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	Temple Police Get Their Man The Australian May 7, 2011 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/temple-police-get-their-man/story-e6frg6nf-1226051428753 It was an early break from tradition in 1993 for the then newly ordained bishop, and a symbol of the progressive style he brought from his former Gold Coast parish to ultra-conservative Toowoomba. Not everyone liked it. Some priests and, later, a secret fundamentalist group of Catholics from in and out of the diocese - dubbed the "temple police" - began voicing opposition, sending a stream of letters of complaint to Rome. On Monday, after an emotional letter from Morris was read out at masses across the Darling Downs, they finally got their man. In a tersely worded Vatican announcement the next day, Morris, 67, became the first Australian bishop in living memory to be publicly sacked, under the guise of "early retirement", for doctrinal disobedience. The extraordinary move, pushed by Pope Benedict XVI, was made even more compelling by Morris's refusal to tread the well-worn path of other dumped bishops - who retire for "ill health" - and go quietly. Instead, Morris - who last year set a brave precedent in taking real action over a sex-abuse scandal at a Toowoomba church school - accused the Pope of running a latter-day Inquisition against him and ruling over bishops through fear. "It has been my experience and the experience of others that Rome controls bishops by fear, and if you ask questions or speak openly on subjects that Rome declares closed ... you are censored very quickly, told your leadership is defective ... and are threatened with dismissal," he said in a letter to priests in his diocese. The sacking, which followed last year's dismissal of rebel Brisbane priest Peter Kennedy, has renewed debate on the rigidity of the Catholic Church in the modern world, and of the unwavering rule the Vatican has over clergy. In the end, it was a 2006 Advent pastoral letter to parishioners that was the undoing of Morris. The letter raised the option, in the face of a shortage of priests, of ordaining women and married men and recognising the Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church orders. An official account has been obtained by The Weekend Australian of the events leading up to Morris's effective sacking, put together in a report by the bishop's "consultors" - a group of priests appointed under canon law to each bishop. In their report, the consultors said Morris came to the diocese with an "easy and open approach" - evidenced by his removal of the Roman collar, which immediately rubbed people up the wrong way. His sartorial style can be seen in a photograph of him with a clown face, sent to The Weekend Australian by his critics. The consultors' report gives a rare insight into the workings of the Vatican and the unforgiving stance it took against Morris, first demanding his resignation in 2007 - less than a year after the offending letter. But it also shows that the 2006 letter was a culmination of more than a decade of discord with Rome, stretching back to the 1990s when the Vatican cracked down on the illicit substitution of "general absolution" for the practice of individual confession of sins to a priest. In the consultors' report, Toowoomba Vicar-General Peter Dorfield noted that, after his appointment in 1993, Morris established guidelines for the use of general absolution. The report said the general absolution issue led to a dispute between the bishop and Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Nigerian-born Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. "Some of this dispute took on a personal aspect", according to the report. But it was the 2006 letter that brought things to a head. In 1994, pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter declared that the conversation about the ordination of women had ended, with the late pope amending the Code of Canon Law in 1998 to make such discussions a punishable offence. Clergy breaking the rule risked suspension, removal from office and excommunication. Within weeks of his letter being sent to Rome by one of his detractors, Morris was called to Rome to explain - a request he refused in February 2007 on the grounds he was busy with "serious pastoral reasons". The following month, Morris was notified that Archbishop Charles Chaput from Denver, Colorado, had been appointed Apostolic Visitor to Toowoomba. He arrived in April, spending his first night with Archbishop John Bathersby in Brisbane. Curiously, Bathersby claimed this week that he didn't know why Morris had been sacked: "I don't know why it happened, you see, and I would very much like to know." A native American and member of the Capuchin order of priests, Chaput, now 66, has been an outspoken critic of US President Barack Obama over liberalised abortion laws and bioethics. After a three-day visit to Toowoomba - where he interviewed supporters and opponents of Morris - Chaput delivered his report to the Congregation of Bishops in Rome in May 2007. At the same time, according to the consultors' report, Morris was in Rome for a scheduled meeting with three of the Pope's kitchen cabinet - cardinals Giovanni Battista Re, William Levada and Arinze - but it did not go ahead. And Morris has never been shown Chaput's report. Several months later, in September 2007, Morris got the gist of the report when he received an unsigned memo from the Congregation of Bishops asking him to resign. Morris was shocked, writing back to Rome asking for time to "reflect" on the memorandum and promising to reply after his October holidays. But Rome wasn't willing to wait. On October 3, 2007, the Congregation of Bishops upped the ante, stating the request for the bishop's resignation was "being made in the name of the Holy Father". Morris wrote to Re - head of the Congregation for Bishops - saying he would meet the cardinals in January if he could be accompanied by Bathersby - a longtime friend - and Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson, president of the Australian Episcopal Conference. The meeting was booked for Morris but Re refused to allow the progressive Bathersby to attend. Morris was also "discouraged" from bringing a canonical adviser to the meeting in Rome with cardinals Re, Levada and Arinze. "The bishop also asked to speak with the Holy Father but was told this would only be permitted after he had resigned," the report said. Morris listened, and a few days later formally wrote to Re saying he would not step down. After Re responded, again calling on Morris to resign, the embattled bishop wrote a more formal "statement of position" that was sent to the three cardinals. Morris also wrote to the Vatican's Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura - the highest court in the Catholic Church - but was told he could not appeal because "no legal proceedings had taken place". In October 2008, Re demanded Morris resign by the end of November and, if he didn't, the "bishop would be removed". Again, Morris refused in writing before penning a Christmas Eve letter to the Pope. It elicited an invitation to meet the pontiff in June the next year, along with Wilson. "It was obvious that the Pope had been thoroughly briefed as he reiterated the demands of the three cardinals and indicated that the bishop's talents lay elsewhere than as the bishop of a diocese," the report said about the meeting. "The Pope urged Archbishop Wilson to work with Bishop Morris to find him a suitable national position in the Australian church." Morris had again refused and, a month later, Re instructed him to submit his resignation "as he had promised the Pope he would do". "The bishop maintained he had not made such a promise," the report said. He wrote to the Pope in November 2009 saying that, "in conscience", he could not resign. "On 22 December, 2009, Pope Benedict replied to Bishop Morris requesting that Bishop Morris resign from office and reminding him that there is no appeal from papal decision," the report said. "The Pope repeated the serious concerns he had with Bishop Morris's position on the ordination of women and recognition of the orders of Anglicans and other churches." The turning point came in January last year when Wilson travelled to Rome carrying a written proposal from Morris that he would retire in October 2013, when he turned 70 - bishops normally retire at 75. In the letter, Morris stated that if the proposal were not accepted, he would be willing to go in the middle of this year - after seeing through the mediation process for the sex-abuse case in his diocese. Re wrote back saying the Pope would accept the "proposal" allowing him to remain in office until this month but made no mention of the sex-abuse case. "While the bishop's offer was to 'retire', the letter used the term 'resign'," the report said. With the sex-abuse case dragging on, Morris wrote to the Vatican, and later the Pope, late last year asking for his departure to be delayed until the mediation was finalised. Morris's appeal for more time was refused and on February 21 the Apostolic Nuncio (Vatican ambassador) to Australia, Giuseppe Lazzarotto, told Morris to resign, informing him that it would be announced on May 2. Morris again refused, saying it would be an "admission of guilt" to the allegations against him. But he knew his time was up and, in March, he wrote to Lazzarotto accepting "early retirement".
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