Dr Ed Peters: Fr. Bozek should stop and think

Noted Canon Lawyer, Dr. Edward Peters, has updated his blog, not only to offer a perspective from a legal perspective according to ecclesiastical law, but to advise Fr. Bozek to reflect on a very grave matter.

Fair-minded readers of St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke’s December 16th letter declaring the excommunication of the St. Stanislaus Kostka parish leadership must conclude that the archbishop would rather have written about any of a hundred other topics during the last week leading up to Christmas. But once again, the lay board of the Polish personal parish—under interdict since February for obstructing the archbishop's authority to supervise the administration of the parish—has forced the archbishop’s hand, this time, by hiring a priest (himself already suspended for abandoning his pastoral post in the neighboring diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau) and announcing that he will celebrate Mass for them on Christmas Eve. That defiant act of schism (see 1983 CIC 751) won the lay board and priest they hired, Fr. Marek Bozek, excommunication under 1983 CIC 1364 § 1.
. . .
...what a pathetic way to mark one’s third anniversary of ordination: suspended by one bishop, excommunicated by a second.
. . .
...Fr. Bozek needs to know something here: contumacy for an excommunication imposed for an act of schism is itself punishable, this time, by penal dismissal from the clerical state (1983 CIC 1364 § 2). Moreover, once imposed, penal dismissal from the clergy—not being a censure (1983 CIC 1336 § 1, 5°)—is not reversible by what amounts to offering a sincere apology. Indeed, reinstatement of a “defrocked” priest is reserved to Rome (1983 CIC 293) and is so rare as to be non-existent.

Complete blog entry of Dr. Peters is here.

Dr Peters has provided great advice to those who will read his words...This unsolicited assistance is yet another work of mercy which should be considered thoughfully and prayerfully.