Australian Catholic paper welcomes removal of Bishop Morris

May 18, 2011

In a strongly-worded editorial, The Record--a Catholic weekly owned by the Archdiocese of Perth--has welcomed Pope Benedict’s decision to remove Bishop William Morris from the governance of the Diocese of Toowoomba.

“While the removal was almost unprecedented in Australia, it not-so-surprisingly illuminated fault lines within the Church which all reasonably well-informed observers have known about for decades,” the newspaper stated. “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.”

“The problem for Bishop Morris, in the end, was that given the two positions he had to make a choice--his way or the Catholic Church way. The problem for the Church was how to handle a Bishop well down the road in effectively promoting what might now reasonably be called heresy in his diocese.”

The editorial concluded:

Catholic spouses and families everywhere face an unprecedented onslaught against their faith, their values and their children from a modern anti-culture predicated on the idea that there are really no more moral rules and no real consequences: one should do whatever one wants. As the simple people of faith do their best to lead the at-times difficult Christian life of fidelity to Jesus and everything He taught, they do not need bishops who will obscure the way or who become obstacles to the heroic vocation of Christian marriage and family. In fact, they are, sadly, better off without them. One might say that they need a Bishop who can be a rock. One of the two Bishops at the heart of this controversy is undoubtedly that.

 

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Further information:

• Editorial: a Bishop that had to go (The Record)