divorced and remarried without the benefit of an annulment demonstrate EXTERNALLY poor judgment and a contempt for Church Law. Therefore, they are not and should not be eligible for positions of leadership or visibility within the Church until they correct this instance of poor judgment or contempt that is visible to all. Marriage is a public act.

  That is the way it is in backward old Atlanta. That being said, Atlanta is one of the fastest growing Archdioceses in the country, has 50+ men in formation to the priesthood plus another 8 in religious orders, many more for the permanent diaconate and just ordained 25 deacons last month. In the 1990’s we were opening a parish a quarter. Fidelity = Growth.

  There are many other places to get a job and many other places to do fulfilling human service volunteer work if they are so called.

  There are many hospitals in the greater Boston area and I am sure that if he is a man of talent he will find employment. However, the contempt he demonstrated for his previous employer and the flagrant disregard he showed for the standard of conduct expected by his employer and the fact that his beef with his previous employer got wrote up in a Globe editorial casting aspersions on the last employer is telling indeed as to his suitability for employment, at least in my company. His lack of discretion in seeking publicity (someone told the Globe) against his previous employer is what makes him unemployable; not the 2000 year tradition that while sometimes the married may be ordained, the ordained are never married. This policy is 10 times older that the United States.

  Finally, imagine an Microsoft executive with an Apple computer at home or a Coke executive serving Pepsi at a party. Would you be surprised or outraged if they were fired? Would you go to a heart surgeon that smoked? Why would you as an employer, keep an employee that showed objective contempt for the rules of your organization and holds you up for public ridicule and scorn when you enforce a thousand year old policy?

  POINT BLANK, I ASK YOU.

• What does “surviving a divorce” mean?  Does it mean getting a divorce and subsequently living beyond the death of your former spouse?

  Because if it doesn’t mean that, there must be an annulment for there to have been a marriage.  A woman who is married to one man in the eyes of the Church cannot marry another man.

  If there was no annulment, there was no marriage, and the deacon is still a widower in the eyes of the Church.

  In which case what we are talking about is living in sin and creating a scandal.

  Of course living in sin assumes a sexual relationship, and their ages would have to be taken into consideration before living in sin is a given.

  Which leaves causing a scandal.  Which they certainly did.

  Can a deacon and his live-in female friend be fired for causing a scandal?  Can a deacon be fired from his hospital job for attempting a marriage?

• Here are the relevant bits from the 1983 CIC:

  Can.  1087
  Those in sacred orders invalidly attempt marriage.
  [ “Those in orders” refers to ordained men: deacons, priests, and bishops. ]

  Can. 1394
  (1) Without prejudice to the provisions of can. 194 (1), n. 3, a cleric who attempts marriage, even if only civilly, incurs a latae sententiae suspension. If, after warning, he has not reformed and continues to give scandal, he can be progressively punished by deprivations, or even by dismissal from the clerical state.
  ….

  Can. 194
  (1) The following are removed from ecclesiastical office by virtue of the law itself:

  1: one who has lost the clerical state;

  2: one who has publicly defected from the catholic faith or from communion with the Church;

  3: a cleric who has attempted marriage, even a civil one.

  So if I read this aright: if his hospital job constituted an “ecclesiastical office”, he’d be removed from it when he attempted marriage.  If it wasn’t, firing him from it may still fall within the category of “deprivations” (c. 1394) that can be legitimately imposed on an unrepentant cleric.

  Of course, I’m not a JCL (NDIPOTV).

• Since the Canon refers to “attempted” marriage rather than “marriage”, it seems pretty clear that he has violated the Canon.  One word makes a world of difference.

  A “hospital job” as “ecclestical office”, though, is a longer stretch unless the job is “chaplain”.

  The attempted marriage would surely constitute “public defection from the Catholic faith”, since I doubt they were married by a priest or in the Church. 

  Would his role as a deacon be suspended by the attempted marriage, thus reducing him to the lay status, or is ordination to the diaconate irrevocable?  If it would reduce him to a lay status, then an argument that his office of deacon demanded a higher standard would no longer apply as a reason for firing him from his job.

• Gotta back off part of that, Carrie: attempting marriage doesn’t constitute public defection from the faith.  Such defection needs an explicit act such as joining another religion/denomination, or publicly embracing some fundamental heresy.

  Ordination to the diaconate is irrevocable, but a deacon can be laicized (“dismissed from the clerical state”) as a priest can be.  He loses the legal status of being a “cleric”; he loses the duties and rights pertaining to the diaconate.  But this punishment is optional (c. 1394) at the bishop’s discretion.

  What would happen by law is that he’d be removed from any “ecclesiastical office” (c. 194): any role of ministry or governance to which he’d been appointed by the Church: e.g., as administrator of a parish, as hospital chaplain, school director, etc. 

  Even this is not totally automatic: the second part of c. 194, which I omitted, says that a removal (for attempted marriage) takes effect only if the bishop declares it.  In this case, Dcn. Gates had given up the chaplaincy already.

• Gotta back off part of that, Carrie: attempting marriage doesn’t constitute public defection from the faith.  Such defection needs an explicit act such as joining another religion/denomination, or publicly embracing some fundamental heresy.

  Marriage is surely considered to be “public”, I would think.  So attempting it is also public. I presume they obtained a license?

  As for “defection”…Well, marriage is a sacrament.  Seeking the marriage rite somewhere outside of the Church is a kind of abandonment of the Catholic sacrament.  In that sense I would think of it as defection, especially since in seeking it, he does so as a deacon, and only jeopardizes his status as deacon when the rite is actually performed, which would be the “attempt”, wouldn’t it?  A deacon may not seek marriage since he agreed not to marry after ordination.  When he does so, isn’t he professing a kind of heresy through his actions?

  If he seeks marriage in a non-Catholic venue, he embraces the heresy which that non-Catholic venue represents.  Who “married” them?

• Sorry if I wasn’t clear, Carrie.  When I spoke about someone “embracing” a heresy publically, I meant: with a written or spoken declaration.  Canon law gives the accused every benefit of the doubt, so it doesn’t work to stretch a bad offense into a case of defection-from-the-faith through its potential doctrinal implications. 

  Also: since the two spouses confer the sacrament of marriage, seeking marriage in a non-Catholic venue (with or without a dispensation) doesn’t imply any belief about the status of the non-Catholic minister or civil authority who witnessed it.

• hey, wheres DELETED?

• This whole thing is going to be fought out in a public venue, not in a Tribunal.  Can Canon Law be brought to bear on the public system?  Because if it can’t, this former deacon may get his job back.  Our legal system cares not a frig about public scandal.

• None of this turns out to be enforceable like pretty much everything else in the Church, Carrie. 

  But you know, if what they’re after is money and respect, we can deny it.  Heck, most of us already have.

• DELETED (if you’re still around),

  Just curious.  You wouldn’t happen to be a member of VOTF, would you?

• What we’ve got under the official umbrella of Catholicism in this country is several different churches, only one of which is probably the real Catholic Church and that one is the one in union with Rome.  (It can be hard even to figure out which one this is—hello—what a mess!)

  It serves the purposes of just about everyone to keep the “lights off.”  That’s why it looks like it does.

  Imagine, if things suddenly became clear:
  1.  The crow the real church might have to consume over the loss of bodies.  And the financial loss……
  2.  The loss of platform that dissidents would have.  Recall the comment about the church having the xerox machines.  And the financial loss……
  3.  The surprise of the media when they would have to confront the dedicated real Catholics who know what the church teaches and cannot be placated with the likes of McBrien.  And the financial loss……..

  Remember, all religions inflate head count all the time.  Head count is everything organizationally and politically.

  What will bring us out of this?  I have no clue but it’s probably not sustainable for long periods of time.

• Regarding DELETED. Just email him and find out though his link.

  I don’t know Bishop Lennon that well, and this is the first hearing that he isn’t very charitable at all with our Faith.

  DELETED’s first post as quoted “Lennon is the most arrogant and ambitious person in the world and Satan’s greatest antidote to the Gospel message”

  I’m not a bishop, but I’m a parent to two small children. And I see any man who carries Holy Orders to fulfill the role of being a parent regarding my faith. There are times when my children are not happy with me, and I’m not too popular with them. But I’m have a responsibility to maintainn authority, keep them safe, teach them right from wrong, and role model behavior.

  In all of the cases in which Bishop Lennon was criticized but the Boston Globe, were circumstances in which grown adults were taking temper tantrums. “If you don’t let me get My WAY, I going to say horrible things about you.” It doesn’t matter if it is a school closing, a priest who refuses to teach the Gospel, or a deacon who refuses to follow the rules. It is the duty of the Church to discipline mercifully and enforce the teachings.

  The Archdiocese in all of these situations, tried to handle it gentle mercy but they choose not to listen and refused to work with the Archdiocese. There will be multitude of times when my children will be angry at me and outright refuse to listen, despite giving them fair oppotunity to resolve the situation and giving them the tools to understand my reasoning. I’m not going to give into my children, just so I can be merely liked by them. I love my children too much, and I would be doing them a disservice.

• Wow!  A lot of posts on one topic over the weekend. First, let me say that as a member of the clergy, the deacon was not free to marry, period.  It is possible for the Vatican to allow an exception, but they are rare and only allowed under limited circumstances, usually because a widowed deacon has small children, or elderly parents to take care of.

  I don’t know about Boston, but in St. Louis, during deaconal formation, the topic of remarriage is discussed repeatedly.  In fact, in my class, some of the wives started complaining about the constant references to their early demise.  Personally, I take the entire issue very seriously. 

  Deacons are clergy!  We have received the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  When we take a job with the Church, we are not ordinary employees. Unless you’ve actually been prostrate on that cold marble floor of the Cathedral while the choir sings the litany of the saints, you really have no idea what ordination is about.  For the life of me, I can’t understand how someone could break their vows.  That’s why I have such a problem with the renegade priest from Springfield, MO and the schismatic parish in St. Louis. 
  One of the reasons that the Church reinstituted the ministry of permanent deacons was so that we could represent to the faithful the beauty and mystery of sacramental marriage.  My wife is a very important part of my ministry just by her presence.

  How can you make a public promise to God and then break it?  I guess these people either think Hell has gone out of business or that it’s so full there won’t be any room for them.

  There are always two sides to every story, but based on the facts presented in the article, the deacon should have been relieved of his duties. 

  By the way, cactus, my formation was anything but “touchy-feely” and had plenty of substance.  I don’t consider five years of college level classes to be “weak”.

• You will notice that the antagonist commenter’s username has been changed in his posts and in references in other people’s posts. I have been alerted by those who actually speak idiomatic Italian that his username is translated as an extreme vulgarity.

  I would have just deleted all his posts, but then the vast majority of the remaining posts wouldn’t make sense. Therefore I went through the labor-intensive process of changing each mention of his username.

  PLEASE do not refer to him by his username. Any posts containing that obscenity will be deleted.

  And I have alerted him that his posting privileges have been revoked until such as he lets me know of an alternate username he’d like to use.

• Now Im glad that I don’t speak Italian.

• Hey, Melanie, where can we get some remedial Italian for Dom?

  Would it be all right to refer to DELETED as “Mr. Fun”? 

• I was wondering why you deleted Mr. Fun in my posts.