"Let's Get Ready to Rumble"
Scandal and Division in the Diocese of Lexington
from the July-August 1998 issue

Nearly every parish church in the Diocese of Lexington was closed on Pentecost Sunday in order to encourage participation in an all-diocese Mass at Rupp Arena. The "Mission 98" celebration, planned by Bishop J. Kendrick Williams more than a year ago, commemorated the Diocese of Lexington’s 10^th anniversary of its liberation from Bishop William Hughes’ Diocese of Covington. Most parishes in the 50 counties that make up the diocese in the foothills of southeastern Kentucky diocese offered no Sunday Masses that weekend.

With more than 9,000 in attendance, Bishop Williams opened the event by loudly exclaiming that someone had dared him to begin with the words "Let’s get ready to rumble!" Accepting the challenge, he did just that; the crowd-congregation responded accordingly with the roar of bread and circus.

Concelebrating Mass with Bishop Williams were Archbishop Thomas Kelly of Louisville and Bishop William Hughes, retired bishop of Covington. The two-hour Mass was preceded by a "Rite of Preparing the Sacred Space," as termed in the program. This fabricated "rite" emphasized the popular secular theme of "multicultural diversity."

The African-American constituency was represented by a bongo-drummer dressed in traditional African costume, and others who performed a "sprinkling rite." Members of the Hispanic community, also in traditional dress, arranged flowers for the worship space while costumed members of the Asian-American community incensed the altar. The Caucasian-Appalachian community covered the altar with a red and white patchwork quilt borrowed from a Disciples of Christ minister in eastern Kentucky. Dressed in a white alb, Sr. Clara Fehringer, OSU acted as the "Director of Liturgy."

The entrance procession approached the stage-sanctuary from the four corners of the arena. Deacons processed with their wives and were seated together, according to the program, as "Deacon Couples."

After an inclusive-language Gospel reading, Archbishop Kelly delivered a homily expressing his sorrow that the Church excludes women and married men from the priesthood, and expressed praise for Lexington’s "New Faces of Ministry" (NFM) program, which, in general, is recommending the ordination of women and married men along with "expansion of the term ‘vocation’ to include the vocation to lay ministry," and the creation of priestless "faith communities" in the wake of a so-called "priest shortage." Kelly called the divisions in the Church "a scandal," and said, "commitment to unity is part of our identity. The future of the Church must stand on unity."

Ironically, one of the greatest sources of division and scandal in the Lexington diocese over the past year has come from the New Faces of Ministry recommendations.

Kelly, no doubt, was also responding to the disruption at the Ordination Mass in January, in which Janice Sevre Duszynska, dressed in alb and stole, presented herself for ordination to Bishop Williams. "I am called by the Holy Spirit to present myself for ordination," she said. "My name is Janice. I ask this for myself and for all women." Further, writing in the May 15, 1998 edition of the National Catholic Reporter, the same Janice urged her fellow lady Catholics to present themselves to their bishops at spring ordination Masses in cathedrals across the country.

In Lexington, she organized a poorly attended "prayer" vigil outside Christ the King Cathedral in protest of the Church’s teaching on the priesthood.

A faithful proposal
Participating in the New Faces of Ministry program, Fr. Roger Arnsparger, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Corbin, Kentucky, issued his "parish report" recommendations, which conform with the directives from Rome on lay collaboration, a unique claim in that diocese.

Arnsparger wrote, "Our parish has the strong conviction that if there would not be a Priest-Pastor assigned to Sacred Heart, the parish should be closed and the parishioners would go to another parish. We do not want a lay person, a Religious, or a Deacon as a Pastoral Director… We do not want Communion Services in lieu of Sunday Mass. If there is not regular Sunday Mass at Sacred Heart, the parish should not exist."

Arnsparger, whose parish council endorsed the recommendations, offered several suggestions to the Lexington diocese. He recommended that the present Diocesan Policy on the limited tenure of priests be discontinued, and that retired priests be encouraged to take assignments as Pastors in parishes or missions that need them. He said he does not believe that there has to be fewer priests for the Diocese of Lexington. He suggested that the diocese spend as much time planning for the recruitment of priests and nourishing vocations as it does planning to live without priests.

Arnsparger proposed "that in the eventuality the Diocese of Lexington is not able to assign a Diocesan pastor to Sacred Heart Church, parishioners would form an Ad Hoc committee to secure a pastor. This may take the form of advertising outside of the Diocese of Lexington and/or with Religious Orders."

"Another possible plan," wrote Arnsparger, "would be that our parish support the education of a seminarian in a third-world country (This can be done at a fraction of the cost of educating a seminarian in the United States), with the understanding that when ordained to the priesthood, he would serve as pastor of Sacred Heart Church, for a specific period of time.

Although Arnsparger’s Sacred Heart recommendations were submitted to the NFM council, none of those recommendations or suggestions were published in the official NFM deanery report, which was prepared as the final set of recommendations given to Bishop Williams, and subsequently published in the diocesan newspaper, CrossRoads.

Instead, the Mountain West Deanery, which includes Sacred Heart Church, recommended Sunday services without the Eucharist to be led by lay ministers; continuing to work with such issues as married clergy and women priests; and determining what roles laicized priests can fulfill. "They are a rich resource in our midst," the NFM Mountain West Deanery report concluded. --Michael S. Rose

[ St. Catherine Review ]