Bishop Loverde's Pattern of Persecuting Priests
Bishop Paul S. Loverde recently made his ad limina visit to Rome to meet with Pope Benedict XVI, the first since 2004 when he met with the seriously ill Pope John Paul II. The bishop presented Pope Benedict a 300 page state-of-the-diocese summary prepared by Mark Herrmann, the diocesan lawyer-chancellor. It included, according to the Arlington Herald, "everything from population statistics and evangelization efforts to child protection programs and the status of diocesan vocations." One of the things definitely excluded was a description of the pattern of persecution in this diocese against faithful priests and laity. Since Bishop Loverde's installation in Arlington in 1999, at least a dozen priests that I know of have experienced persecution in one form or another, often for minor infractions of diocesan rules or deviating from the bishop’s preferences. I have written about some of these cases previously. Read more here....
I was a parishioer of Father Haley and I believe Bishop Loverde did the Church a big favor in removing him. In fact, there are several other priests in this creepy diocese that I hope he will remove before they too do the sort of damage to trusting members of the faithful that Father Haley did.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how well you know Father Haley but he is a very troubled soul and we need to pray for him but he does not belong in ministry The Bishop was right to remove him from ministry
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this and shining the truth even though this is distressing.
ReplyDeleteI know Fr. Haley very well as a parishioner and as a personal friend. He served well and faithfully. His indiscretion was ended by him and Bishop Keating affirmed his continuing ministry. The people who disliked Fr. Haley were generally dissenters and cafeteria Catholics who hated his straight talking sermons.
ReplyDeleteI agree there are some "creepy" priests in this diocese: the ones who use pornography and have boyfriends.