"Army of One" Pro-Life Bishop Gracida: "In 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question...because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the [Texas Bishop's] Statement"
Bishop [Gracida] Excommunicates 2 In Texas for Abortion Stance
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Jul 24, 2021 — The phrase “army of one” alludes to a singular individual being just as effective as an entire army.
Bishop Rene Henry Gracida's 100th birthday is coming up on June 9 so I am reading his autobiography in preparation for the great day.
Bishop Gracida says "in 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question...because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the [Texas Bishop's] Statement":
In addition to all the grief lawsuits caused me in 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question. Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, Bishop of Galveston-Houston, invited the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston to establish a branch office in Houston. The branch office was opened and Father Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P. (the founding President of the NCBC) was appointed its director. He probably suggested to Archbishop Fiorenza that the Office should make a big splash in the news in order to announce its creation. Accordingly he set to work writing a statement on the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration from comatose patients. I had acquired a reputation as being theologically conservative among the bishops of Texas by that time. I received in the mail, from the Archbishop’s office, a document identified as “Draft No. 8″ of the Statement of the Bishops of Texas on the Withdrawal of Nutrition and Hydration From Comatose Patients.” I had not received any of the preceding seven drafts. I read the Statement and was angry, not only because I had been kept out of the loop as the Statement was being developed, but because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the Statement. The Statement called for the withdrawal of of nutrition and hydration, not just from terminally ill or dying patients but from all PVS patients, i.e. from all patients in a permanent vegetative state. The problem was that there have been too many cases where a ‘permanent” vegetative state proved to be a temporary vegetative state and if nutrition and hydration had been pulled from those patients it would have killed them.
I wrote a strong critique of Draft No. 8 and sent it to all the bishops of Texas. No one replied to my critique. Shortly after that we had a meeting of the Province and Draft No. 8 was adopted as a Statement of the Bishops of Texas, but not by all the bishops of Texas, Bishop Bernard Ganter and I voted against the adoption of the Statement. Shortly after that the newspaper of the Diocese of Dallas, the editor of which I had fired as the editor of the newspaper of the Diocese of Corpus Christi because of his extreme liberal editing of the paper, published a big expose of me as having dissented from a teaching of the Bishops of Texas, no mention was made of Bishop Ganter’s vote against the adoption of the Statement. The Dallas Diocesan papers story was picked up by NC News Service and spread all across the United States and I acquired a reputation as a dissenter. I did not want people to think of me in the same way they thought of the dissenters from Humanae Vitae, so I wrote a detailed dissent from the Statement and published it in my own Diocesan paper. Naturally, my published dissent was ignored by the media.
Shortly thereafter I attended a meeting of the NCCB Prolife Activities Committee, of which I was one of seven bishop members, and I moved that the Committee should issue a statement contradicting the stand taken by the bishops of Texas. The Committee approved my motion and Cardinal O’Connor appointed me and Bishop Donald L. Trautman of Eirie, Pennsylvania to write the statement. We did and submitted it at the next meeting of the Committee. Cardinal O’Connor felt that we should consult with the Holy See before issuing the statement so he sent it to Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF in Rome. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote back that we should publish the statement but that we could not say that he approved it since the Holy See had not yet formally studied the subject. We published it. The bishops of Pennsylvnia and the Bishops of Florida soon issued their own statements that mirrored what I had written and fourteen years later, in 2004, Pope John Paul II in an address to the Pontifical Commission of Life said basically the same thing that I had said in my dissent from the Statement of the bishops of Texas. It was a Pyrrhic victory for me however; my relations with most of the bishops of Texas plummeted. The bishops of Texas have never retracted their Statement and I doubt that they will ever forgive me for my dissent. My relations with them only got worse as the 1990’s progressed, as you will see!
On a positive note. If I may be allowed to boast, I will boast about a legal victory. This time as President of the Kenedy Foundation. In 1985 Gary Mauro, the Land Commissioner of the State of Texas awarded petroleum leases on 35,000 acres of land belonging to the Kenedy Foundation. Those acres bordered the inter-coastal canal and had been subject to flooding during hurricanes. Mauro claimed that they were tidal flats and belonged to the State of Texas. The Kenedy Foundation filed suit to prevent him from collecting royalties from the oil companies and denying his claim that the land was tidal. The lawsuit dragged on for six years through the district court, the apellate court and on to the Texas Supreme Court. All the courts upheld Mauro’s claim even though we showed that the tides in the Laguna Madre were less than 12 inches, not enough to cover the land. If Mauro’s victory in the courts had been allowed to stand the property rights of all owners of coastal property from Brownsville to the Louisiana border would have been in jeopardy. We appealed to the Texas Supreme Court for a rehearing of the case and we won; the Court said that the decision of the Court in 1954 in the Case of Humble Oil v Texas (the Gardner decision) was decisive and the land belonged to the Foundation. The foundation collected over $5,000,000 in royalties that had been held in escrow by the courts.
Bishop Drury had applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a permit for the Diocese to own and operatea low-power FM station in Corpus Christi. He retired before the FCC acted on his application. The permit was granted after I became Bishop of Corpus Christi and I built a telecommunications center to house the FM station which I named KLUX, incorporating the Latin word lux which means “light”; I wanted the station to be Christ’s light on the world. We also created TV production facilities and began to tape programs to be shown on public television and commercial stations. I applied for another permit to build a low-power FM station in Laredo while Laredo was still part of the Diocese. I named the station in Laredo KHOY, hoy being the Spanish word for “today.” We also built a TV production facility in Laredo equal to the one in Corpus Christi. Both stations have become powerful means of evangelization in South Texas and, in the case of KHOY in Mexico. KLUX has been linked to the world on the intenet and now can be listened to any place on earth.
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John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York
My becoming persona non grata with my brother bishops in Texas was to get even worse, it that were possible. The Board of Directors of the John G. and Marie Stella Memorial Foundation was made up of seven individuals with myself as President and Chairman, the Board was elected by the Members of the Foundation who were also members of the Board of Directors. The three other individuals of the Board reflected the same religious affiliations as the Members of the Foundation. The Court decision in 1963 that settled Brother Leo’s first lawsuit against the Foundation stipulated that from then on the group of Members of the Foundation would be 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 non-catholic, i.e. four Catholics and two non-catholics. The Board of Directors had the same religious proportions.
The Board of Directors made all the decisions about the operations of the Foundation. I was elected President of the Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1984 until 1997. The Board of Directors was made up professional people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, hospital administrators and government officials. While I provided leadership for the Board of Directors the Directors were not my puppets. They frequently rejected my ideas for the activities on the ranch that might provide additional income for the Foundation other than oil and gas. I never voted on the awarding of grants; I would speak in favor or against but I would never vote.
The Foundation gave away tens of millions of dollars in grants. Fifteen per cent of the grants had to be to non-religious entities by order of the Court in its 1963 decision. The Foundation gave millions of dollars in grants to all the dioceses of Texas with the exception of the two largest, richest dioceses, Dallas and Houston. It was inevitable that, human nature being what it is, some of the bishops felt that they should receive more. That may have motivated some to launch an attack on me or some of their motivation may have stemmed from their anger over the nutrition and hydration scandal; only God knows! Here is what happened.
In 1992 Bishop Leroy Matthieson, Bishop of Amarillo gave an interview to the Diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Tyler. In the interview he accused me of abusing my power as President of the Foundation. In short order Bishop Joseph Delaney of Fort Worth and Bishop John McCarthy jumped on Bishop Mattieson’s bandwagon and began to make public statements that were quoted in the media accusing me of abusing my authority as President of the Foundation. They persuaded Archbishop Flores to visit the Attorney General of Texas and to convey their concerns. Archbishop visited the Attorney General, Dan Morales, and he filed suit in the District Court in Travis County that had jurisdiction over charitable foundations asking the court to remove me from the Board of the Kenedy Foundation and to reorganize the Foundation’s governance.
The appearance of an attorney from the Attorney General’s office at the office of the Foundation demanding that all of the files of the Foundation be turned over to the Attorney General sent shock waves through the staff and Board of the Foundation. In addition to our Foundation attorney the Board retained the services of former Judge Jorge Rangel to defend the Board and the battle was joined.
The three bishops I named above continued to slander me in the media. Concerned about my good name and reputation and also conscious of the scandal they were giving to the Catholics of the United States I asked John Cardinal O’Connor to help by getting Rome to stop the three bishops from making their slanderous remarks about me in the media. It was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life!
I had know John O’Connor ever since I was Auxiliary Bishop in Miami and he was Chief of Chaplains to the United States Military. We met in 1972 when I celebrated a confirmation in Key West and again at Homestead Air Force Base. We hit it off since I was ex-military myself. Then over the years we worked together on committees of the N.C.C.B. We had served together on a special committee consisting of himself as Chairman and Cardinals James Hickey and Joseph Bernardin with Bishop Sean O’Malley and myself, charged by the President of the N.C.C.B with visiting Nicaragua, Guatamala, Honduras and El Salvador to gather information of the Church’s struggle with revolutionary forces. I had worked closely with him on the N.C.C.B. Committee for Prolife Activities. I counted on our friendship to persuade him to do as I asked.
It was a mistake because I forgot that during the decades when Brother Leo and Peter Grace had tried to gain control of the Foundation they had appealed for help, first to Cardinal Spellman and later to Cardinal Krol. Both Cardinals, far from trying to help Brother Leo and Peter Grace tried to gain control of the Foundation themselves. I should have remembered that. The love of money and the power that it gains was too much for Cardinal O’Connor to resist. He asked the Congregation of Bishops to appoint a special commission to investigate the Kenedy Foundation and Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops appointed Cardinal O’Connor chairman of the Special Commission with Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston and Bishop Raymond Burke, Bishop of La Crosse.
When the Attorney General of Texas, Dan Morales, filled suit against me and the Board of Directors of the Kenedy Foundation I recognized that anything could happen and I did not want the Diocese of Corpus Christi to be vacant for any period of time after I retired since that meant that there would not be a Bishop of Corpus Christi as a member of the Foundation and a member of its Board of Directors. So I decided that I would ask Rome for a Coadjutor Bishop to assist me in the last few years until I turned 75 and had to send my resignation to the Pope. Coadjutor Bishops usually do not have any power in the diocese until the Ordinary dies or retires. They only have the right to succeed the Ordinary and become Ordinary in his place. Until the Ordinary dies or retires the Coadjutor functions in the same way an Auxiliary Bishop would function.
So now I made the second biggest mistake of my life. I approached the Apostolic Nuncio and told him of my desire to have a Coadjutor with right of succession in place when I retired so that the Diocese Foundation relationship would not be jeopardized. He asked me if I had anyone in mind. I told him that while I was Chairman of the Hispanic Affairs Committee of the N.C.C.B. I was impressed with the Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez. The Nuncio told me to speak with Cardinal Law and see if he was willing to let Bishop Roberto go from Boston. I did, he agreed and I informed the Nuncio; Bishop Roberto was appoint my Coadjutor shortly thereafter without any special powers, only the right to succeed me. I say that the appointment of Bishop Roberto was a mistake because after Cardinal Gantin appointed the Commission Cardinal Law and Cardinal O’Connor had, in Bishop Roberto, an agent in my Chancery and he did betray my trust.
Cardinal O’Connor called a meeting of all the bishops of Texas to be held at the Marriott Hotel at DFW Airport. We all went. The Cardinal O’Connor, Cardinal Law and Bishop Burke listened as each bishop in turn expressed his opinion. Then Cardinal O’Connor adjourned the meeting and everyone departed. Some weeks later Cardinal O’Connor sent a letter to me and to the Board of Directors in which he proposed that the Board be replaced by a new Board made up of the Bishops of Texas. The Reaction of the Board was immediate and very negative.
Sarita Kenedy East had created a Foundation to be run by laity. The only cleric she named to be on her Foundation was her Bishop, Bishop Garriga of Corpus Christi. All her life, up until she came under the evil influence of Brother Leo, she bestowed her generous giving on people and institutions in South Texas, primarily Catholic but occasionally non-catholic. Under Brother Leo’s influence she gave generously to the Trappist Order, but never to Dioceses other than the Diocese of Corpus Christi. Cardinal O’Connor’s proposal was so foreign to the desires of Sarita that I told him he was violating a fundamental rule in the Church that the wishes of a donor were to be respected. He replied, “No one knows what she thought” which was absurd because we had documentary evidence of what she thought.
To my disgust my new Coadjutor, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez began to actively conspire with his mentor, Cardinal Law and Cardinal O’Connor. Years later in speaking with Cardinal Raymond Burke I learned from him that after the meeting in the Marriott Hotel at DFW Airport, Cardinal O’Connor never consulted him about the Diocese of Corpus Christi/Kenedy Foundation case. O’Connor was acting just as Spellman and Krol had acted years before in trying to gain control of the foundation.
My plan for the reorganization of the Foundation Board to meet the criticisms of the bishops of Texas was for the Board to be expanded to thirteen members. It would be composed of nine members who were laity from South Texas, plus the Bishop of Corpus Christi, and one other Bishop selected by the bishops at the provincial meeting and finally two other lay persons from elsewhere in the State of Texas. The Board of Directors voted approval of my plan and so I instructed our attorney, Jorge Rangel to begin negotiations with the Attorney General for the acceptance of our plan.
While Jorge Rangel was negotiating with the Attorney General’s office, Cardinal O’Connor send me a fax which read, “I am on my way to JFK Airport to fly to Rome to meet with Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, you must fax a letter to me immediately so that I get it before my flight leaves telling me that you accept my plan for the reorganization of the Foundation.” I was furious! I immediately faxed a letter to him at his Chancery office knowing that they would read it to him at the Airport over the telephone; I wrote to the Cardinal, “How dare you order me about like a servant. I am a successor of the Apostles just as you are! I will never accept your plan.” My anger at him was mitigated months later when I learned that he was suffering from a brain tumor which caused his death. No bishop in his right mind have sent that fax to me.
The Foundation was saved by the United States Justice Department launching an investigation into the conduct of Attorney General Dan Morales. He was indicted and convicted of accepting bribes and was sentenced to a prison term in a Federal Penitentiary. With Dan Morales, the tool of Bishops McCarthy, Delaney and Mathieson, in prison our attorney Jorge Rangel had no difficulty in persuading the Deputy Attorney General to accept the Board’s plan of reorganization. The Office of the Attorney General dropped the lawsuit that had been filed in Austin.
So ended the drama started by Bishops Mathieson, McCarthy and Delaney. But my troubles with the bishops of Texas did not end, they would never end. We, they, had crossed the Rubicon.
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Braunvieh Bull similar to my bulls, Cornerstone Amigo and Ambassador
Dan Morales’ lawsuit was settled but my troubles were not over. I had a Coadjutor Bishop, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez, who did not understand that he was no different from an auxiliary bishop except that he had the right to succeed me when I retired. He was constantly trying to usurp my authority. For example, when I went on vacation he fired several of the chancery employees. He did not have the power to hire or fire anyone and when I returned from vacation I had to rehire the people he had fired. I began to worry about what he would do to the Diocese after I retired and he succeeded me, my worries proved to be well founded
I had bought some land in the Hill Country and created Camp Corpus Christi as a place for young Catholics with or without their families could go for a vacation. Some of the poorer families never took vacations because they could not afford to do so. Every summer we had a week at the Camp devoted to all the altar boys in the Diocese. I would go to the Camp and spend the week with the altar boys. It was a great experience for me and it was a valuable means of promoting vocations to the priesthood.
In the first summer Bishop Roberto was in the Diocese I suggested to him that he should go spend the week with the altar boys at Camp Corpus Christi. He agreed to do so. When he came back after the week I asked him, “How was the week?” He replied, “It was the worst week of my life!”
I was close to celebrating my 74th birthday and I realized that in just one more year I would be 75 years old and on my 75th Birthday I would be required to submit to the Pope a letter of resignation. The more I thought about it the more I questioned why I should wait a year to do it. I was mentally and physically exhausted from the Kenedy lawsuit, the attacks by the bishops, other ‘slip and fall’ lawsuits and now the daily problems created for me by my Coadjutor. I decided that I would ask the Pope to let me retire a year early. I wrote to Pope John Paul II and asked him for permission to retire. He granted me permission and so on April Fools Day, April 1, 1997, I retired.
My worst fears about Bishop Roberto were soon realized. He closed Camp Corpus Christi and began closing different chancery offices such as the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Pro-life Activities and others. It was a disaster. Many of the programs that I had started that were successful were now shut down. Some people were comparing him to Attila the Hun laying waste the countryside. Thank God the Diocese of Corpus Christi was spared further damage when, after just two years as Ordinary, Pope John Paul II promoted Bishop Roberto to be the Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is not the place to recount all that happened in San Juan after he became its Archbishop. Suffice it to say that he has been the subject of an Apostolic Visitation and has been asked by the Holy See to resign. [http://extraordinarybishop.blogspot.com/2014/09/here-is-series-of-posts-by-bishop-rene.html]
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis's Amoris Laetitia.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost - Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
- Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
- If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the"Roman Rite Communities" like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & "Eminent Canonists and Theologians" by "Resist[ing]" him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
- LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"
- On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."
- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents."
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
- Tucker Carlson's Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written" according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1
- A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: "Anitfa 'Agent Provocateurs'":
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God's Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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