What About Fr Z?

Bishop of Madison, WI Donald Hying appears to be moderate-to-conservative based on his public record, which includes public denunciation of rioters who desecrated religious statues during the 2020 riots, as well as leading opposition to discriminatory COVID limits on church attendance by Madison civil authorities. The photo above is from a post at The Hermeneutic of Continuity congratulatiing Bp Hying on his appointment as Bishop of Madison and noting that "Fr Zuhlsdorf is upbeat and positive about this news."

As was widely published,

A popular traditionalist priest who performed live-streamed exorcisms falsely alleging widespread election fraud will no longer serve in ministry in the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin.

A statement sent to the priests of the diocese on Jan. 14 said Fr. John Zuhlsdorf will relocate to "pursue other opportunities" and noted it was a mutual decision reached between Zuhlsdorf and Madison's Bishop Donald Hying.

. . . Although Zuhlsdorf initially defended himself saying he received permission from the bishop, the bishop publicly corrected him, issuing a statement to clarify that his permission for the exorcism rite was "for the intention of alleviation from the scourge of the coronavirus pandemic" and not for "partisan political activity."

. . . Without having priestly faculties in the Madison Diocese, according to the church's Code of Canon Law, he will now need to receive the permission of another bishop to continue his work elsewhere.

As far as I can determine, this hasn't taken place, and although Fr Z continues his blog -- when I checked yesterday, his activity appears to have increased markedly -- he hasn't received faculties from another bishop. It may not be coincidental that in a post yesterday, ASK FATHER: “Do you know a time with blessed bishops?”

Consider that the very first collegial act of the entire Body of Bishops was to abandon the Lord. There were only Twelve, but they all abandoned Him. . . . One 12th of all the Bishops in the world (at the time) sold the Lord for 30 pieces of silver.

That’s not a great foundation and history has shown time and again that bishops can be and often are rotten to the core. It has ever been so, it is now, and shall be until the Lord returns.

Fr Z is not high on bishops at the moment. On the other hand, I'm not ready to revert to my Calvinist roots. Instead, I come back to Lumen Gentium:

For the discharging of such great duties, the apostles were enriched by Christ with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and they passed on this spiritual gift to their helpers by the imposition of hands, and it has been transmitted down to us in Episcopal consecration. And the Sacred Council teaches that by Episcopal consecration the fullness of the sacrament of Orders is conferred, that fullness of power, namely, which both in the Church's liturgical practice and in the language of the Fathers of the Church is called the high priesthood, the supreme power of the sacred ministry. But Episcopal consecration, together with the office of sanctifying, also confers the office of teaching and of governing, which, however, of its very nature, can be exercised only in hierarchical communion with the head and the members of the college.

Lumen Gentium ephasizes the need for unity among the bishops. I think this is something Abp Gómez has been publicly working for as head of the USCCB, and as I've said elsewhere, the bishops are steadily working to reclaim the public narrative they'd lost in the 1960s.

But one factor is the question, which the pope has also raised, of freelance internet priests. Thus I saw another recent disciplinary action by another Wisconsin bishop:

Fr. James Altman has been removed from ministry after Bishop William Callahan of La Crosse sought privately to correct the priest for his inflammatory, though in some circles popular, commentary on social media.

“The obligation of a bishop is to ensure that all who serve the faithful are able to do so while unifying and building the Body of Christ,” the La Crosse diocese said July 9. “Bishop William Patrick Callahan, in accordance with the norms of canon law, has issued a decree for the removal of Fr. James Altman as pastor of St. James the Less Parish.”

. . . Fr. Altman stirred controversy for numerous public statements he made in 2020 and 2021 on politics, racism, feminism, and the coronavirus pandemic. In viral video that was posted online Aug. 20, 2020, Fr. Altman said that no Catholic can be a Democrat, because of the party leadership’s support for abortion.

Now, of course, it appears that the US bishops are in fact moving toward a unified statement on Catholic politicians who support abortion, and I would guess that both Bps Hying and Callahan would be among the large majority currently in support of it. The problem is that internet priests like Frs Zuhsdorf and Altman are getting out in front of the bishops, and especially when they make extreme or blatantly political statements, they make unity harder to achieve.

I started reading the Vatican II constitutions on Bp Barron's recommendation. I've found them extremely helpful in understanding what's going on right now, and I recommend them highly. At the moment, I'm in the middle of Sacrosanctum Concilium.