Mr. Pavone admits to CNA: I told my bishop to shut up and leave me alone.

rob­a­bly my favorite line from The Ten Com­mand­ments—I mean the movie—is “Your tongue will dig your grave.” When­ev­er I think of Frank Pavone, I think of that line. All you have to do is give him the oppor­tu­ni­ty, irre­sistible to him, to open his mouth, and he will fume, threat­en, con­tra­dict him­self, and oth­er­wise be a rag­ing, nar­cis­sis­tic spec­ta­cle. Mr. Pavone has “pre­dict­ed” that the pope will excom­mu­ni­cate him. My guess is that some­one in author­i­ty already warned him about this, and he’s dar­ing them to do it, through his near-dai­ly oppo­si­tion­al defi­ant behav­ior.

PAVONE CONTRADICTS PAVONE.

When CNA report­ed that the Vat­i­can had defrocked Mr. Pavone, he com­plained that he had no idea. “How did CNA learn about this before I did?” he cried. He wants us to believe he rose one morn­ing in the pink of inno­cence, said the Office, made his cof­fee and got online, read CNA, and sat there astonied. Appar­ent­ly the Vat­i­can defrocked him and decid­ed not to tell him. That’s cred­i­ble.

But now, Pavone tells CNA that it may have got­ten lost in the stacks and stacks of mail that come in to Priests for Life. “I have no idea what they sent me,” said the befud­dled Pavone. “The com­mu­ni­ca­tion broke down a long time ago. They may indeed have sent some­thing. I sim­ply did­n’t see it.”

Oh. So for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion from your dio­cese, to the effect that you’ve been defrocked, got mis­placed at Priests for Life. Maybe some­one acci­den­tal­ly spilled formalde­hyde on it and it dis­in­te­grat­ed. Or maybe Pavone’s staff was hid­ing it from him, lest he become vol­canic and throw ketchup on the walls in imi­ta­tion of Trump. What’s going on in Titusville? Pavone sure did­n’t miss the 2017 let­ter from his bish­op warn­ing him that he was about to get him­self defrocked; he post­ed it on his own Web site in the odd belief that it vin­di­cat­ed him in some way. Pavone gets that let­ter but can’t find this one?

Even CNA is at pains to point out how Pavone’s new sto­ry is at odds with the old sto­ry. (It’s hard­ly the first time, either; Pavone fre­quent­ly changes his sto­ry.) On Decem­ber 21, Pavone said: “I haven’t got­ten any­thing.” “I don’t have instruc­tions,” he said. “I was­n’t told,” he said. But now he says: Maybe I was. Maybe some­one mis­placed it. My bish­op and I, we’re not on speak­ing terms, some­times I put my fin­gers in my ears and say, “Nya, nya, can’t hear you,” so who knows? Maybe my staff burned the let­ter. Maybe its one of the let­ters I nev­er opened and decid­ed to use as a dart board.

YAKETY YAK.

“Well,” Pavone said to CNA,

they can say ‘they informed me,’ but that state­ment alone ignores the entire con­text and the fact that the com­mu­ni­ca­tion was abu­sive, bro­ken, dis­hon­est, for years. Again, peo­ple have to under­stand, none of this was nor­mal.

“None of this was nor­mal.” You think? Pavone says he may have over­looked a for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion from his bish­op that he had been defrocked. Yeah, I’d say that’s not nor­mal. Except I don’t blame the bish­op for “bro­ken” com­mu­ni­ca­tion; I blame the priest for behav­ing like an irre­spon­si­ble, petu­lant, and self-willed child.

“Pavone,” CNA con­tin­ues, “said the con­flicts with Zurek [Con­flicts about what, the arti­cle does not say.] reached the point that he asked the dio­cese not to con­tact him any­more.

“I told the bish­op not to. And the Vat­i­can knew it,” he told CNA.

“This was not a nor­mal rela­tion­ship. It was abuse. If they say they sent some­thing, they are admit­ting to vio­lat­ing a very seri­ous, long-stand­ing set of instruc­tions to stop abus­ing and harass­ing me,” he said.

If you’re hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty wrap­ping your head around this, you’re not alone. Pavone tells his bishop—to whom as a priest he makes a vow of obedience—shut up and go away. It’s no won­der the pope defrocked him. And what’s more the won­der to me is that Pavone seems to think he had the author­i­ty to give instruc­tions to his bish­op (as though he was his bish­op’s bish­op). The arro­gance of this man is breath­tak­ing.

What’s fur­ther baf­fling is Pavone’s state­ment that, if his dio­cese did tell him he was defrocked, they’d be “vio­lat­ing a very seri­ous, long-stand­ing set of instruc­tions to stop abus­ing and har­rass­ing me.”

So first Pavone com­plains that his dio­cese nev­er told him he was defrocked; then, he says if they had told him, they’d be vio­lat­ing his orders. Does this make sense to you? Does this make sense to any­one?

PAVONE’S MIRAGE.

“Our canon­i­cal and civ­il reme­dies will con­tin­ue,” Pavone says, which frankly I think is Pavone speak­ing out of some oth­er ori­fice than his mouth. My friend Mary Pez­zu­lo not­ed on her blog that Pavone has a habit of mak­ing emp­ty threats of legal action.

But unfor­tu­nate­ly Mr. Pavone’s prob­lem is larg­er than his lies and con­tra­dic­tions. It’s larg­er than his oppo­si­tion­al defi­ant dis­or­der. He con­tin­ues, on his Twit­ter feed, on Face­book, on Insta­gram, and in inter­views, to denounce his bish­op and the Vat­i­can. He there­by encour­ages defi­ance and hatred in his sup­port­ers. This is a scan­dal, and it may very well lead to his excom­mu­ni­ca­tion. A priest who behaves as Pavone does, and who los­es his priest­hood because of it, and who is tempt­ing the Church to excom­mu­ni­cate him, has put his immor­tal soul in grave jeop­ardy. And some­how he thinks this is the accept­able price for the mirage of end­ing abor­tion.

How can a man who is so vocif­er­ous­ly against abor­tion be so will­ing to abort his priest­hood, abort his vows, abort the truth, and abort his rela­tion­ship to the Church and to the true and liv­ing God?