Archbishop and Mrs. Milingo
Archbishop Milingo, after years of increasingly outrageous conduct, has been defrocked, according to Catholic Word News.
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo—the renegade African prelate who has launched a worldwide crusade for married priests, under the influence of the Korean sect figure Sun Myung Moon—has been defrocked, the Vatican announced on December 17.
Because of Milingo’s “regrettable conduct” that resulted in his canonical suspension in 2001 and later his excommunication in 2006, and because he “has shown no sign of the desired repentance,” the Vatican statement said, “the Holy See has therefore been obliged to impose upon him the further penalty of dismissal from the clerical state.”
Archbishop Milingo was suspended in 2001 after he flew to New York to participate in a mass marriage ceremony, at which Rev. Moon presided, in which he was joined to a Korean woman, Maria Sung. After being reconciled with the Church for a short time, in 2006 the African archbishop ordained four married men as bishops, without the approval of the Holy See, thus incurring automatic excommunication.
In recent months Milingo has continued ordaining bishops in illicit ceremonies. Those ceremonies demonstrate his “persistent contumacy,” the Vatican statement said, and show the need for new disciplinary action.
However, no bishops involved in the sexual abuse crisis have been so punished, not even the bishops who were abusers themselves, much less the ones, like Cardinal Law, who were enablers of abusers.
Lee, Archbishop Milingo does not have friends in high places in the Vatican like Bernard Law, Roger Mahony or the other bishops who either abused personally or facilitated abuse apparently do. Remember, in a closed bureaucracy impervious to accountability, members will protect each other in order to protect themselves. Milingo was easy to throw to the wolves. Law, Mahony, et al won’t be — unless and until it somehow becomes undesireable for the bureaucracy to protect them.
Then again, perhaps Law, Mahony et al can spill quite a few embarassing secrets about the inner workings of Holy Mother Church….
And some bishops in Ireland still don’t get it!