Many years ago when I was working in New York I found myself on a bus with a friend, arguing about religion.  We had known each other since we were children in Hawaii; she was an atheist, or maybe an agnostic (I was never really sure), I was Roman Catholic, and religion had always been a strange area of silence and even strain between us, one of the few things we rarely talked about during slumber parties or after-school walks to the ice cream store.  And now here we were in our twenties, living in New York, starting our adult lives, and she wanted to know why I still went to church every Sunday.  I felt curiously shy and inarticulate, trying to talk about my faith in front of this person I had known for most of my life.

Image courtesy of bbc.co.uk/radio4

But she continued to push, asking me to explain…

Bishop Richard Stika introduces himself during a Knoxville press conference in January. Credit: Knoxville News Sentinel

Bishop Richard Stika, a former St. Louis priest who is now bishop of Knoxville, Tenn., was hospitalized over the weekend while visiting a sick friend in Florida, according to the chancellor of the Knoxville diocese, Deacon Sean Smith.

Stika, 52, was the pastor of the Church of the Annunziata in Ladue when Pope Benedict XVI named him Knoxville’s bishop in January. He was installed in March.

According to Smith:

Bishop Stika traveled to Florida to visit a sick friend and became ill with severe flu-like symptoms, which precipitated a diabetic crisis. Although the Bishop suffered a mild heart attack related to the diabetic crisis, his heart was thoroughly examined and found to be in great shape.

Smith said Stika is “stable and responding well to his treatment. He is looking forward to returning home to Knoxville.”

Along with his five years at…

In a statement it attributed to Deacon Phil Hengen, Director of its Office of Child and Youth Protection, the St. Louis Archdiocese said Saturday that its interim leader, Bishop Robert Hermann, had taken away the priestly faculties of the Rev. Robert Osborne, former president of Vianney High School in Kirkwood.

The removal of Osborne’s “faculties” - a term meaning the authority to perform as a cleric - means the Marianist priest can no longer publicly celebrate Mass.

Hermann is the interim leader of the St. Louis Archdiocese until newly named Archbishop-elect Robert Carlson’s installation next month.

In February 2006, Osborne temporarily stepped down as president of Vianney after a lawsuit accused him of having “sexually, physically and emotionally abused” a student. Another accusation followed, and in August 2006 Vianney removed Osborne permanently for what were called “unresolved legal matters.”

Osborne has consistently denied all the accusations against him, and in October 2006, a criminal investigation of…

The Rev. Marek Bozek

In a comment to a previous post, Commenter StGuyFawkes asked me to run down Father Bozek’s contention that the Reformed Catholic Church and Married Priests Now! had granted him “secondary faculties.” StGuyFawkes suggested there was no such thing.

I asked a canon law professor at Catholic University to explain some of the canonical questions raised by Bozek’s decision to become incardinated into these groups so that his faculties would remain intact in the case of his laicization. The professor, a priest, asked to remain anonymous (I’ve shared his identity with my editors in accord with Post-Dispatch policy.)

Here’s what the canonist wrote in an e-mail:

Tim:

Legally (canonically) speaking, a man becomes a priest through ordination (that is, he receives the sacrament of orders). He is ordained first a deacon and then (six months to a year later) he is ordained a priest. When ordained a deacon, a man becomes incardinated into…