From News in Brief, December 2006
Anti-life priest now Bloc Québécois candidate

          Montreal-Fr. Raymond Gravel has been acclaimed as the Bloc Québécois candidate for a November 27 by-election in the riding of Repentigny (Globe and Mail, Oct. 30, 2006).

          So what is special about that? Three things.

          First, under Canon Law, priests are not supposed to belong to political parties and are prohibited from running for, or holding, public office, unless there is serious necessity for the "protection of the rights of the Church or the promotion of the common good." The reason is clear enough, as Fr. Raymond de Souza explained so well in the November 4 National Post. "Priests are to be instruments of unity in service of the Gospel. Political office by its nature requires making choices on political options on which the Gospel requires no particular position-e.g., the sovereignty of Quebec. Those choices must not be confused with the Gospel itself, and priests in public office confuse just such issues."

          Second, there is no serious necessity for Fr. Gravel to run, as Canon Law stipulates. So why is he running? Because his bishop, Gilles Lussier, has allowed him to do so. Here is where we disagree with Fr. de Souza who, after inspecting the diocesan website, drew the conclusion that because Fr. Gravel may not exercise his priestly ministry during the period of his political activity, his bishop had not given him permission to run.

          LifeSiteNews, on the other hand, reports that on contacting the diocesan spokesman Gilles Ferland, it turns out that neither the bishop nor the diocesan priest council offered objections to Fr. Gravel's new career. All the bishop has done is to tell (or ask) Fr. Gravel to discontinue any sacramental actions for the duration of his political career; in other words, to discontinue for a while, his priestly services. Also, "part of the agreement is that Gravel would not take positions as a politician that 'go against the doctrines of the Church'" (Oct. 30, 2006).

          That brings us to point three. Fr. Gravel has been denouncing the Church's moral teaching for years, including the Church's rejection of abortion, homosexual activity, and same-sex 'marriage.' Gravel was a 'gay' prostitute for six years as a youth, and neither the seminary nor ordination has reformed his views, precisely the kind of person the November 2005 Vatican document on priests and homosexuality warned against. He has expressed these opinions on TV and radio and wherever else he had the chance.

          Fr. Gravel was one of the 19 dissenting priests who signed the open letter "Trop, c'est trop" ("Enough is enough") in February 2006, objecting to Catholic moral teaching and Vatican authority (see C.I., April 2006, pp. 15-17, "Dissent on Vatican document in Canada," and Sept. 2006, pp. 30-31, NIB, "Quebec priest's scandalous views going unchecked"). More recently he wrote a letter to the editor of the Quebec newsweekly Actualité (Sept. 15, 2006) in which he asserted that "Cardinal Ouellet is not a true Catholic, that he is not representative of Quebec Catholics, and that, indeed, he is against the Gospel."

          Comment: In view of his vociferous denunciations of Catholic doctrine in the past, it is difficult to believe that Fr. Gravel will hold to this agreement. It is more likely that, once elected, he will unfortunately be perceived as a Catholic priest at every radio or TV interview or show, and continue to denounce Catholic moral teaching. In the House of Commons, he will present himself as a legitimate spokesman for the Catholic community and do the same thing there.

          As for Bishop Lussier, he has exceeded his authority in allowing and not preventing Fr. Gravel to run for political office. The bishop's refusal to permanently suspend Fr. Gravel now may endanger the efforts to overturn same-sex 'marriage.' We have informed the Papal Nuncio and the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy about this situation.

From News in Brief, January 2007
Fr. Raymond Gravel elected to Parliament

Ottawa-The dissident Quebec Catholic priest who ran for federal political office, despite Vatican pronouncements against such actions, has been elected to Parliament. He becomes the first priest to sit in the House of Commons since 1980 when Pope John Paul II prohibited priests in politics. Fr. Raymond Gravel, representing the Bloc Québécois, captured two-thirds of the vote in a November 27 by-election to take the Montreal-area riding of Repentigny. This took place in the wake of statements from the bishop of Joliette, Most Rev. Gilles Lussier, who confirmed the Vatican had given no "green light" for Fr. Gravel to run. In a controversial manoeuvre, Bishop Lussier declared Gravel could keep his priestly status while active in a political party, but would be released from the exercise of priestly ministry.

Of even greater concern to faithful Catholics than Fr. Gravel's electoral run, however, is his long-time dissent from Church teachings on key matters such as abortion and homosexuality. A former male prostitute who went on to serve drinks in a Montreal leather bar before entering the priesthood, Fr. Gravel has been described as "openly gay" in press reports-although he told one newspaper recently he is not homosexual. He also holds non-Catholic positions on same-sex 'marriage,' abortion, and the ordination of women. Despite pledging to abstain on some moral issues, he plans to vote against reopening the debate on marriage. He is "rarely. afraid to take on the Church establishment" (Montreal Gazette, Nov. 28, 2006; Canadian Catholic News, Nov. 29, 2006).

In a 2005 interview printed in a Montreal homosexual magazine, Fr. Gravel opined that most priests don't respect their vows of celibacy and that 50 per cent of Quebec priests are homosexual (Tor. Star, Nov. 27, 2006). In 2004, he boasted in a radio interview that he was "pro-choice and there is not a bishop on earth that will prevent me from receiving Communion, not even the Pope" (LifeSiteNews.com, Nov. 28, 2006).

Fr. Gravel's election as a Member of Parliament had an immediate impact throughout Canada as the nation's media from coast to coast reported on his "colourful past," to use the expression of the Toronto Star (Nov. 28, 2006), and his present dissent from the Church's position on abortion, same-sex 'marriage,' and women's ordination.

The episode has prompted an outcry among faithful Catholics not only in Canada, but elsewhere in the world. Submissions to an online forum in the U.S.-based Catholic World News magazine (Nov. 2, 2006), for example, were sharply critical of Bishop Lussier's handling of Fr. Gravel's candidacy. "The tactically limited truthfulness and sheer subterfuge that we meet in every aspect of the Gravel story is exasperating," wrote one poster. "It's clear they're not levelling with us. The distinction between Gravel's priestly status and his exercise of priestly ministry may satisfy a canon lawyer, but 90 per cent of the faithful (and the public) will understand simply that a notorious gay-activist priest, who has not been defrocked, is running for office without public opposition from the Church. If this is pastoral solicitude, what does pastoral malfeasance look like?"

            On December 7, 2006, Fr. Gravel abstained from voting on the motion to re-open the same-sex 'marriage.'