ABOUT A PIECE OF NEWS:
On April 30th Dr Günther Storck was consecrated a bishop, at Etiolles, a suburb of Paris, by Mgr L.M. Guérard des Lauriers. Here is what can be known about the ordination:
- Though the sacrament was completed publicly, no other bishop took any part
in dispensing it.
- No other bishop had been invited to the liturgical function or even told about it.
- There were reasons preventing Fr. Storck from being eligible into the first order of the clergy.
* After being ordained into priesthood (in 1973), he had had himself incardinated in the Spring of 1976 into a modernist bishop's diocese of Formosa.
* He had planned to collaborate with Mgr Vitus Chang, who used to say the so-called N.O.M, but who died prematurely. The Chinese was to ordain the seminarists whom Fr. Storck was educating in a seminary whose Headmaster he was himself.
* He also performed liturgical functions and collaborated with obscure schismatic bishops (?) such as Boris Rothermund of Schlossberg, for whom he made his seminarists serve Mass and from whom he let them have Holy Communion. We can also quote the name of Schmitz, of Villingen, whom he recommended for ordinations, as a consecrating bishop. There is Müller, from Berlin, whom he got installed in various places, Ulm included, there is also Übelhör, of Pappenheim, the very one who ruined the Mass center at Lucern.
Mgr Guérard was cognizant of these excommunicating faults that Fr. Storck had committed. (cf. Codex Iuris Canonici, canon 2338 § 2b)
- After being casually told about the prepared ordination, Mgr Louis Vezelis, the bishop of Rochester/New-York, who also received intimations that similar promotions into episcopacy were likely to take place also in America later, rang up Mgr Guérard. Mgr L. Vezelis begged him to give the designed promotion up altogether, or at least to postpone the consecration till they met at Etiolles, where he was to call at his house on the 14th of the soon-incipient month of May. There they would jointly examine the indictement against the would-be bishop.
- From other places too, people asked Mgr Guérard to procrastinate, while stating their objections.
- Fr. Storck was personally called and begged to put off the intended ordination.
- All this proved futile, and the order was eventually conferred, validly forsooth; but Storck's episcopal powers have been illicitly bestowed on him, because he was impeached as a candidate. (CIC, canon 2260, § 1).
- Mgr Storck is excommunicated: therefore he may not use the Holy Powers that have been transmitted on to him. (cf. CIC, canon 2263 § 1).
THE LATEST NEWS:
The German "News from the Catholic League" from Switzerland, (SAKA-INFORMATIONEN) state in their June-1984 issue that "for personal (?) reasons Mgr Storck renounces fulfilling his duties as a bishop, for the time being."
We can find in the CIC (canon 2338 § 2b) what follows: "THE EXCOMMUNICATING CENSURE APPERTAINING TO THE HOLY SEE IS IMMEDIATELY INCURRED WITHOUT FURTHER PROCEDURE BY ANY CLERIC WHO WILLINGLY AND CONSCIOUSLY TAKES PART IN DIVINE WORSHIP WITH A VITANDUS EXCOMMUNICATED ONE or COUNTENANCES SUCH WORSHIP."
In his "Treatise on canonical laws" Jones adds about this delict (Vol III, p. 588): "According to the catholic tradition it is obvious that this law deals with only one sort of offence, for participation essentially consists in allowing a vitandus discharging the functions required by catholic liturgy. Therefore this way of trespassing can be open only to persons vested with some authority in the church, such as an ordinary bishop in his diocese, a rector in his parish, the superior of a cloister etc... |
