The Strange Path of Fr Joe

The story of Fr. Joe, who would one day become the most vilified Bishop in the US, illegally deposed as Bishop of Tyler, Texas.

From Crisis

By Kevin Wells

Fr. Joe was a typical Catholic priest. But then something changed.

Fr. Joe became a priest at the perfect American moment.

In the summer of ’85, America’s dads and moms gathered with their children in family rooms, laughing together at the wholesome storylines of The Cosby Show and Family Ties. Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. seemed to pour from every car radio, each track reflecting the energy of the times. The country pulsed with optimism: jobs were plentiful, interest rates were easing, and the untroubled rhythm of pre-technology suburban life was in full swing. Even the wider world felt hopeful; Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher had become friendly and began to unite to end Soviet communism.

It was a wonderful moment in American history for the handsome young man to begin serving the Lord as a newly ordained priest. During his years in seminary, he had listened closely to his formators, who taught him to shepherd his future flock with joy, love, and a welcoming spirit.

Fr. Joe received his first parish assignment, and it was perfect—Bedford Falls perfect. And so he set out, ready to serve as a priest of God, his ministry reflecting the bright optimism of the times.

There were thorny issues, of course, but he had learned to navigate them with a measured hand and a pastor’s warmth. When a married woman confessed to using birth control to manage her growing family, he met her with compassion, fully aware of the burdens that come with many little mouths to feed. Before offering absolution, he gently encouraged her to avoid any permanent decisions that would close the door on future children.

In seminary, he had heard of Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s daily Holy Hours, but the devotional practice was not emphasized, and he knew the devotion was probably not for him. He knew of Mary’s request at Fatima for daily recitation of the Rosary, so he prayed one every now and then. He delivered well-prepared homilies that were always faithful to Church teaching, though he seldom spoke about sin, hell, or the renunciation of comfort required on the road to holiness. Altar girls processed to the altar beside him, a practice he welcomed without hesitation. And when most parishioners received the Eucharist in the hand, that too felt perfectly natural to him.

Fr. Joe was so naturally gifted and widely respected as a priest that, in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the rank of bishop. Life seemed only to improve after that—except on the occasions when word reached the chancery that one of his priests had delivered a homily that spoke too bluntly on a moral issue. He knew how to handle those situations as well. In private chancery meetings, he would calmly ask the priest to soften his rhetoric. As he delivered the correction, he fixed his gaze on the priest with steady, unblinking eyes.

One day in 2016, a strong Catholic gentleman in his diocese gave him a book about the unique power of Eucharistic adoration and the suffering of Christ caused by the scarcity of priests who made Holy Hours. After reading a few chapters, Fr. Joe decided to commit to a daily Holy Hour, or at least for as long as it took to assuage his guilt. As time went on, he found himself wanting to return to Jesus in his chapel as often as he could.

In Adoration, he found himself drawn to the writings of Pope Gregory the Great, one of the holiest, most devout, and courageous popes in history. As the young bishop learned more about the former monk’s life, he discovered how Gregory had all but miraculously saved a Rome besieged by plague, famine, crime, mob violence, and repeated Lombard attacks. What struck the bishop most was the source of Gregory’s strength: his strength flowed directly from penances and his devotion to contemplative prayer, the Eucharist, and Our Lady.

Perhaps because the bishop knew he lacked Pope Gregory’s stamina and resolve, he began to take on more penances and slowly pull away from the creature comforts his lofty Church position afforded. 

He felt a strong pull to pray the Rosary daily, usually in front of the monstrance, where the mysteries became like shifting kaleidoscopes of images of Mary calling him to come more closely to her Son.

In time, his imagined mental landscapes of the twenty decades settled on a single decade, a single image, and a single event. Mary was calling the bishop to Golgotha. Over and over in the depths of prayer, she summoned him to kneel beside Beloved John and the other saintly women at the Cross, and to look upon the love poured out by the Slaughtered Lamb.

The bishop had never heard about this pure form of love in seminary, nor had he been encouraged to pray the daily Rosary or dedicate an hour each day to Adoration. 

It wasn’t 1985 anymore, and he wasn’t in Bedford Falls. It was 2016: Barack Obama sat in the White House as the most pro-abortion president in history, and same-sex marriage had become legal in every state. In just three years as pontiff, Pope Francis had unsettled the hearts of millions of faithful Catholics with a mix of pastoral ambiguity and challenges to long-standing orthodoxies and cherished Catholic forms of reverence and love for its customs and heirlooms, hinting they were forms of rigidity and backwardism.

On a cold afternoon in late December of 2016, in a moment of internal confrontation, he asked himself: Who am I? In the silence of his consideration, a single question surfaced from within: What’s your choice: Do you want to stay in the club, the management-team system of bishops you entered—or do you want to teach the fullness of the Gospel, no matter the cost?

Thereafter, as the walls of his life began to crumble, he awakened from 31 years of his mostly priestly slumber. Like Lazarus from the tomb, he was given the rare gift of living a second time—and he wanted to offer it to God alone. It was clear to him: He had not taken the time to see how the sweet violence of the Victim nailed to the Cross redeemed souls. As a bishop, he knew the demand was the same: he, too, was to annihilate every measure of comfort to become a victim for the souls of his diocese. 

His passport that had enabled three decades of safe passage to a safe priesthood was handed over to Mary, gone forever. It was time to make up for lost time. So he asked for Mary’s maternal protection—and he set off. 

And nothing for Bishop Joseph Strickland has been the same.

“She obliterated all of my caution lights,” he said, a few days after being called a grifter, showboater, and worse at the fall general assembly of the USCCB in Baltimore. These accusations came on the heels of him addressing his concern over Fr. James Martin presiding over the confirmation of a practicing homosexual, who later received the Body of Christ with his lover.  

“Back in 2016, Mary kept showing me her Son hanging from the Cross. She kept pointing to Jesus and saying to me: Now, go and be a bishop for the Church in the manner of my Son from the Cross. Joe, stop pleasing the world. Die to it.”

And that was that. 

And we know the rest of the story. In the process of Bishop Joseph Strickland transmogrifying from a comfortable man into Ezekiel—albeit, a humble and soft-spoken New Testament version—Pope Francis removed him from his role as bishop of Tyler, Texas. But what of it? In the Holy Hour, he felt himself commissioned by God through Mary to address the rising tide of sin, depravity, and confusion in the Vatican and worldwide Church. What else was he to do? Ignore Our Lady and go to hell?

“I look back at the priest I became after 1985, and the system I allowed myself to fit into,” he said. “I am making reparation for my mistakes. I’ve apologized to some strong priests. I wasn’t the priest or bishop I should have been. But thank God that He removed me from that page of life; I won’t go back to that place. I can’t be comfortable anymore.”

Because he has been drawn into the recesses of Jesus’s Sacred Heart, he moves about as a lit stick of dynamite within the Catholic hierarchy, dominated by modernists. He is a glitch to the system, an interruption in the DNA code. He is them, inverted. As bishops speak to the concerns of the world, Bishop Strickland warns souls to overcome the world. As they ignore the red tide of depravity that swallows whole Catholic youth, he puts his head on the block to save them. Where they use careful watchwords refined by layered chancery staff, the shepherd without a flock heralds from a boneyard, and moves from place to place with nowhere to lay his head. Prophets just do what they’re told, move on, and leave the rest to God and providence. 

Crisis writer Sheryl Collmer wrote yesterday in her commentary following last week’s meeting of bishops: It is finally becoming apparent, even to the most hopeful, that no amount of begging, pleading, or shaming will cause the bishops to care about the laity and those things that are most important to us. … I guarantee it’s not offenses against climate change or synodality.

She was speaking about the visceral fear of Catholic laity of the strange phenomenon of bishops retracting from their role and burden to correct or work to halt the crisis of our expanding Babylon. These faithful Catholics see bishops refusing to stop the nihilism spreading throughout the world like slow-moving WWI chlorine gases. Each day, wide-eyed, small children awaken to moral depravity, broken families, classmates genuflecting to cell phones, and teachers blurring their unformed consciences with new moral norms.

They mostly have stopped looking to the Church for help.

Thankfully, though, behind the curtains, there is hope. A handful of bishops approached Bishop Strickland last week to quietly express their appreciation for addressing Fr. James Martin and the scandal of a priest giving the Eucharist to two men identifying as “married.” Essentially these are the same bishops who rebuked Cardinal ​Blase Cupich’s decision to award a pro-abortion politician with a lifetime achievement honor.

Quickly, in your mind’s eye, imagine for a moment this scene from last week’s gathering of American bishops: Instead of the awkward silence that followed Bishop Strickland’s censure of Fr. Martin’s sacrilege, imagine that a dozen or more bishops had risen from their seats and began to applaud. You can be certain, had this taken place, that Rome would have been promptly alerted. And the news would have been read in the Vatican as thus: They are standing beside Strickland now. 

And that image is the pinhole of hope for the hero-starved Catholic faithful. They still hold out for these bishops.

They know that these faithful bishops, who know better, likely want to step into the same internal confrontation Bishop Strickland did in 2016. But they also know time is running short. When will they finally begin to step away from concerns over their safety, reputation and comfort—and come from behind the curtain—to join your brother, who speaks alone as the commanding voice of the Baptist in the Judean wilderness? These bishops see the synodal-breakaway locomotive that seems intent on embracing morally lawless behavior.

So laity wonder, when will you become the victim and to save this battered and sin-darkened Church?

Bishop Strickland might remind these bishops that wintertime in the Church is just beginning, and that hirelings will serve no purpose as the crises grow. He knows what you know: the time is ripe now for one thing: to set your gaze firmly on Christ alone, and take more seriously your prayer life, penances, and prophetic voice. Only this way will give you a bishop’s valiant heart able to turn back what seems to be a changed Catholic Church.

And one final insight: The old Tyler bishop sleeps peacefully each night.

“I’m just a simple man who knows my role to proclaim truth, and I guess that’s put me at the Cross,” he said. “If I’m going to stand for truth, I’m going to have to stand beneath the Cross and suffer with Jesus. It’s violent and alone there, but it’s a victorious place. 

“As Jesus suffered to save the world, I’ve been given the opportunity as a bishop to suffer with Him. I am not welcomed in most places,” he said. “But over time, I’ve found that sadness and grief is not the overwhelming emotion at the Cross—in the same way it isn’t as a bishop who’s been removed from his diocese. It, in a way, has brought joy.

“The Church is undergoing Christ’s same Passion now. The world’s diminishing faith, a weakened Church, and confusion from bishops has led to this Passion. But in a way, I feel proud that I’m able to endure some of the pain that the Lord felt, and I get to experience it beside Mary and John.”