Another Australian bishop has been throwing his pandemic-acquired weight around, this time in sunny Queensland. Mark Coleridge, Archbishop of Brisbane, has decided to collaborate with the tyrannical state government by forcing his priests to get vaxxed or risk losing their faculties.
The Catholic Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, affectionately known as “Stasi,” has found a willing ally in the Archbishop of Brisbane. Like Daniel Andrews and his “good Catholic grandfather”, Palaszczuk has fond memories of her Polish grandparents with their “eight photos of Pope John Paul II in the living room.” Also like Daniel Andrews, Palaszczuk is left-wing, pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia and has been autocratically bullying her subjects into following a raft of COVID mandates, including barely-voluntary vaccination.
While the two State Premiers have much in common, it is remarkable to likewise observe some similarities between Archbishops Coleridge and Comensoli: the latter fancies himself to be the Australian incarnation of John Paul II, while the former was, at one stage, the Polish Pontiff’s speech writer. But unlike JPII, neither Archbishop seems to have the strength nor the will to stand up against their secular leaders’ repressive regimes.
Despite demanding that his priests are double-vaxxed with toxic gene serum by December 15th (“Clergy not doubly vaccinated are failing in their duty to care for the faithful”), the good Archbishop states that he respects his priests’ consciences.
“I too have a conscience”, says he. At least, that’s what he tries to convince them of in his four-page letter, reproduced below.
For the time-poor, the short version is: “You have to listen to me since I am the CEO of the Archdiocesan Corporation.”
Yes, that’s right. The Archdiocese of Brisbane is a Corporation, so as well as owing obedience to their Ordinaries, priests must also now submit themselves to medical trials at the behest of their CEOs. From the letter:
“I recognise that having a vaccination, including the COVID-19 vaccination, is a matter of personal choice. However, I am the sole member and officer of the Archdiocesan Corporation which in civil law is the employer of Archdiocesan staff, including those working in parishes. I am therefore bound to take seriously compliance with health directions. Further, I have a legal obligation to ensure that the Archdiocesan Corporation meets its workplace health and safety obligations….“
Oooohhh. Civil AND legal obligations. But no moral ones?
The Archbishop goes on to make some sophistic claims about his duty to protect his priests, his priests’ duty to protect their parishioners and everyone’s duty to protect unborn babies from medical experimentation – oops, sorry! – he didn’t actually write that last bit because Australian bishops no longer believe in minor obligations like upholding Catholic teaching.
Coleridge did include some extracts from Canon Law which is always guaranteed to make a prelate look more credible. The fact that those Canons are twisted and misapplied is neither here nor there. (He is a CEO with Obligations, remember!)
Just take a look at the penalties Coleridge has prepared for the non-compliant priests, who are, no doubt, some of his most holy and orthodox men: the cessation of their public ministry or worse – suspension of their faculties.
“In circumstances where a priest or deacon has not complied with paragraph 1 above by 15 December 2021, I will be asking that he voluntarily stand aside from pastoral duties in his parish and from all pastoral ministry until he has been fully vaccinated. Should a priest or deacon in such circumstances decline to stand aside voluntarily, I will need to consider the temporary suspension of faculties until he fully complies..“
Does the Archbishop not realise that unvaccinated Catholics (and probably many vaccinated ones) have no problem at all with being ministered to by an unvaccinated priest? The letter continues with a tirade about medical exemptions, and makes no provision for conscientious objection – or for objecting to His Grace’s conscientiousness!
Now, it really comes as no surprise that Archbishop Coleridge has agreed to do the government’s bidding. As President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference – that same Bishops Conference which in 2017 approved Catholics to be Freemasons – he is more than familiar with handshake deals and fraternal cooperation. Coleridge is not even averse to using Brisbane’s churches for sexually-explicit entertainment or from pushing an heretical agenda at his pet project, the Plenary Council.
However, there may be just a little hope for Brisbane’s faithful, unvaccinated priests. It seems Archbishop Coleridge can sometimes be quite lenient when it comes to his pastors breaking the law – at least, it depends on what kind of law is being broken. If it is something on the scale of child sex abuse, he seems to be able to turn a blind eye. He can even enlist help from his pal Cardinal Cupich when the need arises. But something tells me that his unvaxxed priests will not be so fortunate.
In case there’s any doubt left as to what kind of prelate we are dealing with, here’s Archbishop Coleridge’s take on “synodality.” Given that it was St Charles Borromeo who risked contracting the plague to ensure that all Catholics had access to the Sacraments, Archbishop Coleridge unironically uses the patron saint of facing-down pandemics to promote heresy, all the while shirking his own responsibility to safeguard the souls of his flock.
The hermeneutic is strong in this one.
Ecclesiastical Freemasonry 