Bishop Threatening Excommunication for Members of 12 Groups

LINCOLN, Neb. — When Joan Johnson was in parochial school, the nuns taught her to pray and obey. But they also encouraged her to think independently.

Because of that, Johnson says, she faces excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Lincoln Diocese has threatened to excommunicate parishioners who belong to 12 groups, including Planned Parenthood, Call to Action and Catholics for a Free Choice. In a warning in the diocesan newspaper, he told Catholics to sever ties with the groups by May 15 or consider themselves excommunicated.

Johnson doubts that she will quit Call to Action Nebraska, which wants the church to discuss allowing women and married men to become priests--issues that Pope John Paul II has said are closed.

“My conscience tells me I have to go on with this,” said Johnson, 55, who attends Mass more than once a week. “God’s going to ask me at the end of my life, ‘Did you do what you thought was right?’ I feel this is right.”

Other groups on the bishop’s list include the Hemlock Society, which supports doctor-assisted suicide, and secret Masonic organizations such as Rainbow Girls, whose teenage members volunteer in hospitals, perform community service and read Scripture at their meetings. The Vatican has long held that the Masons’ secret beliefs and oaths are incompatible with the Catholic faith.

Catholic scholars said Bruskewitz is the only bishop in modern times to threaten such blanket excommunication. Most excommunications are done privately and do not address a large group of people.

“In the Catholic Church, excommunication is the equivalent to capital punishment,” the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theology professor at Notre Dame University, said Tuesday. “It is the ultimate punishment of a Catholic.”

Under excommunication, Catholics may attend Mass but are forbidden to receive Holy Communion or other sacraments, such as marriage in the church.

The bishop does not plan to issue formal notices of excommunication to individuals, and he admitted that he has no way of knowing if someone who is excommunicated is heeding the ban on receiving the sacraments.

“That rests on the conscience of the person,” Bruskewitz said.

The Lincoln Diocese has about 85,000 members. Scholars say it is one of the two most conservative dioceses in the country; it does not allow girls to serve at the altar.

The bishop has the power to issue a blanket excommunication, said the Rev. Thomas Green, a canon law professor at Catholic University in Washington. “Whether he should do it is another question,” Green said. “It does seem to be a little bit strange.”

McBrien said members of the Lincoln Diocese should ignore the warning.

“This edict is so irresponsible that no one is bound by it,” he said. “If a sufficient number of priests in the Lincoln Diocese try to actually enforce it, there will be public scenes in churches. Things will begin to snowball.”

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Call to Action’s national director, Dan Daley, said no other bishop has responded to the group with such a threat. The organization, which has 24 chapters in 15 states, recently formed a Nebraska chapter.

Bruskewitz said he wanted to warn parishioners before they became involved in the new organization, which he called too progressive. He said the excommunication threat is “less a punishment than it is a sanction urging people to reevaluate their faith with God.”

McBrien doubted that the warning would draw support from bishops in the estimated 170 dioceses nationwide. “I’m fairly confident that most of the bishops in the U.S.--even the most conservative ones--rolled their eyes and sighed,” he said.