What does Laicising a Priest Mean?

Question: Recently the Vatican laicised the former US priest Frank Pavone, but the Letter to the Hebrews says: “You are a priest forever.” So what exactly are the implications of laicisation?

Answer: Frank Pavone, a prominent priest who headed a controversial US pro-life organisation, was dismissed from clerical orders for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop”. He will never cease to be a priest, but as a laicised priest he is unable to exercise priestly duties and privileges.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, priestly ordination “confers a gift of the Holy Spirit that permits the exercise of a ‘sacred power’ which can come only from Christ himself through his Church”. Ordination marks a person with an irremovable imprint, a character, which “configures them to Christ”.

Ordination, in Catholic theology, makes a permanent change that the Church has no power to reverse. As you note, the Letter to the Hebrews states: “You are a priest forever.” This change is referred to as being ontological, or a change in being itself.

In addition to making an ontological change, ordination also makes a legal change in a person’s status in the Church. By ordination, a person becomes in canon law a “cleric”. A cleric, or a sacred minister in the Church, is an ordained man who is permitted by the Church to exercise sacred ministry as a priest or a permanent deacon.

A cleric is bound to certain obligations, and he has certain rights, such as the right to be appointed to pastoral leadership positions in the Church. Clerics who are priests have the right to be financially supported by the Church and are bound by obedience to the pope and to local Church authorities.

While ordination can never be lost — no power on earth can erase the sacramental imprint of ordination — a person can lose the legal status of being a cleric; this is what is referred to as “laicisation” or “dismissal from the clerical state”.

Loss of rights

A laicised priest is no longer referred to as “Father” or other titles given to clerics. When a person loses the clerical state he is no longer permitted to celebrate Mass or any other sacraments, except in situations he is unlikely to encounter, such as being with a person in danger of death. Someone who has lost the clerical state also no longer has the canonical right to be financially supported by the Church.

Often, a man who is laicised is also dispensed from the obligation of celibacy and may marry — but this is not always the case, especially when someone has been involuntarily removed from the clerical state.

Ordinarily, the Church does not permit a person who has been dismissed from the clerical state to teach, as a layman, in a Catholic college or school, to be a lector or extraordinary ministry of holy Communion, or to exercise other functions in the name of the Church. This is determined on an individual basis, and exceptions and dispensations can be made.

A person can lose the clerical state because he has requested it through a special petition to the pope personally, or he can lose it as a penalty for committing an ecclesiastical crime. There are also provisions that allow for a priest or deacon who has abandoned his ministry to be removed from the clerical state after a protracted period of time, and through a specified canonical process.

Published in the May 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine