THE Catholic Bishop of Toowoomba, William Morris, has been effectively sacked by Pope Benedict XVI over doctrinal disobedience for his support for ordaining women priests and other liberal reform.
In a highly unusual move, Bishop Morris complained in a letter to his followers that he was leaving unwillingly and claimed he had been denied natural justice.
The developments have led to an incipient revolt among at least some sections of the church.
In the letter read out to all congregations in the diocese at weekend masses, pre-empting a Vatican announcement tonight, Bishop Morris, 67, said he had taken early retirement because “it has been determined by Pope Benedict that the diocese would be better served by the leadership of a new bishop”.
It is understood that one of Brisbane’s auxiliary bishops will step into the diocese temporarily as administrator until a new bishop is appointed. Bishops normally do not retire until at least 75.
The usual suspects including those in the diocese are shocked at this action, though they didn’t seem that way over the bishops previous letter.
The bishop’s letter shows things had reached a stalemate after he had been talking to the Vatican for five years.”
In his letter, Bishop Morris said the Vatican’s decision was sparked by complaints to Rome about an Advent letter he wrote in 2006. In that letter, he argued that with an ageing clergy the church should be open to all eventualities, including ordaining women, ordaining married men, welcoming back former priests and recognising the validity of Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church orders.
Yes another bishop with a vocation to the papacy.
In contrast to some other provincial dioceses, the priest shortage has been exacerbated by Toowoomba’s appalling record over recent years in attracting virtually no new vocations.
The dearth of vocations in a diocese is almost an infallible indicator of a bishop’s orthodoxy. In fact you could almost measure a bishops heterodoxy using a ratio of priests and pastoral associates. It did not take me long to verify that this was a diocese big on pastoral associates and an extreme lack of priests. Of course there are many factors for the priest shortage but it does seem that in heterodox diocese such as Bishop Morris and Bishop Clarke of Rochester that they seem to create a priest shortage to push reasons to use other than celibate men as priests.
Ironically a lay group might have been partly responsible concerning this forced retirement.
This is the third bishop that we know of who was dismissed this year by the Pope. This is a serious action that no doubt was made as a last straw because removing a bishop from a diocese is about as serious as you get. It’s not like replacing a CEO, it’s more like removing a father from a home. Unfortunately that indeed is required at times.
9 comments
Your comment about Priests and Pastoral Associates strikes close to home where I live.
As ever, I love your writing. Especially because you’ve used the word dearth. That’s just cool.
As a pastoral associate of many years, who has done what I can to encourage priestly vocations (not without some success) I find your comment deeply offensive. Vocations and charisms in the church are not in some sort of war with each other. They are all meant to build up the Body of Christ. I suggest that you take a good long look at 1 Corinthians 12
As a pastoral associate in my third decade of ministry, who has tried to encourage all sorts of vocations, including priestly (with some success), I find this deeply offensive.
The ministries and charisms in the church are not in some sort of war with each other. We are all called to build up the Body of Christ with our own gifts and talents. I would urge a careful re-reading of 1 Corinthians 12.
I whether Deacons to Priests ratio has any relevance. I know of no priests in our Diocese who have openly challenged the basic historicity of the bible or or who have openly advocated for the ordination of female Deacons or who have openly treated Magisterial teaching with contempt.
I cannot say the same for Deacons.
Getting back to the original topic, it appears that one of the people involved in the Apostolic Visitation leading up to this unusual move was….
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/306302
Archbishop Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, Colorado
Check out the laundry list of duties attributed to one of our pastoral associates in Rochester: http://cleansingfiredor.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/barbara-bio.png
Even worse than the multitude of lay pastoral associates in the Diocese of Rochester is the large number of lay “pastoral administrators.” These people direct the pastoral care of their respective parishes contrary to the directives found in Ecclesiae de Mysterio, leaving the priest with little more to do than perform sacramental duties (and oftentimes, these admins encroach on that as well). Lay administrators in Rochester don the alb at Mass, sit alongside the presider in the sanctuary, take an active role in the liturgy by delivering various commentaries, preach the homily after a 30 second introduction from the priest (Bishop Clark calls this the dialogue homily and considers these lay reflections to be legal, going so far as to grant laypersons the title “Authorized Lay Preacher”), lead Communion Services despite the ample availability of deacons, and sometimes carry out the preliminaries at Baptisms.
We currently have 16 non-priest pastoral administrators in Rochester. Of these, 3 are deacons, 2 are laymen, 5 are women religious, and 6 are laywomen. Don’t think these 16 are running just 16 parishes… They are often in charge of multiple churches clustered together or merged into a single canonical parish. Sr. Joan Sobala, a women’s ordination conference pioneer, runs 2 parishes; Sr. Karen Dietz runs 3; Irene Goodwin runs 3; etc. etc.
And, surprise surprise, the Diocese of Rochester has ordained one priest per year (and sometimes none) over the past two decades. Were it not for a former Protestant minister receiving permission from the Holy Father to become a Catholic priest this June, we would be entering the second of three straight years of ZERO priestly ordinations in Rochester. The diocese has projected that the number of active priests will fall to approximately 60 by 2020. To gain perspective, we had 540 priests in 1976, and 334 of these were diocesan.
By their fruit you will know them.
Jeff, even if we have a correlation you may draw between pastoral associates and heterodoxy, the causal link may run in either direction. I don’t think I’m the only one who has a tendency to confuse symptoms with root causes.
When Pope Benedict starts removing bishops who enabled the clerical sex-abuse crisis, wake me up.