Perth, Australia, May 20, 2011 / 01:24 am
The dismissed Bishop William Morris effectively promoted heresy and had to choose between following his way or the way of the Catholic Church, an editorial in the Perth archdiocesan newspaper said.
The Vatican’s removal of the Bishop of Toowoomba involves “fundamental” questions about the nature of the Church and Church authority, the Archdiocese of Perth’s official newspaper The Record said in a May 18 editorial titled “a Bishop that had to go.”
“One mentality is informed by two millennia of constant belief and practice, often heroically witnessed to by martyrdom, the other by the mass media and the fashionable theories that abound in our culture,” the paper said. “On the side of the essential unity of Church belief and teaching from Christ up until the present is Pope Benedict; on the side of changing Church teaching and practice to suit some values of majority opinion, sadly, was Bishop Morris.”
On May 2 the Vatican confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI removed the bishop from the pastoral care of his diocese. Australia’s bishops backed the decision, citing “problems of doctrine and discipline.”