Dear Linda:

Well, first I must say that those priests ought to be publicly horse-whipped and then sent to a mountain-top monastery in Turkey to be re-educated and until they repent. If I were these priests bishop, they were be suspended and sent for "reflection" to a monastery for rehabilitation, or defrocked.

The sins committed by people who have relied on the advice of a rebellious priest will be on the hands of those priests. They will have to stand before God to account for it. They risk their souls to hell by misleading the flock. Pray for them.

This, however, does not eliminate all culpability on the part of the parishioners. We have a responsibility and a duty to seek out the truth for ourselves. This can be done very easily these days by just opening up the Catechism of the Catholic Church and reading what this "official" book has to say on these topics. So, there really is not much of an excuse for people to blindly follow a wacko priest.

In addition, at least in the United States, I do not believe for a minute that any Catholic is not aware, at least in passing, of the Church's teaching on contraception, divorce and remarriage, and the like. What generally happens is that people are looking for a priest to give them an okay on something they either know or suspect is wrong but they want to do anyway. Thus, they ignore their own passing knowledge about Church teaching and use the wacko priest's opinion as an excuse to sin.

I think that every Catholic knows enough, no matter how poorly catechized, and frankly all non-Catholics know enough, to question a priest's accuracy on such things as contraception and remarriage. After all, anyone who watches TV will hear about these teachings on the news and in movies. It is hard to avoid the information.

These people will be held accountable for what they know, or for their lack of due dligence to educate themselves. If people feign ignorance or purposely avoids the diligence to find out, or use what they know or suspect is a priest's wayward opinion as a justification to sin their culpability for the sin actually increases above the normal culpability.

Every Catholic needs a copy of the Catechism. If any laity, religious, deacon, priest, bishop, or Cardinal preaches or teaches things that are direct contradictions to what is written in the 2nd Edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, then they are wrong and should be challenged.

While more subtle issues of theology and doctine may be difficult for the average person to discern, in this day and age of information technology and mass media there is really no excuse for anyone to accept and act upon a priest's opinion that is so obviously in error.

Ultimately, God will judge those persons according to the genuine truth of their state of mind, heart, and soul. That judgment may be that they not culpable due to the mis-information they received, or partially culpable, or fully culpable. Only God truly knows.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary