This commentary is a response to a staff editorial titled “Church’s continued silence sending wrong message,” which ran in The Daily Cougar on Wednesday.
The Daily Cougar editorial board clearly has no idea what excommunication is, which is not surprising considering the laziness and sloppiness that characterizes so much journalism about the Catholic Church.
Excommunication is not a punishment for bad behavior, but a call to repentance. The church does not deny the sacraments to a confessed and repentant believer, and it is odd that a newspaper editorial board would presume to tell the church to whom it should give its sacraments.
Nobody knows whether this priest is receiving communion and it’s really none of our business. It is a private spiritual matter between him and his confessor and pastor.
When clerical misbehavior is alleged, the church is obligated to remove the priest from ministry so he is not a threat to parishioners and refer the issue to the proper authorities, and that is exactly what happened in this case.
If you don’t like the sentence, take it up with the prosecutor.
Rolando Garcia is a UH student and may be reached at [email protected]
Uh Rolando please shut your grotty trap and actually learn something about your own religion before you go running your trap again. Excommunication IS a punishment you idiot and is meant as a punishment in the eyes of the church. You are pretty much banned from participating in the church and yes you are banned from receiving the sacraments. So in the case of a priest/pastor/any man of the cloth YES this would be an appropriate PUNISHMENT in their case since it would prevent them from being able to perform their duties and keep them from holding an office/position in the church. However it wouldn’t be the best punishment seeing as they could still be pardoned and could then easily return to their ways.
That being the case they would be best to be defrocked so they couldn’t practice and participate as a priest in the church ever again. However to say the Daily Cougar is at fault for saying they should be excommunicated is pretty much idiotic since they were correct in saying that, it might not have been the most accurate term to use but it was still an applicable term to use nonetheless.
And finally people are pissed at the church BECAUSE they DIDN’T remove those priests from the ministry when they had their chance, it doesn’t take an atheist to figure out that if a priest is molesting children that he’s a bad man and should be removed from the church automatically for committing such horrible crimes. And yet they WEREN’T removed, rather they were just put into another parish to start over once again.