A Jesuit priest has abandoned the faith (insert joke: “So what’s new?”) and is setting up a new church in Toledo, Ohio, for “people disenfranchised by the Roman Catholic Church.” Operating under the auspices of the “progressive” and schismatic Reformed Catholic Church, the new parish will strike out in new daring directions by becoming indistinguishable from most Episcopalian churches today, ordaining women, blessing homosexuality and gay marriages, allowing divorce and re-marriage, so on and et cetera.
Yawn, same baloney, different day. I’d be worried if I wasn’t positive that this Piskie Junior(TM) clone wouldn’t end up as barren and empty as Bishopess Katharine Jeffrts-Schori’s church will be after the Anglican Communion abandons them and they chase off all the practicing Christians into communion with African and Asian dioceses.
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I’m not convinced that this event deserves any attention.
From what I can find on Google, the guy has been in this denomination for some time, conducting services in a borrowed or rented chapel near Raleigh, NC, just as he’s doing in Ohio. (Click on “cached text” if that page doesn’t display properly.)
Therefore Fr. Heckman’s status as a schismatic/heretic/whatever is not news.
One can’t even assume (without further proof) that he was ever a Catholic priest or a member of the real Society of Jesus, since this denomination claims to have its own bishop and its own Jesuit order.
The only real news here may be that this tiny gay-oriented sect closed its (failed?) activities in NC, moved the clergyman to Toledo, and sent out a press release to recruit a congregation.