Milwaukee Catholic priest faces excommunication after apostatizing

A Milwaukee-area Catholic priest sanctioned this year for indirectly violating the seal of the confessional now faces excommunication after launching a new parish with a breakaway diocese a few miles away.

Father David Verhasselt, once a popular priest at St. Catherine of Alexandria Parish in Oconomowoc, was named pastor this month at the newly founded Holy Name of Jesus Evangelical Catholic Church in nearby Ashippun, taking at least some of his former parishioners with him.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Verhasselt will be given an opportunity to reverse his decision and would incur "immediate excommunication" if he does not.

Verhasselt has declined repeated requests to be interviewed. But the Chicago-based Evangelical Catholic Diocese of the Northwest said he withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church in accordance with canon law.

"For the record, the Roman Catholic Church cannot declare a former member of its body 'excommunicated' after the fact," it said in an email to the Journal Sentinel. "We are currently residing within the 21st century."

continue at JS (worth the read)

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Part of the prayer of formal excommunication(1569):

Our assurance, O Lord, is thy expressed word; and therefore, in boldness of the same, here I, in thy name, and at the commandment of this thy present congregation, cut off, seclude, and excommunicate from thy body, and from our society, N., as one person scandalous, proud, a contemner, and one member, for this present [time] altogether corrupted and pernicious to the body. And this his sin (albeit with sorrow of heart), by virtue of our ministry, we bind and pronounce the same to be bound in heaven and earth. We further give over into the hands and power of the devil the said N., to the destruction of his flesh, straitly charging all that profess the Lord Jesus, to whose knowledge this our sentence shall come, to repute and hold the said N. accursed, and unworthy of the familiar society of Christians: declaring unto all men, that such as hereafter before his repentance shall haunt or familiarly accompany with him, are partakers of his impiety, and subject to the like condemnation. This our sentence, O Lord Jesus, pronounced in thy name, and at thy commandment, we humbly desire thee to ratify according to thy promise. And yet, Lord, thou that camest to save that which was lost, look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy, if thy good pleasure be; and so pierce thou his heart that he may feel in his breast the terrors of thy judgments, that by thy grace he fruitfully may be converted to thee; and so damning his own impiety, he may be with like solemnity received within the bosom of thy church, from the which this day (with grief and dolour of our hearts) he is ejected.

 Prayers.