The Vatican has upheld the excommunication of a Louisiana deacon whose son was sexually abused by a priest, while the offending cleric reportedly retains his priestly status. Yet the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s own decree raises serious questions about the application of canon law. By treating formal reception into another ecclesial communion as sufficient evidence of culpable schism, without expressly examining the statutory circumstances which can prevent automatic excommunication, Rome has left a significant juridical question unanswered. The case exposes a wider crisis concerning ecclesiastical authority, canonical equity, the protection of the innocent and the Church’s obligation to administer justice according to the whole of her law.
A Catholic father whose son was sexually abused by a priest has been formally declared excommunicated. The priest who abused his child has been imprisoned by the civil authorities but, according to the available reporting, has not been dismissed from the clerical state. The Vatican has now upheld the declaration against the father. These facts do not establish that the two men committed equivalent canonical offences or that their cases should attract identical penalties. They do, however, present ecclesiastical authority with a question which cannot be answered merely by citing the appropriate paragraph of the Code of Canon Law. How has the Church come to demonstrate such certainty in declaring the canonical consequences of a wounded father’s departure, while providing so little public explanation of the canonical judgement reached concerning the priest whose abuse precipitated it?
Scott Peyton was ordained a permanent deacon in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, in 2012. He served at St Peter’s Church in Morrow alongside Father Michael Guidry, who sexually abused Peyton’s teenage son, Oliver, in 2015. The abuse was disclosed in 2018; Guidry subsequently pleaded guilty to molesting a juvenile and received a ten-year prison sentence, with three years suspended. The diocese permanently removed him from public ministry, acknowledged the credibility of the allegation and apologised to the family. A civil settlement followed in 2021. Yet the Peyton family continued to describe serious distress arising not only from the original abuse but from its subsequent experience of diocesan authorities. In December 2023, Peyton informed Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel that he intended to leave the Catholic Church and cease exercising his diaconal ministry. On 21 January 2024, he and his family were formally received into Trinity Anglican Church. On 13 March, Bishop Deshotel declared that Peyton had incurred automatic excommunication for schism under canon 1364 §1.¹
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has now upheld that declaration. Its eleven-page decree, signed on 22 May 2026 by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and Archbishop John Joseph Kennedy, but delivered to Peyton on 16 October, rejects his hierarchical recourse and confirms both the excommunication and the irregularity affecting his exercise of Holy Orders. The decree acknowledges the tragedy surrounding the family’s departure, recognises Peyton’s desire to preserve his children’s Christian faith and concedes that Bishop Deshotel might have warned him more explicitly about the canonical consequences of his intended course of action. Nevertheless, it concludes that Peyton’s formal reception into the Anglican Communion constituted an intentional separation from Catholic ecclesiastical communion.²
The decree must be examined seriously because its underlying ecclesiological argument is not without foundation. Catholic communion is not an optional administrative association, nor is the primacy of the Roman Pontiff merely an institutional arrangement which the faithful may disregard when dissatisfied with their bishop. The Church’s visible unity belongs to her divine constitution. A Catholic does not cease to owe allegiance to the Church because a priest has committed a terrible crime or because ecclesiastical superiors have handled its consequences badly. The distinction between the indefectibility of the Church and the fallibility of her ministers remains essential. Their sins may disfigure her visible life, but they cannot destroy her divine institution or dissolve the obligations arising from baptism and Catholic profession.
Nor can traditional Catholic theology adopt the contemporary denominational assumption that one Christian communion may simply be exchanged for another according to personal preference or pastoral convenience. The visible unity of the Church, submission to the Roman Pontiff and communion with those subject to him are not matters of indifference. An argument on Peyton’s behalf which merely asserts that he had every right to become Anglican because his diocesan authorities had failed him would therefore be ecclesiologically unsound. The fact that his departure arose from suffering cannot itself transform an objectively wrongful separation into an ecclesiastically legitimate act.
The Dicastery consequently makes a valid distinction between attending another Christian congregation and being formally received into its ecclesial communion. The former does not necessarily express an intention to repudiate Catholic communion; the latter ordinarily provides much stronger evidence of a deliberate change of religious allegiance. Peyton’s public reception and subsequent announcement are therefore relevant facts. The difficulty arises not in recognising those facts, but in determining whether they establish every condition necessary for the automatic penal consequence which Rome has declared.
Here the distinction between an objectively unlawful act and personal canonical culpability becomes decisive. Canon 751 defines schism as the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or communion with those subject to him. Canon 1364 §1 prescribes latae sententiae excommunication for the offence. Yet these provisions do not operate independently of the general principles of penal responsibility. Canon 1321 §1 establishes the presumption of innocence; §2 requires grave imputability by reason of malice or culpability; §3 distinguishes deliberate violations from those arising through negligence; and §4 establishes a rebuttable presumption of imputability once an external violation has been proved. The presumption has genuine juridical force, but it is not irrebuttable, nor does it dispense with the examination of circumstances which the law expressly recognises as capable of excluding or diminishing penal responsibility.³
This is not a concession invented by contemporary pastoral theology. The 1917 Code, reflecting the older canonical tradition, likewise distinguished the external commission of an offence from the imputability of the offender. Canon 2199 provided that imputability depended upon dolus or culpability and could be increased, diminished or removed by circumstances affecting either. Canon 2200 defined dolus in terms of a deliberate will to violate the law and recognised defects of knowledge and freedom as relevant to its assessment. Although the older legislation placed particular restrictions upon exemptions from automatic penalties, especially where conduct concerned faith or ecclesiastical authority, it nevertheless maintained the fundamental distinction between the external act and personal penal responsibility. The law could presume culpability from conduct; it did not regard the presumption as an infallible disclosure of the internal forum.⁴
The Dicastery’s own language demonstrates where the difficulty arises. In paragraph 9 of the decree, the Congresso declares: “The formal and public nature of the act of joining this other faith community in itself establishes the requisite dolus.” It then makes the still more categorical assertion: “Choosing to be received formally in a public ceremony is sufficient.” These statements identify an evidential argument of considerable weight. A formal reception ceremony certainly provides stronger evidence of deliberate ecclesiastical separation than irregular attendance at another congregation. But evidence that the external action was deliberate is not necessarily conclusive evidence that every condition necessary for automatic excommunication was fulfilled.
The Dicastery further argues that canon 1321 §2 concerns the imposition of a penalty rather than the declaration of one already incurred. The distinction between a penalty imposed by judgement and one incurred automatically by operation of law is perfectly legitimate. A ferendae sententiae penalty does not bind until imposed, whereas a latae sententiae penalty arises when the offence and the conditions required for its incurrence are fulfilled. But this distinction does not establish that the general requirements of penal imputability cease to apply simply because an authority is declaring rather than imposing a penalty. A declaratory decree does not create the alleged automatic penalty. It asserts that the penalty already arose at the moment the offence was committed. If the necessary conditions were absent, there would be no such penalty available to declare.
Canon 1342 §3 reinforces the need for care. It provides that what the law prescribes concerning a judge who imposes or declares a penalty also applies to a superior acting by extrajudicial decree, unless the contrary is clear or the provision concerns exclusively procedural matters. This does not abolish the legitimate distinction between imposing and declaring censures, and it cannot by itself establish that every discretionary power available when imposing a penalty applies identically to an automatic censure. Nevertheless, it makes clear that a declaratory procedure is not a juridical territory beyond the general requirements of penal law. The decisive issue remains whether the alleged offender incurred the penalty under the substantive law applicable to his conduct.⁵
The strongest objection to the decree therefore concerns canons 1323 and 1324. These are not peripheral expressions of pastoral sympathy. They constitute substantive legislation governing whether and how a person becomes liable to punishment. Canon 1323 excludes punishment in specified circumstances, including certain instances of grave fear, necessity or grave inconvenience, subject to qualifications where the act is intrinsically evil or tends to harm souls. Canon 1324 §1 then requires mitigation in circumstances where complete exemption is unavailable, including grave fear, necessity or grave inconvenience even where the act is intrinsically evil or harmful to souls. It also recognises ignorance of an attached penalty without personal fault and conduct undertaken without full imputability, provided that sufficiently grave imputability remains.
Most importantly, canon 1324 §3 expressly provides that a person falling within one of the mitigating circumstances enumerated in §1 does not incur a latae sententiae penalty, although lesser penalties or penances may subsequently be imposed. This is not a discretionary invitation to show mercy after an automatic excommunication has been established. Where a qualifying circumstance under canon 1324 §1 is proved, paragraph 3 prevents the automatic penalty from being incurred. The prohibited conduct remains objectively unlawful, and ecclesiastical authority may still impose an appropriate lesser sanction through the proper procedure. But the automatic censure itself does not arise. Nor should this mandatory consequence be confused with the wider discretionary mitigation permitted under canon 1324 §2: paragraph 3 refers specifically to the circumstances enumerated in §1.⁶
Yet the Dicastery’s decree does not expressly examine canon 1323 or canon 1324. Neither appears in its catalogue of applicable legislation, and neither receives the specific assessment which its potential relevance would seem to require. Instead, the decree concentrates upon establishing that Peyton deliberately entered Anglican communion and that the evidence does not overcome the presumption of imputability. The omission leaves a serious gap in the published reasoning. Rome may ultimately possess grounds for concluding that no qualifying circumstance under canon 1324 §1 was established. But the existence of possible grounds is not their demonstration. The decision recognises extraordinary suffering, an untenable family situation and a father’s attempt to preserve his children’s Christian faith, without explaining why these acknowledged circumstances did not engage the provisions governing grave fear, necessity, grave inconvenience or diminished imputability.
This does not mean that Peyton’s suffering automatically establishes an exemption. Canonical necessity has a specific meaning and cannot be equated with every situation in which a person experiences profound distress. Nor does a father automatically acquire a juridical necessity to enter another religious communion because his family can no longer bear attending the parish associated with an abuser. The availability of other Catholic congregations, the possibility of temporary withdrawal from particular diocesan circumstances, the nature of the pressure experienced and the degree of freedom remaining to Peyton would all be relevant to a complete assessment. Likewise, grave fear or grave inconvenience must be established through evidence rather than inferred solely from the gravity of the original wrong. But that is precisely the inquiry required. The question is not whether tragedy cancels canon law. It is whether the law has been applied in its entirety to the tragedy before the authority.
The Dicastery’s treatment of Peyton’s intention illustrates the difference. His advocate, Dawn Eden Goldstein, argued that the family’s circumstances affected his freedom and that his principal intention was to preserve their Christian faith rather than to repudiate papal authority. The Dicastery responded that an act deliberately chosen as a means towards another objective remains intentional. In paragraph 13, it insists that “schism was chosen in itself” for the purpose of preserving the family’s faith. As an abstract proposition, the argument that a deliberately chosen means remains intentional is correct. Peyton knowingly participated in a formal Anglican reception; the action was not accidental. Yet grave fear does not necessarily eliminate deliberation, necessity does not render every decision involuntary, and diminished imputability does not require complete incapacity to choose. The existence of canon 1324 demonstrates that the law expressly contemplates deliberate external conduct whose penal consequences are nevertheless altered by the circumstances in which it occurs.
The decree’s discussion of the bishop’s failure to warn Peyton presents a related difficulty. The Dicastery acknowledges that Bishop Deshotel could have been more explicit concerning the canonical consequences of his intended departure, but maintains that canon 1347 §1 requires a warning before the imposition of a censure and does not impose the same formal prerequisite before the declaration of an automatic penalty. On that narrow procedural question the Dicastery has a substantial argument. It would be incorrect to claim that every declaration of latae sententiae excommunication is invalid merely because the bishop did not first issue a formal warning.
Nevertheless, the absence of a warning has a different potential significance under canon 1324 §1, 9°, which recognises mitigation where a person, through no personal fault, was unaware that a penalty was attached to the law violated. If established, that circumstance also engages canon 1324 §3. The question is therefore not simply whether the bishop was obliged to warn Peyton before declaring the censure, but whether Peyton possessed sufficient knowledge of the penal consequence when he acted. The Dicastery relies in part upon his years of clerical formation and his ordination to the diaconate. That inference is relevant, but it does not necessarily establish that he understood the precise distinction between ceasing active ministry, withdrawing from diocesan life, attending another congregation and formally entering a separated ecclesial communion. Ignorance arising from culpable negligence or deliberate avoidance of the truth would not provide the exemption. Yet the matter requires examination rather than assumption.
The bishop’s own correspondence makes the pastoral and juridical difficulty more pointed. Peyton informed him on 4 December 2023 that he intended to leave the Church and the diaconate. Bishop Deshotel responded with regret and an assurance of prayer. The Dicastery reasons that Peyton’s intentions were not yet sufficiently clear to demonstrate an imminent act of schism. But that uncertainty itself presented an opportunity for clarification. A bishop need not accuse a deacon prematurely of schism in order to explain the distinction between ceasing active ministry, distancing oneself from diocesan authorities and formally joining another religious communion. Precisely because the difference was canonically consequential, a personal inquiry and clear paternal instruction would have been appropriate.
Canon 1341 reinforces this consideration. It governs the initiation of judicial or administrative procedures for imposing or declaring penalties and requires the Ordinary to consider whether pastoral care, correction, warning or other remedies can adequately restore justice, reform the offender and repair scandal. This is not identical to making the formal warning required by canon 1347 §1 universally indispensable before a declaration of automatic excommunication. It is a distinct statutory duty concerning the prudential initiation of penal proceedings. The published decree does not convincingly explain why measures directed towards clarification and reconciliation were insufficient before the public declaration was issued. The family’s circumstances made such intervention especially important, not because their suffering conferred immunity from canon law, but because the law itself places penal discipline within an ordered process directed towards the recovery of justice and souls.
The Dicastery’s response to Goldstein’s analogy with an abused spouse similarly illustrates both the strength and the limitation of its argument. Under canon 1153, a spouse may legitimately separate from an abusive partner without thereby dissolving the marriage bond or acquiring the right to contract another marriage. Similarly, the Dicastery reasons, Peyton could have distanced himself from a damaging diocesan situation without formally entering another ecclesiastical communion. The analogy correctly distinguishes legitimate withdrawal from an intolerable situation and the attempted establishment of a new ecclesial allegiance. Yet an analogy identifying the objective limits of permissible conduct does not answer every question concerning culpability. The wrongfulness of an action and the possibility of diminished responsibility for committing it remain separate juridical considerations. One cannot use an argument establishing the former as though it automatically disposes of the latter.
There is a further concern in the Dicastery’s treatment of the defence. The decree notes that certain additional arguments from Goldstein preceded her formal appointment as Peyton’s procurator-advocate and did not form part of the original petitum. Nevertheless, the Congresso states that it will consider them ex caritate, out of charity. There is nothing inherently improper in observing procedural limitations upon supplemental submissions. But where material placed before the competent authority raises a genuine question concerning the legal conditions under which a penalty could have been incurred, its consideration is not merely an act of benevolence. The authority administering penal law must apply the law correctly. Canonical exemptions and mitigating circumstances are not privileges which a tribunal may graciously entertain; they are provisions binding upon the tribunal itself.
The distinction between evidential presumption and moral certainty must also be maintained. Canon 1342 §1 expressly requires an extrajudicial penal decree to observe canon 1720, particularly the right of defence and the moral certainty required of the authority issuing the decree. Moral certainty is not the same as absolute certainty, nor does it require the elimination of every conceivable doubt. But it requires a judgement founded upon the acts and evidence of the case rather than upon an evidentiary shortcut. The presumption of imputability under canon 1321 §4 has legitimate juridical significance; it does not dispense with the obligation to evaluate relevant contrary evidence or to establish the conditions necessary for the particular penalty declared. There is a serious question whether the Dicastery’s published reasoning sufficiently distinguishes proof of the external action from proof that no statutory circumstance prevented the automatic censure from arising.⁷
The procedural history adds another layer of concern. Goldstein has criticised a process in which communications with the Dicastery passed through the bishop whose decision Peyton was challenging. She has also raised questions concerning the use of press reports and quotations without an adequate opportunity for their contextual examination. Such allegations cannot independently establish procedural invalidity without scrutiny of the complete canonical acts. Ecclesiastical administrative recourse is not identical to civil litigation, and the Church possesses her own legitimate juridical order. Nevertheless, canonical justice is not exempt from the requirements of fairness, adequate access to evidence and meaningful opportunities for defence. Canon 221 protects the faithful’s right to vindicate their rights in a competent ecclesiastical forum, while canon 1738 safeguards representation by an advocate or procurator. The Church need not imitate every procedure of a secular court to demonstrate that justice has been done; it must nevertheless ensure that its own procedures genuinely protect the rights which its own law recognises.
The time taken to communicate the decision deserves scrutiny as well. Peyton lodged hierarchical recourse in May 2024. The decree was signed almost exactly two years later but was not delivered until October 2026. The public record does not adequately explain the intervening months. The decree now allows sixty useful days from notification for further recourse, subject to requirements concerning representation and an administrative fee for which remission may be sought where there is genuine need. Canon 1353 also recognises the suspensive effect of recourse against a decree imposing or declaring a penalty, although the procedural effect of suspension must be distinguished from the substantive question whether an automatic censure had originally been incurred. A Church which administers penalties in the name of spiritual healing must recognise that prolonged uncertainty and procedural opacity can themselves aggravate the injuries which ecclesiastical justice is intended to remedy.⁸
The case becomes still more troubling when the canonical treatment of Father Guidry is considered. It would be inaccurate to suggest that sexual abuse of a minor and schism are subject to identical canonical penalties. The Church does not ordinarily attach automatic excommunication to the former offence, while canon 1364 expressly does so to the latter. But the legislation governing sexual offences by clerics provides for grave sanctions, including dismissal from the clerical state. Because Guidry’s offence occurred in 2015, its canonical treatment must be assessed with reference to the law then governing such offences, particularly the 2010 norms concerning delicta graviora, article 6 §2 of which explicitly contemplated dismissal from the clerical state. The subsequent revision of Book VI retains that possibility under canon 1398 §1. In considering any change of penal legislation, the principle expressed in canon 1313 concerning application of the more favourable law must also be observed.⁹
Guidry’s removal from public ministry is unquestionably a serious disciplinary restriction and must not be ignored. A priest permanently excluded from public ministry is not simply permitted to continue his former ecclesiastical life without consequence. Nevertheless, removal from ministry and dismissal from the clerical state are juridically different measures. The first restricts the exercise of priestly functions; the second removes the juridical condition of clerical status, although neither can erase the sacramental character of ordination. Nor is dismissal necessarily required in every case of clerical sexual abuse. The law provides for assessment of the gravity of the offence and the appropriate sanction, including permanent restrictions where warranted. Precisely for that reason, the public ought to be given a clear account of the canonical treatment of a priest whose criminal wrongdoing has already been established before the civil authorities.
Goldstein has reported that, during the meeting of 16 October, Bishop Deshotel acknowledged recommending that Guidry retain his priestly status because of his age. This remains her account of the meeting, rather than an independently published explanation from the diocese. Nevertheless, if accurate, it raises an unavoidable question. Advanced age may properly influence the conditions under which an elderly offender is maintained, supported or restricted after punishment. It does not diminish the objective gravity of the offence. If pastoral circumstances are considered when determining the canonical consequences for a convicted child abuser, ecclesiastical authority must explain why the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the victim’s father were insufficient to alter its declaration of automatic excommunication.
The proper comparison is not between the gravity of schism and the gravity of child abuse as though they belonged to an identical category of offence. One concerns the visible unity of the Church; the other involves the grave violation of a child and the betrayal of priestly office. Both are serious, but their juridical elements and prescribed consequences differ. The comparison concerns instead the administration of justice. In Peyton’s case, the competent authority had to determine whether an automatic censure had genuinely been incurred. In Guidry’s case, the competent authority had to ensure that the grave offence received an appropriate canonical response. Neither responsibility was optional. The Church’s duty to protect minors, vindicate justice and repair scandal cannot be discharged solely by the imprisonment imposed by the civil authorities.
There is also an uncomfortable comparison with the Dicastery’s recent treatment of the Society of Saint Pius X. As Nuntiatoria argued in its July editorials, particularly Attendance Is Not Schism and Roma Locuta Est, Causa Finita Est?, the distinction between an external act, an individual penal decree, a wider declaration concerning ecclesiastical status and personally imputable schism is indispensable to sound canonical reasoning. The circumstances are not identical. The SSPX controversy concerns episcopal consecrations, jurisdiction and disputed assertions of necessity, whereas Peyton formally entered a non-Catholic ecclesial communion. His external act therefore provides evidence of separation of a more direct kind than mere attendance at a traditional Catholic chapel or resistance to a particular episcopal directive. Nevertheless, the same underlying principle applies: an objectively unlawful act does not abolish the requirement to establish personal responsibility or examine the possible operation of statutory exemptions. Rome cannot insist upon legal distinctions when they support the declaration of a penalty while treating those distinctions as inconsequential when they might qualify its conclusion.¹⁰
This consistency matters particularly because the authority of the Roman Pontiff must never be confused with an exaggerated conception of ecclesiastical power in which every administrative judgement becomes practically immune from scrutiny. The Church’s constitution is divine; the prudential and judicial acts of her ministers are not thereby rendered infallible. Papal primacy does not transform an inadequately reasoned penal decision into an unquestionable exercise of the Magisterium. Neither does submission to legitimate ecclesiastical authority eliminate the rights recognised by the Church’s own law. A Catholic may accept fully the divine institution of the papacy, the necessity of ecclesiastical communion and the Church’s authority to punish schism while disputing whether a particular declaratory decree has correctly established the conditions for an automatic censure.
This distinction has particular importance in the contemporary ecclesial climate. Catholic authorities frequently invoke accompaniment, discernment, pastoral sensitivity and the significance of personal circumstances in matters concerning disputed moral teaching and sacramental discipline. Yet here is a father whose child was sexually abused by a priest, whose family struggled for years with the consequences, and who sought another Christian environment because he feared that continued association with the circumstances of their suffering would destroy his children’s belief in Christ. His choice cannot be approved merely because the suffering which preceded it evokes sympathy. But if pastoral discernment is to mean anything more than selective indulgence, it must surely require an exceptionally careful account of such circumstances before the Church publicly confirms its severest medicinal censure.
A traditional Catholic perspective must reject two opposite errors. The first is the supposition that ecclesiastical abuse or episcopal misconduct dissolves the obligations of the Catholic faith. It does not. No priest’s wickedness can make the Catholic Church cease to be the Church founded by Christ, and no bishop’s failures can annul the divinely instituted primacy of Peter. The second error is to suppose that defending Catholic unity requires defending every exercise of ecclesiastical authority, however disproportionate, inadequately reasoned or pastorally destructive it may appear. The Church’s divine constitution must not be confused with the personal decisions of those entrusted with its governance. Catholic fidelity demands recognition of both truths.
This is why canon 18 possesses particular importance. It requires laws establishing penalties or restricting the free exercise of rights to be interpreted strictly. Strict interpretation does not mean that penal laws are rendered ineffective or that obvious offences must be excused. It means that ecclesiastical authority may not enlarge the operation of a penalty beyond the law’s proper meaning or disregard the limitations attached to its application. When canon 1364 is read together with canons 1321–1324, the conditions of imputability and the exclusion of automatic penalties in specified circumstances are not concessions imported from a foreign juridical system. They are provisions of the Church’s own law. To insist upon their proper application is not opposition to canonical discipline, but fidelity to it.¹¹
The same principle governs the Church’s ancient doctrine of aequitas canonica, canonical equity. Equity is not permission for a superior to disregard the law whenever sentiment favours doing so. It is the administration of justice according to the law’s proper reason and purpose, with due consideration for relevant circumstances and the avoidance of disproportionate results. Canon 1311 §2 itself requires that penalties be applied with canonical equity, bearing in mind the restoration of justice, the reform of the offender and the repair of scandal. These are juridical objectives, not merely pastoral aspirations. The authority declaring a medicinal censure must therefore be concerned not only that a prohibited act occurred but also that the conditions governing the penalty have been established and that its legitimate purpose has been properly considered.
Excommunication is consequently more than a mechanism by which ecclesiastical authority establishes that a boundary has been crossed. Its medicinal character presupposes concern for the supernatural welfare of the person censured. The Dicastery states that it hopes Peyton will return to Catholic communion, and its decree identifies the authorities competent to remit the excommunication and dispense from the irregularity affecting his Holy Orders. Yet reconciliation cannot be reduced to requiring the injured party to acknowledge his offence while the institution offers only limited recognition of its own failures. The Church can properly require repentance for a real act of schism. She must also demonstrate repentance, reparation and accountability where her own ministers have committed grave wrongs.
The practical question is therefore what the Church has done, and is prepared to do, to restore this family to Catholic life. Has the family been offered a genuinely safe and pastorally trustworthy Catholic environment? Have the failures which contributed to their alienation been adequately acknowledged and remedied? Has the canonical treatment of Guidry been explained with sufficient transparency? Has the bishop recognised the distinction between a father’s rejection of his diocesan leadership and his formal departure from Catholic communion, and attempted to address the former before the latter became permanent? These are not sentimental alternatives to canon law. They concern the exercise of pastoral government in pursuit of the very end for which ecclesiastical law exists.
The final canon of the Code directs that the salvation of souls must always remain the supreme law of the Church: salus animarum suprema lex. That principle is not a convenient formula for setting aside inconvenient legislation. It expresses the purpose which must govern the interpretation and exercise of ecclesiastical authority. There is a considerable difference between applying the law faithfully and applying it in a manner which allows juridical correctness to become detached from the restoration of justice, the repair of scandal and the salvation of those involved. One cannot invoke the medicinal character of excommunication while remaining indifferent to whether its administration has deepened alienation, fractured a family or made reconciliation more difficult.¹²
Above all stands the warning of Our Lord concerning the scandalising of little ones. The Church’s defence of ecclesiastical communion cannot be separated from her obligation to protect those whom Christ has entrusted to her care. The father who removes his family from an intolerable situation may be mistaken in the remedy he chooses. The Church may have good reason to correct that mistake. But the authority which corrects him must itself submit to the judgement of the Gospel, recognising that the preservation of institutional dignity is not the same thing as the defence of the Church’s supernatural mission.
Scott Peyton’s decision to enter Anglican communion raises a genuine canonical question. It should not be excused merely because his family’s suffering evokes understandable sympathy. Equally, the extraordinary circumstances of that decision must not be treated as an unfortunate background detail which can be acknowledged and then effectively excluded from the decisive penal analysis. The law itself provides for distinctions between objective conduct and personal culpability, between punishment and mitigation, and between an incurred penalty and its declaration. A convincing judgement must demonstrate why those distinctions do or do not alter the outcome. It is not enough to insist that the external act occurred.
The strongest objection to the decree is therefore not that schism has ceased to be a punishable offence, nor that Peyton was necessarily innocent of it. It is that the Dicastery’s published reasoning does not adequately explain why the particular exemptions and mitigating provisions of canon law would not affect the alleged automatic penalty, despite its express acknowledgement of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the case. Whether those provisions ultimately apply is a matter requiring proper juridical determination. Their relevance cannot be disposed of merely by invoking a presumption of imputability and repeating that the external act was intentional.
The greater scandal is therefore not that Rome continues to defend the necessity of Catholic communion. It must defend it. The scandal is that the authority which identifies a wounded father’s separation with such certainty has yet to provide an equally satisfactory public account of its administration of justice towards the priest whose abuse precipitated the tragedy.
The Church does not vindicate her holiness by minimising schism. Neither does she vindicate it by treating those whose departure exposes the failures of her ministers as though their suffering were juridically incidental. She vindicates it by defending the truth, protecting the innocent, administering justice impartially and exercising authority in the service of souls.
Until those obligations are seen to operate together, this case will remain something more than a contested canonical judgement. It will stand as a devastating illustration of the distance which can open between ecclesiastical authority and the justice that authority exists to serve.
¹ Jim Hummel, “Vatican Upholds Excommunication of Deacon Whose Son Was Abused by Priest”, Acadiana News First, 19 October 2026; Camillo Barone, “Vatican Upholds Excommunication of La. Deacon Who Left Church After Son Abused by Priest”, National Catholic Reporter, 21 October 2026.
² Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decretum: Declaratio Excommunicationis Latae Sententiae — Scott Peyton, Prot. N. 405/2024, 22 May 2026, nn. 1–5 and 14–18.
³ Codex Iuris Canonici (1983), Book VI, canons 1321 and 1364 §1; DDF, Decretum — Scott Peyton, n. 9.
⁴ Codex Iuris Canonici (1917), canons 2199–2200.
⁵ Code of Canon Law, canon 1342 §§1–3; DDF, Decretum — Scott Peyton, nn. 9 and 13.
⁶ Code of Canon Law, canons 1323–1325, particularly canon 1324 §1, 5°, 9° and 10°, and §3.
⁷ Code of Canon Law, canon 1720; canon 1608; DDF, Decretum — Scott Peyton, nn. 6–9 and 13–14.
⁸ DDF, Decretum — Scott Peyton, nn. 17–18; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Norms Regarding Delicts Reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 11 October 2021, arts 2 and 23–24; Code of Canon Law, canon 1353.
⁹ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Normae de Gravioribus Delictis, 2010, art. 6 §2; Code of Canon Law, canons 1313 and 1398 §1; BishopAccountability.org, “Fr. Michael S. Guidry”.
¹⁰ Nuntiatoria, “Attendance Is Not Schism: Rome, the SSPX and the Canonical Rights of the Laity”, 3 July 2026; “Roma Locuta Est, Causa Finita Est? The Decree, the Note and the Papalism That Swallowed the Law”, 7 July 2026.
¹¹ Code of Canon Law, canon 18; canon 1311 §2.
¹² Code of Canon Law, canon 1752; Douay-Rheims Bible, St Matthew 18:6.
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