We go to Christopher in Tennessee, Christopher you are on with Jimmy Akin,
what's your question? Hey guys, thanks for taking my call. So my
question is, how do I deal with a priest that is borderline Sedevacantist?
I say "borderline" because he doesn't outright say that the chair is vacant.
But he does spend time during his homilies to not only criticize the Pope
but also his writings, most recently Amoris Laetitia--which, by
the way, thank you guys for your write-up on that on the Catholic Answers website,
that was immensely helpful to me, at least as far as being able to
understand what's going on there. But back to this predicament: Father has an
interesting theory that I won't go into here, but basically boils down to, he
doesn't know who the valid Pope is--is what he says--but out of an
abundance of caution he still says "Francis" during the prayers of the
faithful, so it's irksome, to say the least. And a few of us--parishioners, that
is--tried to talk to him about it and he, for lack of better terms, pulls rank on
us saying that we're just not as studied on the current situation as he is. I mean,
I get that he's not an Ultramontanist, that's fine, I can dig that.
But if he's referring to the Pope by his given name instead of his Papal name, and
criticizing him during Mass--and in his podcast, because he's hip on technology--
is there anything that we as laypeople can do about it if we feel that it's
inappropriate for him to do so, comma, is it appropriate for him to do so? Okay, so you,
let me make sure of something now. You've already talked to him personally, right?
Yes. Okay. One thing, I'll just mention this as just a small matter, I wouldn't I
wouldn't sweat over the fact that he sometimes refers to the Pope by his
given name. That can sound a little unusual to American ears, but it's
actually quite common in Europe. If you read, like, famous Vaticanistas,
you know, journalists who make a study of the Vatican, like Sandro
Magister and people like that who are quite Orthodox, they will regularly talk about,
you know, Papa, or not just him, but for a long time
they'll say, you know, like, Papa Wojtyla. That would be John Paul II. Or Papa Ratzinger.
Or Papa Bergoglio now. So that's actually not that uncommon. Now, if he was
calling him George, well, okay, that's a little familiar for His Holiness. But
I probably wouldn't worry too much about that. The thing that concerns me is
that this guy is saying he's not sure who the Pope is. And that's a serious
thing, and it's a very problematic thing for a priest to say in an ordinary
parish setting. I assume that you're going to an ordinary diocesan parish
and, you know, not like some kind of independent chapel. Is that correct,
Christopher? That's correct. Yeah, so this is like totally over the line, for a
priest who has the care of souls in a parish, to be publicly doubting who the
Pope is. That's just way over the line. And so you've tried talking to
him already on your own, and I would, I'd probably go back to him and
say, "Look, this is a really unreasonable sentiment to be expressing to the
faithful, because it's going to scandalize them, and not just in
the sense of outraging them, but tempting them towards the sin of schism." And--because
if Father's expressing these doubts, then that's going to stir up doubts on their
part. And that could lead people into schism, which is a grave sin and a
canonical crime. And so for him to be doing that is just completely pastorally
irresponsible. And I'd be frank with him and say, "You know, if you have doubts that
are like this, and you're expressing them in public, that's
something I think you need to have a talk with the bishop about. And so if, you
know, I feel the need to let the bishop know about this. I mean, I tried talking
to you individually--" and by the way, that's something I always recommend. You
never start by going behind somebody's back. You start the way our Lord said to
in Matthew 18, which is talking to the person directly. But if you don't get
the problem resolved by talking to the person directly, then it can be necessary
to escalate, and in this case, where you have a priest publicly doubting in front
of the faithful whether the Pope is the Pope, that's the kind of thing that you
need to escalate over. And so I'd talk to him once more and say, "I think this needs
to be brought to the attention of the bishop, and I want to let you know that
as a courtesy to you, but this is a very serious matter and I feel I need to do
that." Okay. And is it appropriate to try and, you know--let me just say I've
never tried to contact the bishop directly before, is it more
appropriate to, like, write an anonymous letter? No. Do not-- It's some sort of like--
Do not write anonymous letters to the bishop, that doesn't do anybody any good,
you need to take responsibility for what you're doing. When a bishop sees an
anonymous letter it decreases the credibility of it, because the person who
wrote it didn't have the courage to put their name to it. If--the more you--for all
the bishop knows, it could be misreporting something just based on a
personal rivalry, someone has it in for the priest, and--or just doesn't like him
and wants to do him harm by making up a story. What I would do is, I'd write the
bishop a letter, I'd write it directly to the bishop with the bishop's name on it,
he will see it. And say, you know, "Father so-and-so has said this on this occasion,"
supply dates and exact quotations if you can, maybe from his podcast, if he said
this stuff in his podcast. Point to Bishop to where he can listen to the
podcast and which episodes to listen to and he can hear it for himself,
and then, you know, ask that, you know, you can say, "This is obviously a
very serious matter for a priest who has pastoral care of the faithful to be
expressing these sentiments in public, and I wanted to call it to your
attention, Respectfully submitted," and sign your name Gotcha, thanks. Thank you
Christopher.