An extraordinary document and insight... (Main Forum)

by AnnieJ , Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 11:44 (729 days ago) @ gemstones

This short excerpt from the document above says it all:

He was instrumental in the removal, for misconduct, of a number of Australian bishops; in the prevention of certain episcopabili (potential bishops) among the clergy from being appointed to that high office and, in the humbling of the entire Australian bishops conference in 1998. Little wonder, then, that no bishop attended his funeral in St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney on Monday, 9th May.

Concerned over the serial negligences of the bishops, particularly their tolerance of the abuse of Third Rite Reconciliation which ‘protestantised’ the Sacrament of Penance, he organised rafts of Catholic laity throughout the country to report abuses committed by priests in their parishes. The results, refined in statutory declarations, provided the stumbling block when the Australian bishops arrived in Rome for their 1998 ad limina visit. The ‘Statement of Conclusions’ of 14th December 1998[2] , to whose terms they found themselves constrained, stands as a monument to Paul’s efforts to preserve the orthodoxy of Australian Catholics.

We can only weep.

Annie