Priest defrocked for blasphemous communications on social media

And for disobeying the hierarchy.

I expect this will get political, so let’s just start there.

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cat fight lol

Details of the reasoning not yet public, but apparently he was a huge MAGA head.

shouldn’t that be “huge MAGA lack-of-head”?

He seems pretty aligned with most catholics I see online, so this will be interesting.

For those who are curious what he did, from Lucy’s link (emphasis mine):

Note that it doesn’t specify that this is the reason he was dismissed. They are apparently not saying.

Also:

Yikes. That absolutely goes against [my understanding of] Catholic teaching and also jeopardizes the church’s 501c3 status. While it’s unlikely that would be revoked over a rogue priest’s Tweets, it sounds like he was making himself more of a liability than an asset.

It is perhaps worth noting that Joe Biden is Catholic.

As a pastor I am getting closer and closer to believing we just really shouldn’t even vote. Not sure it serves any purpose. I can submit to any authority. Jesus did. Want to make it illegal to worship? That’s fine. Arrest me, I will hopefully deserve it. Otherwise you do you, i’ll do me.

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I don’t follow. Who is “we”?

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So, worshipping false idols?

This path has dangers too, as when the lutheran church in germany rather infamously did too little to resist nazism. that attitude went all the way back to writings of martin luther on submitting to secular authorities.

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I hope he doesn’t worship Trump… sounds like he is more likely a single-issue pro-life voter. But who knows. :woman_shrugging:

Anyone acting as clergy. We definitely shouldn’t tell others who to vote for.

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You can definitely throw shade at bad character. I don’t know what the day to day was like in Germany but I certainly threw shade at Donald Trump’s character the last several years. No need to endorse anyone else to do that.

Also it’s quite clear to me that Hitler won’t be the last person to be like Hitler. It’s happened over and over and over again throughout human history. The only thing that is changing is the ability to impact more and more people when it happens. Humanity as a whole hasn’t learned anything from its past.

My take on politics as a Christian is that one side wants us to change our values to match the worlds values and one side wants to leverage our values for their own quest for power. I don’t think either are very worthy of support. Better to be a sojourner. Besides salvation it’s the lesson of the New Testament. Embrace your faith not the world. The world is corrupt.

What we can do is help ease suffering in our local communities and in the families and friends of those who come through our doors. There is a lot of impact one person can make in their community. There is virtually zero impact one person can make in their nation or in the world.

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And you can’t while representing the church and remain a 501c3 organization.

Privately of course you are entitled to a vote same as anyone else.

Has this ever been actually enforced?

The first headline I saw mentioned only his social media comments. Those were bad too, but then I read about the stunt with the aborted baby. :exams: :exams: Yeeeah, no. Absolute sacrilege against the altar. Good riddance to him.

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I suspect enforcement is highly lacking, although conceivably the new spending on the IRS could help with that.

The Urban Institute published (in 2011) some details about organizations losing their tax-exempt status, but it didn’t list the reason they lost it. I suspect a lot are due to not having the right cover sheet on the TPS report rather than actual wrongdoing. They said 275,000 organizations lost their status though, which seems like a lot. I wonder how many lost and regained.

To be fair, it wasn’t an altar at all… it “appeared to be” an altar, but was actually a table in an office.

Still, plenty of other stuff to merit dismissal even without the altar bit.

But also: How did he even get one?? (On second thought, maybe I don’t want to know.)