Some of you may remember the sad saga of Deacon Scott Peyton. Here’s an update via The Guardian:
A Louisiana man who resigned as a Roman Catholic deacon after a priest molested his son and then was excommunicated from the church entirely by his local bishop is asking global church leaders to inform him of the fate of his appeal against the prelate’s decision, something that was supposed to be resolved more than a year earlier.
In a letter to the Vatican entity in charge of clerical discipline, a canon – or church – law attorney representing Scott Peyton asserts that his case is “nuanced and requires careful consideration”. “To the extent that the delay reflects such diligence, he is grateful,” said the letter to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), prepared by Dawn Eden Goldstein on 3 February and obtained recently by the Guardian.
Nonetheless, the letter continued, Peyton “wishes that I convey to you that, from his perspective, the unduly long span of time with no communication from your office only compounds the injustices that he and his family have suffered from the church”.
Word of Peyton’s plight earned international news headlines in March 2024, with many outlets characterizing his excommunication as a remarkably harsh consequence that his child’s molester does not appear to have ever faced because the church, in sum, does not consider the abuser’s offense on its own excommunicable.
Peyton was ordained into Louisiana’s diocese of Lafayette – about 135 miles (217km) west of New Orleans – as a deacon in 2012. Deacons are largely similar to priests, though they can join the clergy despite being married.
About six years after his ordination, a priest with whom Peyton ministered at St Peter’s church in Morrow, Louisiana, confessed to molesting the deacon’s teenage son, Oliver, and was arrested by authorities.
Michael Guidry, now 83, later pleaded guilty to abusing Oliver Peyton, who was an altar server. He received a seven-year prison sentence after his church feted him with a farewell lunch for which the diocese was forced to apologize.
In 2021, Peyton said he, his wife, Letitia, and Oliver secured a $350,000 settlement from Lafayette’s diocese to settle a civil lawsuit without a trial. The Peytons in the meantime have become advocates for clergy abuse survivors. And in December 2023, Scott Peyton decided he was no longer a good fit to serve as a deacon in the diocese, quit and went on to join an Anglican church’s congregation.
