Jury finds [SSPX] church liable for slander, distress

POST FALLS -- A Kootenai County jury on Thursday found an ultra-conservative Catholic church liable for slandering a former parishioner.

Jurors unanimously awarded Anthony J. Ferro $200,000 in compensatory and $600,000 in punitive damages after an eight-day civil trial in 1st District Court.

Ferro, a Coeur d'Alene wine distributor filed suit against the Post Falls Immaculate Conception Chapel of the Society of St. Pius X in August 2003, claiming a former priest interfered with his marriage and slandered him in front of the congregation.

He asked jurors in his closing to award $250,000 compensatory and $750,000 punitive.

Manwaring told 1st District Judge Charles Hosack he would submit a judgment form for his signature within a day.

Ferro claimed the Rev. James H. Doran "abused his office as spiritual director for his parishioners" when he counseled his now-ex-wife without his consent and outside his presence. He also claimed Doran "ordered" him to undergo psychiatric evaluations, then published libelous statements about his mental condition to other church members.

The suit named Doran, the Post Falls priory, as well as the entire religious order as defendants.

The jury went into deliberations late Wednesday morning and returned with the verdict shortly after noon Thursday.

The jury found Doran inflicted intentional emotional distress upon Ferro. For that, they awarded the $200,000.

They also found that the Rev. Peter Scott, as the agent for the society, approved Doran's conduct toward Ferro.

Ferro claimed following Doran's arrival in Post Falls in 1992, the priest "began to engage in a host of inappropriate actions during his term as parish priest."

He said Doran began to take private horse riding lessons from his wife which were "hurtful and shameful" because they "unjustly provided Mrs. Ferro greater standing with the parish priest than her husband."

Ferro also claimed Doran engaged in private counseling sessions outside his presence and against his wishes, despite assurances by Doran the sessions would involve both spouses.

Those sessions, Ferro said, "were inappropriate, held in bad faith and caused great harm" to the marriage.

Ferro said Doran ordered him to undergo a psychiatric examination. The results, Ferro said, concluded he suffered from "no mental defects, imbalances, instabilities, disorders or other illnesses."

But on Christmas Eve 1993, Ferro alleged, Doran sent a letter to about a dozen people which contained "false, malicious and defamatory statements."

Ferro claimed in the letter, included in the court filing, Doran suggested the psychiatrist was not to be believed. Ferro said it caused "great division within (his) family."

Ferro also claimed Doran, in a sermon given in March 1996 to more than 450 parishioners, defamed him by questioning his adequacy as a father, alleging disobedience to Doran's orders and that he was impossible to deal with. The sermon also allegedly instructed parishioners to have no social or business dealings with Ferro.

Ferro and his wife, who was at one time married to actor David Soul, split in 1994 and underwent a two-year-long legal battle for custody of their daughter. Doran's letter was used as ammunition during that fray.

The filing also claims Doran said in his sermon he ordered the couple to divorce, resulting in Ferro being "ostracized by a large percentage of the parishioners."

Ferro also claimed Doran formed an "honor guard" to protect him and members of that guard ridiculed him and even went so far as to pantomime assaults upon him.

In 1999, Ferro published "The Assault of Catholic Fatherhood in Post Falls Idaho," a lengthy recitation of his battle with Doran and church hierarchy.

Ferro said the actions of the priests became so severe it prevented him from attending Mass at the church, and he was threatened he would be arrested for trespassing if he came to the church.

Why? This is perfectly believeable.

Yeah, perfectly believable. Is that the best you can do - a toy earthlink site that looks like it was built by an 8 year old? Its webmaster a disgruntled SSPX reject whose entire Catholicism consists of spending his days devoted to bashing the Society. That article and the site are nothing but the perturbed musings of a shut-in grinding an axe. Few facts, lots of rambling opinions from an army of one.

If you're going to try to smear the society, get a real source - and maybe a real web site to go with it. Here's your favorite webmaster is in his humpty-dumpster hole:

Even if this priest is the above article is wayward, the truth everyone knows is that you can search all you like and count "bad" Society priests on one hand. For every one you find, there will be thousands of his counterparts in the New Order. Only as opposed to being sued for slander, they're being jailed for having sex on little boys.

Nice try though.

Actually, I thought the article was understated, terse and restrained. Furthermore, considering that it was written in 1992 (if I've understood it correctly), it's position with respect to Bp. Williamson and his theories has proven to be somewhat prophetic. He has since been exiled to Argentina, has he not?

I also thought that the author's dissection of how a schism comes about was especially accurate. Passages such as this are spot on:

Once you have taken a stand in opposition to authority, once you build churches, once you have properties and benefactors and mortgages, once you pour into your people a crusading, persecuted spirit and become a kind of god to your world-wide flock once all of this has happened, it is tremendously difficult to bow your head again to the institution you have fought for so long, with the added humiliation of losing all your property and your power. It is why the Old Catholics, for example, still exist as varied dots of egoism after a century and a half, or why the Anglican Church still exists as a husk without a doctrine after four centuries.

As for the following, it is a perfect paraphrase of the posts of ultima ratio on these boards:

Sliding around the facts of schism and excommunication are typical for defenders of a group in schism. The same arguments were heard in the Schism of Utrecht, in the establishment of the Old Catholics, and during the creation of Protestant churches in the 16th century. Always a higher law is appealed to so that a specific law can be circumvented:

According to Martin Luther, "These [church laws] hold good only so long as they are not injurious to Christianity and the laws of God. Therefore, if the Pope deserves punishment, these laws cease to bind us, since Christendom would suffer."

According to Marcel Lefebvre, "In the Church there is no law or jurisdiction which can impose on a Christian a diminution of his faith. All the faithful can and should resist whatever interferes with their faith.... If they are forced with an order putting their faith in danger of corruption, there is an overriding duty to disobey."

I'm in no position to comment on his chronology of how the episcopal consecrations came about. Others may be. I can well understand though, why this article would be unwelcome to SSPXers. The image of a principled and consistent Lefebvre resisting the Vatican bogeymen is replaced by a story of tangled, intra-SSPX politics and intrigue.

This is how I responded to Totus Tuus on another thread, regarding my assertion that Rome is imposing a new religion:
__________________________________________________

1. Here is what Cardinal Ratzinger himself has admitted, in a speech before the bishops of Chile on July 13, 1988:

"The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest. This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which previously was considered most holy--the form in which the liturgy was handed down--suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited."

The problem is the Cardinal is in opposition to his own Pontiff who allows such anomalies. The Pope himself has spoken many times of a "New Advent," a "Second Pentecost", indicating he fully believes that the Church is starting up all over again in some new way--a new start from zero, as the Cardinal says.

So let's begin right here and admit that what has been happening the past forty years is not a renewal, it is not a reform--it is a revolution, both in the way the faith is believed and in practice of the faith. Postconciliar "Catholicism", in fact, has far more in common with the beliefs and practices of mainline Protestantism than with the Catholicism of only just forty years ago. In this sense--a very real sense--it is a new religion. As Klaus Gamber pointed out, St. Augustine of the fifth century would have been quite at home at a Catholic liturgy only forty years ago, but would have been totally disoriented by the Novus Ordo, not recognizing it as truly Catholic.

2. You say, "This would mean that us Catholics faithful to the Holy See are not His Church and therefore this makes us the ones in schism."

Not exactly, since you intend no schism and schism resides in the intent. But that said, you are correct after a fashion. Faithfulness to the Holy See at a time when the Holy See itself has departed from Tradition is no guarantee these days that one is practicing the Catholic faith. What clouds the issue is the fact that once upon a time the Holy See was so closely identified with the Church itself that to speak of one was to speak of the other. This is no longer true. In fact, the Holy See itself--the Vatican apparatus--is riddled with apostates, men of little faith, modernists committed to the wrecking of the Church's own Tradition. Some in the bureaucracy, of course, are true men of faith and true Catholics. But many are not.

So of course there is great confusion. And the Pope himself adds to it by making statements and positing actions that scandalize the faithful, suggesting that he believes himself not only to be above Tradition, but that he may even create it. But Tradition is not something popes can create. By definition it is what has been passed down. It is what is inherited, not what is invented. That the Pope actually seems to believe he can invent Tradition, that he believes it is merely whatever he decides it is, and that he is, in fact, the Lord of Tradition and not merely its servant is shocking and scandalous. So also are his many assaults against Tradition. I don't pretend to understand his motives, however. By the same token, it is he, not the SSPX, who goes around praying with witchdoctors and elevating heretics to the college of cardinals.

In any case, you are very wrong to compare the SSPX and other like-minded traditionalists with the heresies and schisms of the past. This is because the Society rejects no doctrine whatsoever and intends no break with the Pontiff. It merely seeks the right to hold onto Tradition and not be forced to reject the Catholic faith. For this it is being persecuted. Yet, as in the words of St. Vincent of Lerins fifteen hundred years ago:

"What should the Catholic Christian therefore do if some part of the Church arrives at the point of detaching itself from the universal communion and the universal faith? What else can he do but prefer the general body which is healthy to the gangrenous and corrupted limb? And if some new contagion strives to poison, not just a small part of the Church but the whole Church at once, then again his great concern will be to attach himself to Antiquity which obviously cannot any more be seduced by any deceptive novelty."

3. All the heresies you mention had as their genesis some rejection of established doctrine. Arianism, in particular, is instructive. Almost the whole Church rejected the traditional teaching on Christ's divinity in the fourth century. One bishop alone bucked the tide--and he was opposed at one point by a weak pontiff. Only Athanasius and his small band of followers held on to the true faith. So your comparison is faulty. It is not to the Arians that you should compare the SSPX, but to that small band of outcasts who stood fast and held onto the faith in the face of almost universal hostility.

So also is the comparison to Martin Luther erroneous. Luther was a revolutionist, the SSPX is not. Luther opposed the Pope unjustly, the SSPX does not. Luther promulgated theological novelties, the SSPX promulgates only the perennial teachings and practices of the Catholic Church from time immemorial. No, the real comparison is between Luther and the modernists who now inhabit the highest reaches of the Vatican. You say, "Come home," but there is nothing to come home to. The faith is now found in hovels, not in palaces in Rome--in small chapels scattered hither and yon across a landscape of disaster.

128 posted on 12/21/2004 2:07:31 AM PST by ultima ratio
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I would add this to what I've just posted--namely, that there can be no schism without intent. That is impossible. In fact, disobedience per se is not a schismatic act. In the case of Archbishop Lefebvre, his so-called disobedience wasn't even excommunicatable, since he acted in a state of necessity covered by the Pope's own Canon Law and subject to the Archbishop's, not the Pope's, discretion. There never was, therefore, any excommunicatable offense.

The Pope may argue otherwise, but this would not make him correct. In this he would be as fallible as any other man--and in obvious contradiction to his own canons. Certainly no pope can unilaterally decide someone is schismatic--especially when that person declares over and over his loyalty to the Pontiff and prays for the Pontiff daily. Nor can the Archbishop's refusal to agree to be complicit in the destruction of the ancient Mass be construed as schism by the Pope. This is because it is a doctrinal teaching of the Church that no pope has the power to destroy. His job is to protect Tradition, not to destroy it.

The Archbishop, after all, did not act in a vacuum. He had decades of experience with modernism behind him and understood clearly that it was out to wreck Catholic Tradition. He saw even back then how destruction of the faith began with the destruction of the liturgy. The Church was in a process of auto-demolition everywhere. This was not an illusion on his part--it was observable fact. Yet he struggled with his dilemma--how to remain loyal at one and the same time to the pontiff who was in denial and to the faith that was being threatened. Finally the Pontiff pushed him to the wall--and he chose his faith. For this the Pope harshly condemned him.

But this condemnation is a legal reality only. It has, of course, legal ramifications within the Church since the Pontiff is the Supreme Legislator in the Church. But from a another perspective the Pope's condemnation is morally compromised. This is because while no pope is limited from below legally, he is always limited from above morally--by the Divine Law itself. No pope therefore may punish a man who is wholly innocent without violating God's will--especially someone as dedicated to the faith as Archbishop Lefebvre--and especially when the Pope did so without having seriously regarded the sincerity of the Archbishop's resistance on behalf of that faith. If the Pontiff does this, he is acting unjustly and his condemnation is a mere moral nullity--though, as I say, it retains its legal effect.

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