{"id":2119,"date":"2010-04-13T17:11:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T17:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal.php"},"modified":"2010-04-13T17:11:59","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T17:11:59","slug":"bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal","title":{"rendered":"Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope&#8217;s Resignation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. (RNS) Less than 24 hours after calling for Pope Benedict XVI to step down, a Massachusetts priest has been rebuked by his local bishop.<br \/>\nA longtime critic of how the church has handled the sexual abuse crisis, the Rev. James J. Scahill delivered four sermons over the weekend suggesting that the 82-year old pope should take greater responsibility for solving the church&#8217;s clergy abuse problems or resign.<br \/>\nThe sermons, delivered from the pulpit at St. Michael&#8217;s Catholic Church, made Scahill one of the first priests in the nation to call for the pope&#8217;s departure.<br \/>\nIn a response issued Monday (April 12), Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell of Springfield faulted Scahill for raising the issue on a Sunday meant to foster reconciliation and forgiveness in the church.<br \/>\n&#8220;There is a sad irony in that Father Scahill&#8217;s remarks were delivered on Divine Mercy Sunday,&#8221; said McDonnell, adding the church has expressed &#8220;tremendous sorrow, sadness and shame&#8221; about clergy abuse cases.<br \/>\n&#8220;The church leadership knows how difficult it is for those who have suffered abuse at the hands of clergy who should have been signs of God&#8217;s love rather than inflictors of pain,&#8221; the bishop said.<br \/>\nScahill had criticized the church&#8217;s handling of clergy abuse cases, citing questions about the pope&#8217;s own role in overseeing abuse investigations as a Vatican official for nearly 25 years before his 2005 election.<br \/>\n&#8220;There were standing ovations at two Masses, and applause at the others&#8221; said Scahill, who first spoke out when the sexual abuse scandal erupted in the U.S. church in 2002.<br \/>\nOne parishioner &#8220;booed very boisterously and called me a heretic,&#8221; Scahill added.<br \/>\nThe priest chose the weekend to call for pope&#8217;s resignation because it was the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, also known as &#8220;Doubting Thomas&#8221; for his initial skepticism about Jesus&#8217; resurrection.<br \/>\n&#8220;I think a lot of laypeople have strong doubts as to the veracity of our church leaders, in terms of what was known, for how long and by whom&#8221; Scahill said.<br \/>\n<em>&#8212; Jack Flynn \/ The Republican<br \/>\nCopyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. (RNS) Less than 24 hours after calling for Pope Benedict XVI to step down, a Massachusetts priest has been rebuked by his local bishop. A longtime critic of how the church has handled the sexual abuse crisis, the Rev. James J. Scahill delivered four sermons over the weekend suggesting that the 82-year&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope&#039;s Resignation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope&#039;s Resignation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. (RNS) Less than 24 hours after calling for Pope Benedict XVI to step down, a Massachusetts priest has been rebuked by his local bishop. A longtime critic of how the church has handled the sexual abuse crisis, the Rev. James J. Scahill delivered four sermons over the weekend suggesting that the 82-year&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-13T17:11:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mconsoli\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope's Resignation","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope's Resignation","og_description":"EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. (RNS) Less than 24 hours after calling for Pope Benedict XVI to step down, a Massachusetts priest has been rebuked by his local bishop. A longtime critic of how the church has handled the sexual abuse crisis, the Rev. James J. Scahill delivered four sermons over the weekend suggesting that the 82-year&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-04-13T17:11:59+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal","name":"Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope's Resignation","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-13T17:11:59+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-13T17:11:59+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishops-rebukes-priest-for-cal#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bishops Rebukes Priest for Calling for Pope&#8217;s Resignation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}