TwinCities.com: Conservative Bishop to Succeed Flynn

Revealing headline, eh? But is it not the duty of the media to warn the people of "dangers" ahead? Dangers, as in being graced by a Bishop who teaches, sanctifies, and governs as is his duty and in communion with the Holy Father?

Roman Catholic Bishop John Nienstedt of New Ulm, Minn., a theological conservative who has taken on Hollywood, stem-cell research and people who make too much noise in church, was named Tuesday to succeed Archbishop Harry Flynn.
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While Flynn and others lauded him as an able administrator and liturgist, some of his actions have rankled his own priests and parishioners in the diocese he has led since August 2001.

Rankled his own priests? Not if they were obedient and faithful...

As bishop in New Ulm, Nienstedt prohibited cohabitating couples from being married in Catholic churches. He barred female pastoral administrators from leading prayers at a semiannual leadership event. He once disciplined a priest for holding joint ecumenical services with a Lutheran congregation after the Catholic church had been destroyed by a tornado.

Kenneth Irrgang, a retired priest who clashed with Nienstedt when he was bishop in New Ulm, predicted that Nienstedt will meet resistance among the 654 active priests in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

"I expect disaster there. I don't think those priests are going to accept him," said Irrgang, who now lives in St. Cloud. "He's a micromanager. He has to control everything. He hews the line from the Vatican without any question whatsoever. He's not a very good people person."

"He hews the line from the Vatican without any question whatsoever." As our Lord made abundantly clear, "He who hears you, hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me." Some make it sound as if obedience to lawful ecclesiastical authority is so medieval. And others are, no doubt, setting the stage for confrontation. Which reminds me: I wonder if that obedient priest, Fr Robert Altier, obedient even in the face of difficulties with Abp. Flynn, will be released from his forced exile and allowed to resume his duties and fulfill his calling to proclaim the truth? Perhaps this is an answer to so many prayers...