How to Address a Dissenter
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs is taking aim at what it calls a renegade church in Black Forest and asking its members to return to the fold.
In a letter to about 60 households, Bishop Michael Sheridan said Servants of the Holy Family is not part of the Roman Catholic Church, despite what church priests tell them.
“I entreat you to separate yourself from the Servants of the Holy Family and return to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church,” Sheridan wrote in his letter. “No one can claim to be authentically Catholic if he or she is not in communion with the diocesan bishop and the Pope.”
Sheridan said the separation nullifies some Catholic sacraments such as marriage and reconciliation, also called confession or penance.
FROM BISHOP SHERIDAN’S LETTER TO PARISHIONERS:
“I entreat you to separate yourself from the Servants of the Holy Family and return to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.”
Former members claim that Servants of the Holy Family is out of sync with the Catholic Church in other ways, too, saying the church is as much a personality cult as a place of worship.
Sheridan and the diocese can’t take action against the church, just urge members to leave.
Servants of the Holy Family is a church and seminary of 100-150 congregants at 8025 Maverick Road.
Maverick Road? Now that is pretty funny and perfectly fitting. One of the uses of Maverick is "One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter." I think this would be useful to rename streets around other known dissenters.
- National Catholic Reporter - 666 Heretic Ave
- Hans Kung - E. Communicated Street
- Joan Chittister - 1 Known Dissent R.
- Call To Action - No 1 Under Sixty Lane
- Bishop Gumbleton - 4 Undermining Doctrine Ave.
- Fr. Richard McBrien - Where's My Coll R.
- Frances Kissling - 44,000,000 Moloch Lane
- Minneapolis' St. Joan of Arc parish - 2 Schism Road
Known as 
Call To Action - No 1 Under Sixty Lane
Roflol!
Being from Minnesota I love the address for St. Joan of Arc.
It's also both fitting and funny that they're in Black Forest. Wolves do better in dark wildernesses than sheep do, especially when the shepherds aren't nearby.
Another fitting irony pointed out in another blog, is that Frances Kissling sounds a lot like "Quisling", which is a Norwegian word used as a synonym for "traitor". Even more, interesting is that "quisling" itself is a word derived from the last name of a Norwegian politician who betrayed his country and collaborated with the Nazis...
hrm...
“No one can claim to be authentically Catholic if he or she is not in communion with the diocesan bishop and the Pope.”
How unfortunate that the good Bishop is wrong in this statement. No one can be ROMAN Catholic without being in communion with the diocesan bishop or the Pope, but Anglo-Catholics, Old-Catholics, Mariviate-Catholics, Coptics, Greek Orthodox and well, all of Orthdoxy are Catholic, the Roman Code of Canon Law recognizes them all as Catholic.
With all the problems in the Roman Church, you would think that if Bishop Sheridan was going to throw stones at other houses of God, he would at least try to get his facts straight.
I know this community well; indeed I am a former seminarian who left. I am on good terms- they are a fine community and they preseve the real faith, and true Mass. How dare this Bishop, and this calumnious, slanderous article.
Brendan