UPDATE 12-19-22: The situation with Fr. Frank Pavone continues to develop and will over the days and weeks ahead. I have tried to withhold judgment on the situation until the smoke clears a bit. I am trying to provide links and information as we analyze the whole situation. One thing we can be sure of, though is the terrible way this was presented, and the laicization took place.
Here’s in interesting article by Phil Lawle from 2011 which may provide a little more information and the backstory to this whole situation. https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/father-pavones-last-stand/https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/father-pavones-last-stand/
I am making no final judgments at this point, but watching and learning.
UPDATE 12-18-22: Fr. Frank Pavone responds to his removal from priesthood.
Looks like this will be an ongoing saga. May God bless and help him.
https://www.priestsforlife.org/library/9624-fr-frank-comments-on-latest-developments
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We love and trust you Fr. Frank.
“They (the Vatican) indicated to the bishop that he could not let me do the work full time.” But he could have continued to do the work part time.
“Some call my refusal to turn away from that work ‘disobedience’.” Refusing a lawful order is disobedience. The decision to not allow Father Pavone to continue pro-life work full time may or may not have been the best course of action for the Vatican to take, but the decision was a lawful one.
When young Father Fulton Sheen, after 5 years training to be a college professor at Louvain, he was assigned as an assistant pastor in a poor parish. He threw himself into the work of assistant pastor. After a year, his bishop told him he was sending him to Catholic University, as he had promised its president. When Father Sheen asked the bishop why he hadn’t sent him there immediately, the bishop said: “After all your success, I wanted to see if you would obey. Now run along; you have my blessing.”
When Archbishop Sheen told that to a group of priests in Dublin, in 1977, he also told them that if he hadn’t been obedient to his bishop so many decades earlier, he would not have been speaking to them that day.
“The decision to not allow Father Pavone to continue pro-life work full time may or may not have been the best course of action for the Vatican to take, but the decision was a lawful one.”
“May” have been the best course of action? We have a President, Congress, and many states that are working harder than ever to promote abortion here and around the world, and the Vatican decides that removing the head of one the largest and most effective pro-life organizations, is a good thing to do.
If Father Pavone really had an obedience problem, don’t you think it should have been addressed earlier; he has been a priest for 34 years. To laicize him now is ludicrous!
The Vatican’s problem is that Father Pavone hasn’t been shy about pointing out the evilness of their favorite “Catholics”: Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, et al. Additionally, traditional Catholics whom Bergoglio hates, are very pro-life and tend to like Father Pavone. So this, like banning the Tridentine Mass, is another way for Jorge to thumb his nose at people he doesn’t like.
And yet the openly pro-homosexual Jesuit, Fr. James Martin, remains a priest with no apparent admonitions from our Jesuit Pope?
Well, I’m one faithful, life-long Catholic who is losing his confidence in the church’s hierarchy.
STEVE RAY HERE: I agree with you completely regarding the uneven actions of the Papacy today with “Fr.” James Martin JS a good example. The choice of cardinals and a whole host of other issues. But the Church has stood strong for 2,000 years and will continue despite a history of often inferior popes in many regards. we are certainly in such a low point now.
YOu may want to watch my video “How Does a JP II Catholic Survive in a Pope Francis World” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu2EfKUxCW8
Also a good quote from David Bonagura in his book “Staying with the Church”:
“The Church’s structures, offices, and ruling authorities are necessary to keep Christ present in the world, but his presence transcends their limitations – including the moral failures of his own vicars. Christ, being God, knew his vicars would fail him, as he knew St. Peter would.” In other words, the Barque of Peter sails on. Or, as Hilaire Belloc so perfectly concluded:
The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine – but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”
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