{"id":606,"date":"2008-05-03T08:47:24","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T08:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html"},"modified":"2008-05-03T08:47:24","modified_gmt":"2008-05-03T08:47:24","slug":"on-the-laicization-of-bishops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html","title":{"rendered":"On the laicization of bishops"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been a lot of discussion of this question here and there, not only related to the newly-elected president of Paraguay, but also in relation to those bishops who might have profoundly betrayed their office and call.
\nToday, John Allen has a really excellent\u00a0(or not – see Zadok’s comment below<\/em>) \u00a0overview of the question, using Lugo as a starting point, but gathering various opinions on the issue:<\/a><\/p>\n

If the Vatican felt free to laicize bishops, it would probably already have happened several times, particularly in cases where renegade bishops have illicitly ordained priests and other bishops, thereby creating the basis for a full-blown schism. First in line might well be Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian faith-healer and exorcist who has broken with Rome and ordained bishops as part of his \u201cMarried Priests Now!\u201d movement. From Rome\u2019s point of view, however, Milingo remains a bishop and hence his ordinations are technically valid, even if the Vatican has announced that it will never grant legal faculties to the men who have been ordained.
\nTo be sure, there are experts who take the contrary view, that a bishop could be laicized if the pope really wanted to do so.
\nSome point to canon 1405, for example, which gives the pope authority to judge bishops in penal cases. Given that laicization is provided for as a penalty in canon law, these canonists say, there\u2019s no reason in principle it couldn\u2019t be applied to a bishop, even if prudence and respect for the episcopal office counsel restraint. Others cite an 1862 rite published by Pope Benedict XIV for the \u201cdegradation of a bishop,\u201d which seems to involve the ritual casting out of a bishop from the episcopal state. All the symbols of office, such as the mitre and pallium, are removed, and the bishop\u2019s fingers and head are even ritually scraped with a knife to signify the removal of the anointing imparted in his ordination ceremony.
\nFor now, the relevant point is that there\u2019s an active theological and canonical debate inside Catholicism about the very possibility of laicizing a bishop. Saying \u201cno\u201d to Lugo, therefore, is not just about grinding axes or scoring political points, but also respecting the theological and canonical complexities.
\nTo be crystal clear, none of this is intended to suggest that the Vatican\u2019s recalcitrance is entirely innocent of political motives, or that there aren\u2019t good theological arguments for laicizing bishops. Those questions will be the object of much legitimate discussion for some time to come.
\nWhat the current fracas does illustrate, however, is that in trying to understand why the Church does what it does, it\u2019s incumbent upon observers to take seriously its own inner logic. Otherwise, important pieces of the picture will forever remain out of focus. Applied to Lugo\u2019s situation, the bottom line might well be: \u201cIt\u2019s the theology, stupid.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been a lot of discussion of this question here and there, not only related to the newly-elected president of Paraguay, but also in relation to those bishops who might have profoundly betrayed their office and call. Today, John Allen has a really excellent\u00a0(or not – see Zadok’s comment below) \u00a0overview of the question, using…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOn the laicization of bishops - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the laicization of bishops - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There’s been a lot of discussion of this question here and there, not only related to the newly-elected president of Paraguay, but also in relation to those bishops who might have profoundly betrayed their office and call. Today, John Allen has a really excellent\u00a0(or not – see Zadok’s comment below) \u00a0overview of the question, using…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-03T08:47:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"On the laicization of bishops - Via Media","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\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On the laicization of bishops - Via Media","og_description":"There’s been a lot of discussion of this question here and there, not only related to the newly-elected president of Paraguay, but also in relation to those bishops who might have profoundly betrayed their office and call. Today, John Allen has a really excellent\u00a0(or not – see Zadok’s comment below) \u00a0overview of the question, using…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-05-03T08:47:24+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html","name":"On the laicization of bishops - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-05-03T08:47:24+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-03T08:47:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/on-the-laicization-of-bishops.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On the laicization of bishops"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?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\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}