Denver, Colo., Dec 22, 2022 / 06:43 am
On Nov. 9, Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung Sik, prefect for the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy, laicized Father Frank Pavone from the priesthood for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.” But what does it mean to be “laicized,” “defrocked,” or “dismissed from the clerical state”?
Ordination, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “confers a gift of the Holy Spirit that permits the exercise of a ‘sacred power’ which can come only from Christ himself through his Church.”
The Church says ordination marks a person with an irremovable imprint, a character, which “configures them to Christ.” Ordination, in Catholic theology, makes a permanent change that the Church has no power to reverse.
“You are a priest forever,” the Letter to the Hebrews says.