Friday, March 29, AD 2024 4:09am

PopeWatch: Father Perozich

A sign of the wretched times we are living in as Catholics:

 

An outspoken pro-life priest whose bishop banned him from writing bulletin columns is about to retire to Hawaii.

Father Richard Perozich received much attention from the pro-life movement just before the 2016 election when fliers were stuffed in his parish’s bulletins explaining the Democratic Party’s official support for intrinsic evils like abortion. The fliers warned Catholics they put their souls at risk by voting for Democrats. The Diocese of San Diego decried the fliers, which Perozich hadn’t authorized. 

Then, Perozich wrote a bulletin column defending Church teaching on moral issues. He also opined on matters of prudential judgment within Catholic teaching. This led his bishop, Bishop Robert McElroy, to order Perozich to limit his bulletins to “calendaring events.” 

“Bishop McElroy was very gracious in granting” me permission to retire, Perozich, who is nearly 66, told LifeSiteNews.

But Perozich was well-known to the Catholic faithful in the Diocese of San Diego for years before that incident. In his 25 years as a priest, he worked with the diocesan advisory board on Natural Family Planning, started a Courage chapter for people with same-sex attraction seeking chastity, did prison ministry, worked on ecumenical and interfaith efforts, and learned Spanish. 

The “most satisfying” part of being a priest was when Perozich could be “used as an instrument to draw someone to the Lord,” he said. The “best part of being a priest is when one of your people tell me that something I did or said brought you closer to Jesus. Sometimes it can be something I said in a homily, in Confession, [or] in counseling.”

In 2014, Perozich announced to his parish that he was not going to attend a convocation of priests because the speaker was Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, who has said sodomy can express Christ’s “self-gift.”

Radcliffe “shouldn’t even be given a forum to speak because of his previous expressions on sexual issues and marriage and homosexuality,” said Perozich. “So if you’re going to do that, regardless of who’s going to speak, I’m not going to go.” 

He said he didn’t receive any pushback from the diocese for refusing to go.

“As a Christian, I need top-notch people who are real clear in the fullness of the Catholic faith to be my teachers and to express things,” he said. “I didn’t start a protest for other priests not to go, I didn’t tell anyone else not to go – I just told my parishioners that I wasn’t going.”

Changing language means changing meaning

Perozich said he’s always hopeful about the future, but “realistically,” it doesn’t seem that there will be doctrinal clarity any time soon in the Church.

“I don’t see much ability for that to happen because people are asking for changing of language in the Church,” he explained. “For example, our bishop asked that one of the things in the catechism be changed regarding homosexuality” because calling it “disordered” is “a philosophical term and people misunderstand it as a psychological term.”

“You really can’t change those things because they’ll change the meaning,” said Perozich. And the whole purpose of changing language about actions like same-sex activity is so “that you can indeed change the meaning, change the morality.”

The trend of clergy promoting homosexuality doesn’t seem likely to change, Perozich said. 

 

Go here to read the rest.  The heterodox are placed in charge and the orthodox are forced out.  God help us all.

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Father of Seven
Father of Seven
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 6:03am

it’s simple. Perozich = sheep; McElroy = goat. One draws people to Christ, the other leads them away.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 8:16am

He’s dictating to the pastor what should be put in a Church bulletin? Bishops are commonly otiose about all manner of misconduct and negligence. Amazing the micromanagement they’ll engage in when something really bothers them.

c bryant
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 11:02am

where orthodoxy becomes optional, orthodoxy will eventually be proscribed. rj neuhaus

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 5:09pm

As one who personally known Fr. Perozich for about twenty years, I can attest to both his orthodoxy and that he’s been on the chancery Schitt List for as long as I have known him.

Charles E Flynn
Charles E Flynn
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 6:58pm

@Greg Mockeridge,

Schitt is a relatively new maker of audio electronics, and thanks for your testimony about the eponymous list of presumably orthodox priests.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 7:10pm

Bishop McElroy is a left wing loon. I am grateful I do not live in his diocese. If I did I would probably do something to get arrested in confronting him.

TomD
TomD
Monday, November 13, AD 2017 7:27pm
Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Tuesday, November 14, AD 2017 3:59am

Another lighthouse of truth destroyed and more Catholics will founder on the shoals of falsehood. And another catastrophe Vatican II supporting Bishops.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Tuesday, November 14, AD 2017 7:31am

Father Richard Perozich’s “retirement” is well known to us on the West Coast.

In light of Edward Pentin’s address Oct. 29th, 2017, regarding the absolute police-state control of the Bergoglio papacy—Pentin recounted Cardinal Beniamino Stella of the Congregation for Clergy is known to suddenly demand the complete file of any diocesan priest anywhere in the world, if such an individual is not in step with the Bergoglio Plan, and follow with steps immediately leading to that priest’s (or bishop’s) removal— what happened here to Fr. Perozich is now quite clear.

I wonder if, in an honest moment, if this pontiff has those moments, if he who chose to name himself after Francis of Assisi considers the contradictions of his papacy: the autocracy, the listening-in on cell phone conversations, the snitching by a small group of spies that he encourages to continue spying, the nasty, hardly charitable public attacks on his own organization, the almost complete hostility toward those of a different understanding of matters.

Doesn’t seem so.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Tuesday, November 14, AD 2017 7:36am

At least one positive that has come out of the “resignation” of Father Perozich— the battle lines have never been so clearly drawn as now.

Only the most simpering sycophant could continue to say that nothing is wrong.

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