Defrocked Catholic priest Frank Pavone, one of the most prominent pro-life activists in the U.S., predicted that the dispute with his superiors that led to his dismissal as a cleric last week will likely end with his excommunication from the church.
The Vatican informed U.S. bishops in a letter last week that the American priest had been dismissed, with “no possibility of appeal” for “blasphemous communications on social media” and for disobeying his bishop.
That’s probably just the beginning, Mr. Pavone told The Washington Times last Thursday.
“They are going to send me, at some point in the future, a decree of excommunication altogether — and they didn’t excommunicate me, they just told me I can’t function as a priest — they will excommunicate me and not because of anything I’m going to do,” Mr. Pavone said. “They will make up an excuse, they will find an excuse.”
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Pavone, 63, the national director of Priests for Life, a group of clerics dedicated to supporting the pro-life movement, had been investigated by the diocese of Amarillo, Texas — his most recent assignment — for having placed an aborted fetus on an altar and posting a video of it on two social media sites in 2016.
Mr. Pavone later apologized and explained that the fetus was displayed on an office table occasionally used in the Mass, but it was not a consecrated altar.
Mr. Pavone indicated to The Washington Times that he’s no longer acting as a priest, even if vestiges of his years as a cleric remain. He is still identified as a priest, for example, on the website for Priests for Life, the pro-life group that he serves as national director.
“They’ll use that as an excuse, but no, I don’t I don’t intend to fool people,” Mr. Pavone said.
He no longer celebrates a daily broadcast Mass, adding, “I haven’t been doing that since I have learned of this decision, even though I still haven’t been given any specific instructions.”
Mr. Pavone said he was not hearing confessions or performing any of “the other sacraments … because it’s not part of the specific work that I do. I don’t intend to function in those ministerial roles if the church is saying, you know, you don’t have a home here anymore.”
Asked if he continued to wear a clerical collar, he again said he had not been given “any instructions about that.” He compared it to “somebody [who has] been happily married for 34 years and someone tells them out of the blue, ‘Hey, you’re not married anymore.’ I asked them, ‘How long is it going to take you to take your ring off and stop calling the other person your spouse?’”
Mr. Pavone answered his rhetorical question by saying such a change might “take a few days, maybe a few weeks — maybe you’ll never do that.”
He then said, “Ultimately, I don’t care how I’m dressed, I don’t care what I’m called. What I care about is I want people to understand what abortion is, and I want it to stop.”
Details about what Mr. Pavone specifically did to be dismissed from his “clerical state” are scarce. On Dec. 13, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s representative in Washington, wrote to the nation’s Catholic bishops that Mr. Pavone had been removed by the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy in “a Supreme Decision admitting of no possibility of appeal.”
An accompanying statement said Mr. Pavone had been “found guilty in canonical proceedings of blasphemous communications on social media, and of persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.”
Mr. Pavone responds that he has had no direct communication on his alleged offenses and asserted his current superior, Bishop Zurek, has disobeyed Vatican orders to allow the Priests for Life leader to continue in his pro-life vocation. He said the prelate had sent him a 2017 letter saying Mr. Pavone should seek to be released from the ministry.
Repeated attempts to reach Bishop Zurek and his spokesman were unavailing, and the diocese did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Dawn Eden Goldstein, a Catholic writer in the District of Columbia who is completing a license in Canon Law from the Catholic University of America, said Mr. Pavone’s claim that pro-life work is a vocation is incorrect.
“His vocation is the holy orders in which he promised obedience, he vowed obedience to his bishop and his bishop’s successors,” she said.
“The Catholic Church is not a corporation,” said Ms. Goldstein, who just published a biography of the Rev. Edward Dowling, S.J., spiritual advisor to the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
“In a corporation, you sign a contract with that corporation, and no matter who’s in charge, they have to honor that contract. In the Catholic Church, once the new boss comes in, you’ve got to listen to the new boss, who may be different from the old boss [and] who may have different ideas from the old boss as to what you’re supposed to do.”
Mr. Pavone’s defenders slammed the Vatican’s punishment of the former priest — a well-known supporter of former president Donald Trump — as a politically motivated attempt to curry favor with Democrats in Washington.
Mr. Pavone sounded defiant in a tweet on Sunday, comparing his fate to that of the unborn: “So in every profession, including the priesthood, if you defend the #unborn, you will be treated like them! The only difference is that when we are ‘aborted,’ we continue to speak, loud and clear.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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