;)
L'affaire de Thiberville...
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 20:38 Has seen new movement; the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura has accepted Father Francis Michel's appeal, on its merits, as we Americans would say, Perepiscopus reports.
The short version follows. The bishop of Evreux in Normandy, pleading a lack of priests, a lack of this, the desire for that, et cetera, required Abbé Michel to acquiesce in a plan that would remove him from his pastorate and join a 'team' of clerics who would then be responsible for any number of consolidated parishes and ministries.
Abbé Michel refused, in a more or less politic way, and appealed to Rome, to the Congregation for the Clergy and to the Apostolic Signatura, which appeals were refused because of defects in their form.
This business is complicated by the fact that, according to all accounts, Abbé Michel's churches have become full and prosperous and pious and Catholic, and he paid attention to Summorum Pontificum (meaning that there have been both forms of the Roman Rite in use in them) and the Pope's 'hermeneutic of continuity'. And further complicated by the fact that when Mons Nourrichard went to Abbé Michel's church to personally explain the imposition of the 'innovations', the congregation loudly protested and wouldn't hear him. Abbé Michel retains possession of his churches but Mons Nourrichard has announced that he will suspend him at the end of the month unless he undertakes to obey his instructions.
Mons Nourrichard was appointed by the Holy Father in 2006. (Rorate Caeli has featured an entire series of posts on this business, which can be found via today's post.) On the one hand, the diocese is decaying and it seems just, well, stupid or vindictive for Mons Nourrichard to muck about with Abbé Michel's apparently exemplary work. On the other hand, the bishop is the bishop.
There is a party which sees disaster coming and retrenches, thinking to save some by finesse and adaptation; there is another party which sees with the eyes of hope, spes contra spem: while I know where I should expect to find the finger of God, it is probably necessary to point out that it ought to be presumed that both Abbé Michel and Mons Nourrichard are acting in what each to perceives to be the cause of Religion and justice. But I haven't followed very closely in the French blogs and newspapers.
