Frank Pavone threatens to withhold absolution from Democrat-voting Catholics.

e are all going to have to assume that Fr. Frank Pavone is being utter­ly hon­est in his tweet, because to assume that he is engag­ing in mere blus­ter would be unchar­i­ta­ble. Fr. Pavone nev­er engages in blus­ter and is entire­ly hon­est in all things—particularly his canon­i­cal sta­tus in the Church and the fact that his new, sup­port­ive bish­op is wait­ing until just the right moment to come out from behind the cur­tain and announce his iden­ti­ty to an anx­ious, wait­ing world. None of these things are lies, and the Dio­cese of Amar­il­lo is not refus­ing to answer ques­tions about Pavone because they think they’re not real­ly account­able to any­one; it would be unchar­i­ta­ble to hint at such a thing. Rather, they’re refus­ing to answer ques­tions because they don’t have any­thing to cor­rect. Pavone is as true as Trump. So we must believe he means it when he writes this:

I’ll be ready to hear the con­fes­sions of those who vote #Demo­c­rat, but we are trained that in the absence of repen­tance, abso­lu­tion has to be with­held.”

It’s impor­tant to be clear about the lev­el of spir­i­tu­al abuse that is involved here.

• Pavone sug­gests that vot­ing Demo­c­rat is a sin. It is not. Nor does he qual­i­fy or nuance the state­ment in any way.

I have said before that when Catholics sug­gest vot­ing for a Demo­c­rat is a sin, they have in mind a doc­u­ment from the CDF enti­tled “Wor­thi­ness to Receive Holy Com­mu­nion: Gen­er­al Prin­ci­ples.” But they are not hon­est about what the doc­u­ment actu­al­ly says, which is this:

A Catholic would be guilty of for­mal coop­er­a­tion in evil, and so unwor­thy to present him­self for Holy Com­mu­nion, if he were to delib­er­ate­ly vote for a can­di­date pre­cise­ly because of the candidate’s per­mis­sive stand on abor­tion and/or euthana­sia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abor­tion and/or euthana­sia, but votes for that can­di­date for oth­er rea­sons, it is con­sid­ered remote mate­r­i­al coop­er­a­tion, which can be per­mit­ted in the pres­ence of pro­por­tion­ate rea­sons.

The CDF does not at all say that vot­ing Demo­c­rat, of itself, puts any­one in a state of sin. It is sin­ful to pro­mote abor­tion. It is sin­ful to sup­port laws that allow abor­tion. It’s even sin­ful to vote for can­di­dates because of their pro-choice views. But the CDF allows the pos­si­bil­i­ty that one could vote for a can­di­date in spite of their views on abor­tion and because they’re more like­ly to lessen oth­er evils that, in the voter’s view, are “pro­por­tion­ate.”

Indeed, the USCCB speaks to anoth­er con­tin­gency in vot­ing:

When all can­di­dates hold a posi­tion that pro­motes an intrin­si­cal­ly evil act, the con­sci­en­tious vot­er faces a dilem­ma. The vot­er may decide to take the extra­or­di­nary step of not vot­ing for any can­di­date or, after care­ful delib­er­a­tion, may decide to vote for the can­di­date deemed less like­ly to advance such a moral­ly flawed posi­tion and more like­ly to pur­sue oth­er authen­tic human goods.

There is no such thing as a moral­ly per­fect can­di­date. I can’t think of a sin­gle one, in my life­time, who has not sup­port­ed some grave moral evil. Vot­ing is an act of bal­anc­ing one set of moral con­sid­er­a­tions against anoth­er. How a Catholic decides to do that is an act of seri­ous and per­son­al dis­cern­ment, and it is spir­i­tu­al­ly abu­sive to try to to bul­ly some­one’s con­science about it the way Pavone does.

• Even worse, Pavone attempts to politi­cize the sacra­ment of penance and abso­lu­tion by using it as a weapon against a polit­i­cal par­ty he does not per­son­al­ly favor. He is threat­en­ing to pun­ish Catholic Biden vot­ers by with­hold­ing abso­lu­tion from them.

This is an intol­er­a­ble abuse of a sacra­ment insti­tut­ed by Christ for peo­ple’s spir­i­tu­al good. Jesus did not give us Con­fes­sion to use as a weapon against peo­ple who don’t vote the way we want them to. To use it that way is putting Cae­sar above Christ. It’s sac­ri­le­gious.

As a priest, even a rogue one, Pavone ought to know bet­ter than this. If the Church says abso­lu­tion is con­tin­gent upon repen­tance, the Church also says that priests are not to sit in judg­ment upon whether a pen­i­tent is real­ly pen­i­tent. If I go to con­fess the sin of X, and I repeat the act of con­tri­tion, and Fr. Y gives me abso­lu­tion, but I’m not real­ly sor­ry and I’m just doing this because I think the words of abso­lu­tion are mag­ic words and I intend to go out and do X again with­in 5 min­utes, I’m not real­ly absolved in the first place no mat­ter what the priest says. God is the judge of our hearts, not the priest. A priest should nev­er with­hold abso­lu­tion.

More­over, how does Pavone pro­pose to know how the pen­i­tent before him vot­ed? Does he plan to ask this as part of the rite?

It’s pos­si­ble, if Pavone is not in good stand­ing, as the dio­cese of Amar­il­lo said when it was still both­er­ing to answer any­one’s ques­tions and had­n’t declared itself above such pet­ty things as account­abil­i­ty, that he does not have fac­ul­ties to hear Con­fes­sion at all except in dan­ger of death.

If any­thing, that’s worse—for two rea­sons:

• Pavone’s threat of with­hold­ing abso­lu­tion would apply to Catholics who need it most. The rea­son the Church allows even priests who have had their fac­ul­ties removed to grant abso­lu­tion in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions is because it’s the last oppor­tu­ni­ty to be rec­on­ciled to Christ before judg­ment. But even for some­one in dan­ger of death, Pavone would play a polit­i­cal game.
• Even if Pavone is just using blus­ter here, the mere fact of speak­ing of a sacra­ment in these terms is sac­ri­le­gious. The mere fact of speak­ing of sacra­ment as though it were a weapon to be used against one’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents should offend the sen­si­bil­i­ties of any believ­ing Catholic.

It does­n’t real­ly mat­ter whether Pavone can’t hear con­fes­sions any­way. What he writes on Twit­ter is a sig­nal to oth­er priests, and it’s spir­i­tu­al abuse to Catholics who have con­clud­ed that, in con­science, they must vote for Joe Biden. And when you turn the Sacra­ment of Con­fes­sion itself against them, you are engag­ing in abu­sive behav­ior that is just as bad as abus­ing chil­dren. It is scan­dalous.

The Church has had enough of abu­sive priests, and it has had enough of bish­ops who tol­er­ate them. It’s time for the dio­cese of Amar­il­lo to defrock Frank Pavone. And they also need to make it pub­lic that they have done so; no more refus­ing to answer inquiries about Pavone from pro­fes­sion­al news sites like CNA or the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter or Nation­al Catholic Reporter. I ful­ly expect that, if that were to hap­pen, Pavone would con­tin­ue engag­ing in the same abus­es he already does. But at least he would­n’t be able to do so under cov­er of the priest­hood.