INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (LifeSiteNews) — Fr. James Altman, the well known “canceled” priest and co-host of LifeSite’s latest show Faith & Reason, gave an impassioned speech at the Bringing America Back to Life Convention this past Friday.
Receiving enthusiastic cheers when the emcee mentioned his name, as well as a standing ovation when he took stage, Fr. Altman launched into a scathing criticism of Catholic bishops in a talk titled “Obedience to God, Not Man.”
The object of Altman’s ire were bishops who’ve “redefined and weaponized” the meaning of priestly obedience. He called out by name Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Bishop Christopher Coyne, and Bishop William Callahan, the latter of whom removed Fr. Altman from his parish in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Quoting St. Maximilian Kolbe, Altman clarified that priests promise to obey their bishops in all matters except when they “command something that is in even the slightest way a contravention of God’s law.”
“Monsters in miters have changed the apostolic definition of obedience and then weaponized it to silence all criticism and cancel priests and now even bishops on a regular basis,” he said.
Altman added that bishops cannot be “obeyed” when they demand their priests get injected with the abortion-tainted COVID vaccine, as well as when they threaten to punish them for speaking out too strongly against the vaccine, COVID restrictions, and the pro-abortion platform of the Democratic Party.
He also laid into bishops who kept the faithful away from the sacraments during the pandemic, who let pro-abortion politicians commit sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion, and who have failed to adequately teach the faithful right from wrong.
“Damnation awaits every single bishop whose silence is complicity,” Altman said. “Silence is complicity. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. So like St. Peter before the Sanhedrin, we must say boldly, ‘Obey God before man.'”
Watch Fr. Altman’s speech in its entirety below: