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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Excommunication ("sort of") of Fr. Roy Bourgeois by Canon Lawyer Fr. Tom Doyle

There is an excellent reflection by Fr. Tom Doyle on the excommunication ("sort of")of Fr. Roy Bourgeois in the current issue of ARCC Light.
http://arcc-catholic-rights.net/tom_doyle_on_bourgeois.htm

1 comment:

Mike said...

"The restriction of ordination to priesthood to males is clearly enshrined in Canon Law, but is it an article of faith? It has never been officially defined as an infallible teaching that only men can be validly ordained unless one buys into the very dubious and non-historically based theory of "creeping infallibility""

How this Canon Law "expert" can write this entire rubbish piece without once quoting Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is truly astonishing. His piece is more a rant against the Church and her leadership than it is a piece with any scholarly merit.

Your answer is right here: "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." (O.S.)

and

"This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith." (CDF responsum ad dubium)

Sorry, but wrong again.