Miami priest joins Episcopal church

[hedgehog]

A Catholic priest photographed frolicking with a woman on a Florida beach announced Thursday he had joined the Episcopal Church to pursue the priesthood in a faith that allows married clergy.

The charismatic 40-year-old is a well-known religious leader in Miami who dispensed relationship advice on Spanish-language television shows, church radio programs and newspaper columns.

He was relieved of his duties at St. Francis de Sales parish in Miami Beach earlier this month after an entertainment magazine published photos of him in swim trunks, snuggling and kissing a woman on the sands of a beach in Florida.

Cutie later said he had fallen in love with the woman and broken his vow of celibacy. He apologized for his behavior, but told a television network, "I didn't stop being a man just because I put on a cassock. There are trousers under this cassock."



http://ncronline.org/news/people/miami-priest-joins-episcopal-church

[rug]

1. I'd be less skeptical if he joined the Episcopal Church first.

[hedgehog]

2. I don't know much about this man, but I wouldn't be surprised

if his vocation was more his parents' than his own. He may never have had a real choice about entering the priesthood. I hope things work out for him and his wife.

[rug]

3. Could be. He entered the seminary at 18.

[kwassa]

4. and the Catholic church can't find enough priests, and the Episcopals have too many ...

though most Episcopal dioceses have have women and/or openly gay priests.

[hedgehog]

5. There are some really nasty things being said about the Episcopal

Church on some blogs today. My favorite? "He is leaving the Church of commandments for the church of anything goes. " What does "anything goes" mean? "women priests, gay bishops and same-sex unions, a tolerance for abortion, artificial contraception and divorce with remarriage." (Actually, I think while the Episcopal teaching* is more lenient than the Roman Catholic Church teaches, it matches what most American Catholics believe.) Somehow I think a lot of Catholics have lost sight of the Church as a means of sharing God's love with the world and turned it into a prefect of discipline!

What I can't find is any trace of what Father Cutie said before this scandal hit. I'm curious if he toed the party line and condemned the divorced or gays in loving relationships. Even if he did, he wouldn't be the first Christian moralist humbled by what life brings. C.S. Lewis was adamantly against divorce, then he fell in love with a divorcee. God has a real sense of humor sometimes.





*While the Episcopal Church recognizes a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, the church condones abortion only in cases of rape or incest, cases in which a mother's physical or mental health is at risk or cases involving fetal abnormalities. The church forbids "abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection or any reason of mere convenience."
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=351

[kwassa]

6. I've never heard that supposed Episcopal Church position on abortion

ANYWHERE.

The church, as I have experienced, is far, far more liberal in it's outlook, though parts of the church are battling it out. A noisy conservative minority is attempting a schism and a few other things ...

[hedgehog]

7. I have no idea of the relative numbers, but while the Anglican

communion outside the US is looking in askance at the gay friendly policy, the US Episcopal Church is reportedly expelling people who are not gay friendly.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/crisis-anglicanism

Despite what McBrian implies in his blog, it's not a simple matter of voting something up or down. The Episcopals have decided (rightly, IMO) that the GLBT community is entitled to full membership in the Christian Church. How does one go about delaying simple justice for the few because of the prejudices of the many?

[kwassa]

9. No, we aren't expelling anybody.

We can't expel anyone, it is a democratically-run church that is literally run like the US government, with two bodies of representatives. No one has made any attempt to expel anyone, either.

What we have are a small number of conservative churches trying to leave the US church, yet keep their property, though it is not owned by them but by the national US church itself. The Anglican communion is organized geographically, yet these breakaway churches now claim to align themselves with offshore provinces in other countries. This has resulted in a number of property lawsuits in various state courts, where such issues are decided.

The pivotal offense was raising an openly gay priest to the role of Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 (elected by his constituency) and approved and ratified at the General Convention. This had a giant impact around the world in more conservative Anglicans jurisdictions.

This article you reference is full of shit, by the way. The Anglican Communion Institute is one of the prime offenders in this battle, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury is not a player at all by anyone's definition. The current ABC dithers around and does nothing, but then the Communion itself is a voluntary association, and no one can make anyone do anything. The conservatives don't agree with each other, and the essential character of this church seems that there are many loose cannons about.

The Episcopal Church is standing up for gay rights. That is the entire problem. The most numerous number of Anglicans are now in Africa, a byproduct of colonialism, and some of these African Archbishops are extremely homophobic, and leading the attack on the US. We don't care very much.

If all the US conservatives leave, this will represent 5% to 7% of the US church. That is all. Legally, they have no foot to stand on and keep losing court cases on the property.

It is an epic soap opera that is attenuated by the slow way in which all decisions are made, and by the lengthy US court processes.

We will not lose, though.

I can turn you on to a variety of more valid websites if you are interested enough, but unless you are Episcopal, you probably won't care enough!

The conservative American churches, by the way, have lost in court already on the state Supreme Court level in California and New York already

[hedgehog]

11. I'm glad to see your response. Usually McBrian has something worthwhile to say,

but this entire article seemed off-base and out of character! Somehow he forgot all about the Society of Pius X when he wrote this.


As I was coming home from Mass yesterday with my husband, I told him I'm not sure at all where I'll be worshiping in a year. The diocese has shuttered my parish and sent a reactionary to run the new combined parish. (This man is unique in that he has managed to enrage everyone from me to someone who goes to Latin Masses and everyone in between!)

Right now my husband and I are driving 20 miles south to another parish. The general atmosphere is good, but it is a huge suburban parish and a different community. When I know for sure my parish is gone ( there is an appeal in to Rome and there is a new bishop), I suspect we'll be checking the local Episcopal congregation.

[kwassa]

10. and one more thing

This is unfettered paranoid fantasy, without a shred of truth. This would do Dick Cheney proud. Carey is delusional.

He charged that "a system of Prince Bishops has arisen who appear to have unfettered control over their (rapidly diminishing) flocks, from which all who dissent from the regnant liberalism are being driven out."

Bishops are elected here, unlike many other countries, have no special powers without the approval of diocesan members, the flocks are slowly diminishing like all the mainline denominations, and there is ZERO attempt to muzzle anyone. It is free speech all the way.

The conservatives are just upset because they are losing. That's all.

"Prince Bishops". That is hilarious.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. And even though flocks are slowly diminishing

there are also individual parishes that are growing.

Furthermore, much of the decrease comes from the fact that the Episcopal Church is one of the denominations most friendly to single and GLBT people. Naturally, these groups are less likely to replace themselves than members of denominations that freeze out singles, outright ban GLBT people, and encourage all the married couples to have large numbers of children.

Another factor is that the mainline denominations keep honest records. They have procedures for determining whether someone is active or not, and inactive members are removed from the rolls. In the Episcopal Church, there is no incentive to inflate membership figures, because larger parishes have to pay their priests more.

Some of the fundamentalist and evangelical megachurches, being subject to oversight by no one, inflate their membership roles by counting everyone who ever joined.

[47of74]

8. I've thought from time to time of joining

The only thing that has held me back from doing so is the wonderful parish that I'm part of now. If it wasn't for that I would have probably joined another faith - such as the Episcopal Church - and it would've been on the grounds that I hadn't left the church, the church left me.

[hedgehog]

12. Maybe this should be an entire new thread, but is it possible that

this is what Eucumenicism really looks like? I'm sure that back in 1964, a lot of Catholics expected (without really thinking it through) that if the Catholic Church got rid of Latin and cut back on Mary and the Saints, all the Protestants would come back to Rome. Instead we see hardliners of all traditions hunkering down while the "liberals" (an inaccurate term , IMO) from many faith traditions coming together into something new. Bishops all over the country are shutting down Catholic parishes in a desperate attempt to freeze the role of priests as in control of everything. This tactic might have worked in 1959. In 2009, some people go reluctantly to the new parish, some people drop out completely and some are finding other faith communities.


Going back to the OP, it looks to me like the bishop expected Father Cutie to denounce his beloved, commit public penance and meekly come back into line. Given that Father Cutie was apparently associated with the conservative since he appeared on ETWN, that was a reasonable expectation. Instead it appears that Father Cutie looked around and realized that he could serve as a priest and love the person God meant him to love. More and more Catholics are looking around and realizing that they can serve God just fine without Rome.