Recall the situation of Fr. Paul Weinberger in Dallas, the pastor being removed from his parish in apparent violation of canon law? His is the parish about which the diocesan spokesman said that the use of Latin in the post-Vatican II form of the Mass can be banned by the bishop (which isn’t true.) A layman in Dallas spoke to that spokesman, Deacon Bronson Havard, and then followed up in a letter, which is excerpted here:
To the extent you object to my characterization of Fr. Paul as a ‘holy priest’, I would say you have your opinion and I have mine. However, when you tell me that “I know several priests who did just as much busy work and they turned out to be pedophiles,” let me say you are out of line. For a Deacon like yourself , to indirectly connect Fr. Paul and the abomination of pedophilia in the same sentence, is a insult to Fr. Paul. You owe Fr. Paul an apology.
Yes, this is thirdhand, but I have no reason to doubt the source. If Havard truly did make the connection to pedophilia is offensive, and nearly as bizarre is his contradiction of the correspondent’s asserton that Fr. Paul is holy. Can you imagine any circumstance where a diocesan spokesman would deny that one of the priests of the diocese is holy? Would that Gandalf were here to cast out Wormtongue.
And here is Havard’s thoughts on the new generation of priests. He doesn’t like their orthodoxy or their belief that there is an ontological change through the conferring of ordination. Sorry, Bronson, but that’s the teaching of the Church. Even you, good deacon, received an indelible mark of ordination, just as all Christians receive a similar mark at baptism and all Catholics receive it at confirmation.
