Excommunication

The Vatican stood firm Tuesday on a decision to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop, even as Jewish leaders warned that the move will set back decades of Roman Catholic overtures to mend strained relations between the two faiths. The Vatican joined Jews and fellow Catholics in condemning the British bishop's assertions that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers.

Six Roman Catholic nuns have been excommunicated for heresy after refusing to give up membership in a Canadian sect whose founder claims to be possessed by the Virgin Mary, the Diocese of Little Rock said Wednesday. Msgr. J. Gaston Hebert, the diocese administrator, said he notified the nuns Tuesday night after they refused to recant the teachings of the Community of the Lady of All Nations, also known as the Army of Mary. The Vatican has declared all members of the Army of Mary excommunicated.

The Diocese of San Bernardino has formally excommunicated a Coachella Valley priest for heresy. In a move that church officials called rare, a tribunal of three Inland Empire Roman Catholic priests found Father Ned Reidy, 69, guilty of heresy and schism after a trial in December. Reidy left the Roman Catholic Church in 1999 after nearly two decades as a parish priest in Palm Desert. He founded a new parish in a new denomination, the Catholic Ecumenical Communion, in Bermuda Dunes.

Fifteen Roman Catholic women in the United States, including some Californians, face excommunication after taking up priestly duties following their "ordination" in recent ceremonies designed to challenge the all-male priesthood. On Thursday, Jane Via of San Diego, who was ordained in June and planned to say her second Mass on Sunday, met for two hours with the local bishop, who laid out the ramifications of her actions.

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, a provocative African prelate known for exorcisms, mass healing ceremonies and temporarily breaking with the church to marry a Korean acupuncturist, was excommunicated Tuesday by the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI signed off on the most serious punishment the Roman Catholic Church can mete out, in what is likely to be the final chapter in Milingo's bizarre, tumultuous story spanning more than two decades.

Re "Brazil-bound pope denounces legalization of abortion," May 10 It seems that Pope Benedict XVI has a problem making statements that other church officials are quick to correct. Not long ago he quoted some obscure document that maligned Islam, and there was a rush to assure people that this was not his personal view. Now he is talking about self-excommunication if one espouses abortion -- and, again, some church officials are quick to assure the public that he really didn't mean to set a new policy.

The creator of a 2008 calendar that featured shirtless Mormon missionaries was excommunicated after a disciplinary meeting with church leaders in Las Vegas. Chad Hardy says he bears no ill will toward the council of elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Men on a Mission," which has sold about 10,000 copies, included pictures of 12 returned missionaries wearing black slacks -- but not their trademark white shirts -- in modest poses. The 2009 calendar, which drew 100 inquiries from interested missionaries, is to be released in September.

A British bishop whose denial of the Holocaust embroiled the pope in controversy left Argentina, several days after the government ordered him out. Pope Benedict XVI sought last month to help heal a rift with ultra-traditionalists by lifting a 20-year-old excommunication decree imposed on Richard Williamson and three other bishops. The pope has since insisted that Williamson recant his statements before he can be recognized as a Roman Catholic bishop.

Tim Rutten's passionate argument that John Roberts' Roman Catholicism is irrelevant to the question of his confirmation as a chief justice of the United States ["Roberts' Faith Is Not the Issue," Aug. 20] might be more persuasive if then-Cardinal Ratzinger and some Catholic bishops had not inserted themselves and Catholic doctrine into the last election, particularly with threats to deny communion to John Kerry and other public officials who made a distinction between their private beliefs and their public responsibilities.

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond L. Burke has excommunicated a priest and the board of directors of a traditionally Polish parish that resisted his efforts to put the parish's property and assets under his control. In an archdiocesan newspaper column, Burke said Father Marek B. Bozek and St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish's six lay directors committed an act of schism when the board hired Bozek, who Burke said left another diocese without his bishop's permission.