The Catholic Bishop of Lexington says a Kentucky priest is ex-communicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
Father Ken Waibel has advertised… he’ll say mass this Sunday in Lexington… at a new church called St. Mychal the Martyr. The church is affiliated with the Orthodox Catholic Church of America…. which is ‘not’ connected in any-way to the Roman Catholic Church.
Excommunication means Waibel has separated himself from the church… and is not a priest in good standing.
He says Sunday’s service will be similar to a Roman Catholic mass, and he welcomes all people.
Waibel has spent the last year on an involuntary leave of absence… after pleading guilty last year… to exposing himself in a park.
[Full Story]
If he appears in a black rain coat with a stole, I would advise leaving. I am surprised though that the Orthodox Church of America would allow him to be affiliated with them.
2 comments
I don’t think this is the OCA, rather the Orthodox Catholic Church, which is probably an Old Catholic/Independent Catholic church. Often these churches are fully into the anything goes school of doctrine.
Actually, The Orthodox Catholic Church of America is indeed an independent Catholic denomination (pope-free, so to speak), and has been around since the late 19th Century, so it hasn’t exactly srpung up overnight. It encourages a very traditional liturgy combined with a very liberal theology (but then the greatest liberal that ever lived was nailed to a cross because the conservatives of his day didn’t like him hanging out with lepers, stopping people from carrying out “God’s Will” thru the Levitical dictate of stoning, and preaching that it was wrong to hoard wealth). Mychal Judge, according to everything I’ve ever heard about him, is no doubt delighted that this denomination has declared him a saint (something that it is VERY unlikely the Roman Church will do for a very long time, given that he was an openly gay priest). As for Ft. Waibel, he is of course human and made a mistake some years ago of impropriety, but at least he didn’t molest a couple of dozen children as so many Roman priests have done over the last hundred years or so.