The Roman Catholic Church may prove to be ground zero in the culture wars.
Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest and national director of the pro-life ministry Priests for Life, has been laicized by the Catholic Church. Pavone told Fox News that he is involved in a battle “for the soul of the Catholic Church” against what he calls “Democrat loyalists.”
To be laicized means to be dismissed from the clerical state. A more familiar term is “defrocked.” Pavone, however, remains a priest, as it is impossible to undo his priestly ordination, according to Canon Law. But he is forbidden from exercising his priestly functions.
It’s a Catch-22 — Pavone is a priest and not a priest at the same time. There is no harsher punishment for a priest to endure. What did Pavone do to deserve it?
According to Fox, U.S. bishops were alerted on Dec. 13 that Pavone was laicized on Nov. 9 for his “blasphemous communications on social media, and for persistent disobedience of lawful instructions from his diocesan bishop.”
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“Since 2016, Pavone has posted tweets, Facebook statuses, videos, and other social media postings urging support for the Republican party, calling into question the validity of the 2020 presidential election, and disparaging Democratic lawmakers,” The Pillar reported.
In 2020, Pavone’s diocese disavowed Pavone’s tweets calling then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden a “[expletive] loser” and saying the Democratic Party was “God-hating” and “America-hating,” according to The Pillar. Pavone also tweeted that Biden’s supporters “can’t say a [expletive] thing in support of their loser candidate without using the word Trump.”
For his part, Pavone knows he crossed the line and admitted as much to Fox.
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“[Some in the church hierarchy] got upset by a comment I made to someone who was arguing with me on Twitter, a Biden supporter,” Pavone said. “I used the word ‘g**damn’ in a tweet, which I shouldn’t have done, and normally never do. … I went to confession. I shouldn’t have done that, but that’s the world…
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