Laicization of a priest.

This week Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, a Vietnam veteran and a well-known peace activist, was notified by his superiors in the Maryknoll order that he must withdraw his views on the ordination of women as priests and cease all involvement in, support of this cause. If not he would be reduced to the lay state and excommunicated from the Church. He would cease to be a priest and no longer  allowed to celebrate the Eucharist. This was an order that had come down from Rome.

 Without mentioning that Pope Benedict XVI has written that man's conscience is the final arbitrer of the morality of his action, superior even to directives from the Pope, and that one is bound to obey it, this was the order. When he was ordained