Louisiana Deacon's Excommunication Appeal: A Canon Law Challenge

Louisiana deacon’s excommunication appeal tests canon law in the shadow of abuse crisis

A priest stands at the entrance of a church, facing a scenic view with stormy skies. The interior is dimly lit with candles around an altar, while books on canon law and a gavel are positioned in the foreground.

The unresolved appeal of a Louisiana deacon now before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is not merely a personal grievance prolonged by bureaucratic delay; it is a juridical and ecclesiological test case. At issue is whether the Church will apply the law of schism with formal consistency, or whether it will reckon—adequately and coherently—with the moral and pastoral collapse that has marked its handling of abuse cases in the modern period. The case of Scott Peyton exposes a fault line that can no longer be managed by ambiguity: the tension between the Church’s objective legal order and her wounded credibility as a moral authority.

Peyton, a permanent deacon ordained in 2012 in the Diocese of Lafayette, left active ministry following the abuse of his son by a diocesan priest, later convicted. His departure from Catholic practice, and subsequent attendance at an Anglican congregation, prompted a decree of excommunication issued by J. Douglas Deshotel in March 2024. That decree is now under appeal in Rome, with his canonist, Dawn Eden Goldstein, arguing that the penalty is both juridically unwarranted and pastorally unjust.

The facts, as reported, are not in dispute in their broad outline. A priest—Fr. Michael Guidry—abused Peyton’s son after grooming him through familiarity and access. The abuse was reported to civil authorities and eventually prosecuted, resulting in conviction. The Diocese of Lafayette later confirmed the credibility of the allegation and removed Guidry permanently from ministry following a civil settlement in 2021.¹ Yet the diocesan response, as described by Peyton, included public disclosure of identifying details and statements that appeared to leave open the question of credibility even after admissions had been made.

It is at precisely this juncture that the narrative becomes morally intolerable, even as it becomes canonically precise. A convicted abuser remains ontologically a priest, even if barred from ministry; the father of the abused, by contrast, finds himself juridically severed from communion. The Church’s sacramental theology explains the former; her penal discipline enforces the latter. Yet to the ordinary faithful—and, indeed, to the victim—the contrast appears not as theological subtlety but as institutional contradiction. The Church that failed to prevent the wound now risks canonising its consequences.

The canonical controversy begins not with the abuse, but with Peyton’s response to it. His eventual withdrawal from Catholic worship and alignment—however informally—with an Anglican community raises the question of schism under the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Canon 751 defines schism as “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”² Canon 1364 §1 further provides: “An apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.”³ The penalty, therefore, attaches to the act itself.

On this basis, canonists such as Nicholas Cafardi argue that the bishop’s decree does not so much impose a penalty as recognise one already incurred. As Cafardi stated: “He excommunicated himself by going into schism,” underscoring that the law operates automatically when its conditions are met.⁴ The Church cannot sustain juridical coherence if acts defined as schismatic are left unrecognised for reasons of sympathy. Excommunication, in this framework, is medicinal: it identifies rupture in order to call the subject back to communion.⁵

Yet this formal clarity is precisely what the appeal contests. Goldstein’s argument does not deny the law; it contests its application. Canon 1321 §1 requires that penalties apply only where the violation is “gravely imputable by reason of malice or culpability.”⁶ Canon 1323 exempts from penalty those acting under grave fear, while Canon 1324 mandates mitigation where responsibility is diminished.⁷ These provisions are not marginal—they are the mechanism by which justice avoids becoming rigidity.

Goldstein, in her appeal to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, argues that the excommunication “has the appearance of a punishment for his successfully suing the Diocese… and it is causing grave harm to his family.”⁸ In interview, she added: “I was appalled by what I saw as a total pastoral failure.”⁹ If Peyton’s departure from Catholic life was conditioned by trauma, social isolation, and perceived institutional hostility, then the question is not whether schism occurred in the abstract, but whether it was committed with the degree of deliberation required for penal sanction.

The conduct of the diocesan authority is therefore not incidental. Canon 1341 requires that a bishop employ pastoral remedies—warning, correction, dialogue—before imposing penalties.¹⁰ Yet contemporaneous reporting records that at a 4 June 2018 press conference, Bishop Deshotel stated: “If it was not [criminal], then Father can be restored and his good name restored also,” despite earlier admissions reported to civil authorities.¹¹ Such statements, publicly delivered, risked creating ambiguity about the credibility of the accusation at a moment when clarity was pastorally essential.

This is not a uniquely local problem. The broader abuse crisis has repeatedly exposed a pattern in which institutional reflex—protect the office, preserve the structure, contain the scandal—precedes and sometimes displaces the pastoral obligation to protect the victim. As Athanasius Schneider has observed in his wider critique of postconciliar governance, “ambiguity in practice leads to confusion in doctrine, and confusion in doctrine leads to the weakening of faith itself.”¹² While not addressed to this case directly, the principle applies with uncomfortable precision.

This matters because canonical penalties do not operate in abstraction. They are received—and judged—within concrete moral contexts. Where that context includes perceived institutional equivocation, the legitimacy of later disciplinary action is inevitably scrutinised, not only juridically but morally.

There is precedent for mitigation. Authoritative canonical commentary notes that penalties may be reduced or withheld where “fear, necessity, or grave inconvenience” impair full voluntariness.¹³ In practice, Roman dicasteries have applied these principles in cases involving clerics acting under psychological distress or coercive circumstances, recognising that strict application without regard to context may undermine the law’s pastoral end.¹⁴

The delay in Rome is therefore intelligible. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is not merely resolving a disciplinary dispute; it is determining how canon law will function under the pressure of the abuse crisis. A decision to uphold the excommunication would reaffirm the objectivity of canonical categories, but risks reinforcing the perception that the Church disciplines the wounded while failing to protect them. A decision to mitigate or overturn it would affirm the role of imputability, but risks introducing uncertainty into the application of schism.

What is at stake is not only Peyton’s status, but the credibility of the Church’s juridical order. Law that ignores the conditions that give rise to rupture becomes indistinguishable from arbitrariness; law applied without consistency dissolves into discretion. Between these poles lies the difficult path of justice.

A law that cannot distinguish between rebellion and wound will not long be experienced as either just or credible. Peyton’s appeal forces that distinction into the open. Rome’s answer—whenever it comes—will not simply resolve a case; it will reveal whether the Church has learned to govern her wounds, or merely to legislate around them.

¹ Diocese of Lafayette, “Statement Regarding Fr. Michael Guidry,” 2021; OSV News reporting on conviction and permanent removal from ministry.
² Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 751: “Schisma est recusatio subiectionis Summo Pontifici aut communionis cum membris Ecclesiae ei subiectis.”
³ Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 1364 §1: “Apostata a fide, haereticus aut schismaticus in excommunicationem latae sententiae incurrit.”
⁴ Nicholas Cafardi, quoted in National Catholic Reporter, 23 April 2026: “He excommunicated himself by going into schism.”
⁵ Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Explanatory Note on the Delict of Schism (2006).
⁶ Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 1321 §1: “Nemo punitur nisi… sit graviter imputabilis.”
⁷ Code of Canon Law (1983), cc. 1323–1324.
⁸ Dawn Eden Goldstein, appeal to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (May 2024), as reported in National Catholic Reporter, 23 April 2026.
⁹ Ibid.: “I was appalled by what I saw as a total pastoral failure.”
¹⁰ Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 1341.
¹¹ J. Douglas Deshotel, press conference, 4 June 2018, audio reported by NewsTalk 96.5 KPEL.
¹² Athanasius Schneider, interviews and addresses on doctrinal ambiguity and pastoral governance (2019–2024).
¹³ Beal, Coriden, Green (eds.), New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (Paulist Press, 2000), commentary on cc. 1323–1324.
¹⁴ Ibid.; canonical praxis concerning diminished imputability in penal cases.

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