THE WRATH OF THE BISHOP

It is the kind of snide denunciation usually reserved for dim-witted Hollywood moguls, not the sort of jab one would expect to find in a religious newspaper. But in the current issue of the National Catholic Reporter, columnist Tim Unsworth lambastes Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz as an incompetent cleric who has "been holding his cellular phone too close to his brain." What sparked the invective was Bruskewitz's move to excommunicate members of his diocese who belong to any of 12 groups deemed "perilous to the Catholic faith," including Call to Action, the Catholic lobby supported by 5,000 priests and nuns, which challenges church teaching on birth control and married priests.

Bruskewitz, one of only two U.S. bishops who forbids altar girls to assist at Mass, is the first American hierarch in more than 30 years to order a mass excommunication--an edict that prohibits Catholics from receiving the sacraments. His action has sparked dissent not only from area parishioners such as Jean and John Krejci, a former nun and former priest who said they would ignore the order, but also from church-law experts like Father James Coriden of Washington Theological Union, in Silver Spring, Maryland, who called the bishop's action, "harmful, wrong and canonically invalid."

Yet Bruskewitz has received encouragement from other bishops, and many parishioners back him too. "If you can't live up to what the church teaches," says Ed Petr of Hastings, Nebraska, "then you're in trouble."