Our Sunday Visitor has the details:
A permanent deacon in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, whose then-teenage son was molested by the priest he once served alongside, is now excommunicated after leaving his ministry, because he formally left the Catholic Church, according to the recent decree written by his bishop.
“I’m very surprised — I assumed at some point that they would possibly laicize me, but excommunication … that thought never crossed my mind,” Deacon Scott Peyton, who was ordained in 2012 and had served until December 2023, told OSV News. He provided OSV News a digital copy of the March 13 letter he had received from Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel of Lafayette.
The document — printed on the bishop’s letterhead, signed by both Bishop Deshotel and the diocesan chancellor, and marked with the diocesan seal — acknowledged Deacon Peyton’s Dec. 4, 2023, email stating what the deacon called his intention to resign from the diaconate and leave the Catholic Church.
“The pain and suffering endured by the victims (of clergy sexual abuse), our family, and most importantly our son, coupled with what appears to be a systemic failure in addressing and preventing such heinous acts, have left me disillusioned and unable to reconcile my commitment to the Church with my conscience,” Deacon Peyton wrote.
In his decree, Bishop Deshotel said that Deacon Peyton had “de iure” been removed from all ecclesiastical offices. The bishop declared Deacon Peyton “irregular for the exercise of the sacred order of the diaconate,” according to canons 1044 and 1041, and removed his faculties to function as a cleric. The bishop added he would inform the Vatican’s Dicastery for Clergy “and await further guidance.”
Bishop Deshotel said he “must also sadly declare” that Deacon Peyton had “incurred the ‘latae sententiae’ censure of excommunication,” effective on the day the deacon received the bishop’s letter.
OSV News placed multiple requests March 21 and 22 for comment from the Diocese of Lafayette on Deacon Peyton’s excommunication and is awaiting a response.
Unlike a “ferendae sententiae” canonical penalty, which is not binding until it is formally imposed on an offender, a “latae sententiae” excommunication is “incurred automatically upon the commission of an offense” specifically prohibited under canon law, such as apostasy, heresy, schism and abortion.
Bishop Deshotel said the excommunication had been “in keeping with the earliest Councils of the Church” citing canon 1364.1 and the deacon’s “written decision … to ‘sever’ ties with the Catholic Church.”
Meanwhile, a reader sent me this story from three years ago, which includes background and details about the case against the priest involved.
