EL PASO (TX)
El Paso Times
January 31, 2019
Zulekha Pitts
Catholic leaders in Texas on Thursday released the largest list of Catholic clergy accused of sexually abusing children since a Pennsylvania report in August 2018. According to the Texas list of 286 priests accused of abuse, only a fraction have been stripped of their clergy status, or laicized.
Laicize defined
To laicize a priest means to dismiss him from his clerical state and reduce him to the lay state, or secularize him, according to Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Catholic.com states that “laicization renders a cleric for ecclesiastical purposes the equivalent of a layman.”
The clerical state if a priest is a juridical status. A priest can lose his clerical state by requesting its removal or by having it taken away. Defrocking and unfrocking also are terms referring to the laicization of a priest.
When a priest is laicized
When a priest is laicized, it doesn’t mean that he is no longer a priest. It means that he is banned from exercising the rights fitting to the clerical state, according to an article on The Catholic World Report website. These privileges include celebrating Mass, listening to confessions and offering the sacraments.
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