Monday August 23, 2010
Priest Apologizes, Retracts Statements Favoring Contraception
By Kathleen Gilbert
NASHVILLE, Tennessee, August 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Nashville priest who issued a video criticizing the Vatican’s stance against contraception and divorce, among other issues, has retracted his statements and apologized to parishioners and the pope.
Rev. Joseph Breen, whose recent conflict with the Church hierarchy comes 17 years after he was first told not to publically criticize Magisterial teaching, also indicated in a letter to parishioners of St. Edward Church that he planned to retire as pastor at the end of the year, according to a News Channel 5 report.
In the video, which was noticed by the Creative Minority Report blog, Breen likened the Church’s stance against contraception to Church officials’ conflict with Galileo, recalling Pope John Paul II’s apology over the centuries-old affair. “We’re not able to wait for this Pope or the next Pope to wait another hundred years to say, ‘we made a mistake on birth control,'” he said. He also appeared to complain about the Church’s stance against divorce.
In an apparent attempt to reach out to fallen-away Catholics, Breen opined that, “You gotta get the bishops to, the Pope to listen to the people – the voice, you might say, of the Spirit.” “You see so many people, I do, that quit going to Church because there’s no response to the necessary changes that should be made,” he said, going on to criticize also the Church’s position against women priests, and the Western tradition of the celibate priesthood.
The priest also objected to the bishops’ pledge of unconditional obedience to “one person in Rome,” saying that “we respect the Pope, but we owe no obedience as adults except to our conscience, to what we feel is the spirit of God.”
In 1993, the head of the diocese of Nashville at the time, Bishop Edward Kmiec, ordered Breen not to speak publicly criticizing the Church on such topics, as reported by the National Catholic Reporter. In 2006, Breen wrote to Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, saying that “It is very detrimental to our church when the Papacy proclaims moral and medical issues as infallible and binding when the people, the church, consider them otherwise.”
Local media reports that Nashville Bishop David Choby met with the priest on August 19 to discuss the recent video. Faced with a choice either to retract the video and apologize, or to undergo canonical punishment and be removed as pastor, Breen reportedly chose the former option, writing letters to Pope Benedict XVI and parishioners in which he withdrew his statements regarding Catholic obligation to follow Magisterial teaching.
Attempts to reach the Diocese of Nashville were unanswered as of press time.
See previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Nashville Priest May Face Canonical Discipline Over Heretical Video
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/aug/10080507.html