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Vatican upholds excommunication of US deacon who resigned after son was molested by priest
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2026
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wait. so his wife and other children kept going to catholic church while he converted to anglicanism? that seems even wierder.
To be precise, kept going to the church whose priest had molested their sibling and her son. The fuck are they still there for?
Wife is heart set on keeping the kids and herself catholic, is afraid of loosing her friends and community in a change of venue, and the kids are being drug along. The husband wants to stay Christian but can’t stomach the Catholic Church and possibly doesn’t feel welcome to that one, while not wanting to drag his wife through a possible crisis of faith.
Just a speculation based off other experiences.
yeah its kinda wierd the kids are still going with the mom. I must not understand something.
Catholicism. Even when you're not particularly religious, it can be a huge part of your ethnic and generational identity. You are also generally encouraged to endure whatever you encounter, and if the wrong you endure is both in the church and unbearable, you are to seek another part of the church that does not have this problem. You are, in every circumstance -- even when your kid is getting raped by a priest -- to remain in the church.
I doubt very much that they ever communicate this in so many words (though I have known people that got something very close) but it is hammered in from your earliest hour in every possible way, especially if your schooling was Catholic.
That is why this loving father was punished, and so severely, even if they did not admit it directly: he put his son over the church, and the Catholic church unironically considers itself to be on par with God, to the point that the pope, when speaking ex cathedra, is considered to be the infallible voice of God on earth.
So for Catholics, the full expectation would be that the wife and kids would remain Catholic, even though the marriage is intact and the husband is now excommunicated: loyalty to the church precedes the marriage in importance, and historically always has. Even for as much as a woman is supposed to submit to her husband, the earliest female saints were often women who refused a marriage with someone not of the faith, often by suicide or by choosing death over the marriage to the unfaithful, and these saints are still celebrated.
Also, a mother finding herself strapped to a suddenly non-Catholic husband would also be expected to take it upon herself to ensure that her Catholic children are also brought up in the church, even if it means doing so without their father, even if it means she gets the stink eye whenever she goes, even if going is a living hell for her and her family, which it arguably has been.
All of this is not so much dogma, though the basis of it certainly is, as it is simply written into every fiber of Catholic living.
And the piece of shit pedophile defender that excommunicated this guy -- doing it in such a way that it harmed the entire family -- knew all this when he did it, even more completely and personally than I or anyone else could possibly describe it, and was glad.
NOTE: I am an atheist and do not personally believe or defend any of it, so don't come at me: this is simply an explanation, NOT a defense.
Didn't want to edit so I will just add here: I had not read the article yet when I wrote the above, so I was unaware that the guy had joined another denomination when he left the church, and does not wish to return. Technically, that refusal to return to Catholicism and "submit to the pope" is solid ground for excommunication from the Catholic church.
But having known myself at least two or three dozen openly lapsed Catholics over the years that I met in other churches, it's pretty clear they don't commonly excommunicate for this alone, so I stand by what I said: the real crime was not leaving, but leaving publicly, and in open protest of the assaults on his child, and in such a way that the official doing the excommunication used it not to bring him back, but to punish him and his entire family for not suffering in silence.
sure, but the church seldom if ever-- penalizes anyone for switching faiths. This was about going after him because he is an angry victim, not because he's hanging with anglicans now.