Retired "Motorcyle Priest" Reprimanded After ''Offensive'' Sermon

More details emerge about Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo's decision to bar retired "motorcycle priest" Thomas J. Quinlan from public celebration of the Sacraments, as reported here last week:

VIRGINIA BEACH — The Rev. Thomas J. Quinlan Jr. famously loves to jar congregations with bluntly worded homilies, but he went too far when he mentioned the Virgin Mary’s birth canal during a Christmas Eve service – a Catholic bishop has banned him from performing any priestly function in public.

“Your shock content was crude, offensive and disturbing,” particularly to families, youth and visitors, Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of the Richmond Diocese told Quinlan in a Jan. 17 letter. The bishop cited a sermon that Quinlan, known as “TQ,” gave at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Virginia Beach.

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Quinlan, who provided a copy of DiLorenzo’s letter, said Thursday that his Christmas Eve homily was an attempt to separate lore from the facts of Christ’s Nativity.

“When the baby Jesus came out” of Mary, “he was a man, just like us,” Quinlan said. “I was knocking the traditional idea of Christmas.”

Quinlan said his sermon also tried to show that Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth were not strictly historical accounts, but rather, one of several different forms of literature in the Bible. “There was nothing wrong with my behavior,” he said.

Quinlan has long been one of the most colorful priests in the diocese. His exploits included riding a police motorcycle into the sanctuary during a Palm Sunday service at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Norfolk.

Over the years, his earthy language at Mass and in wedding sermons generated complaints by offended listeners who contacted the diocese’s bishop and the Vatican’s official representative to the United States.

“I’m always graphic,” Quinlan said Thursday, and he has taken glee in his reputation as an iconoclast.

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Is any comment really necessary?

UPDATE
Even more details from the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
(hat tip to an anonymous commenter)

A retired Catholic priest has been banned from saying Mass or performing other priestly duties in public after a Christmas Eve homily in which he said he referred to Jesus having "come out of his mother's vagina," in an effort to stress Jesus' humanity.

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Quinlan said that after he mentioned Mary's birth canal, he noted that "that was a sacred part of her body."

The vast majority of his listeners understood his point, he said, but "a pious fool, living in the past," [ED.: A "fool for Christ (see I Cor. 4:10), perhaps] took offense and complained to the bishop's office.

***
He said DiLorenzo has brought an unhealthy conservatism to the diocese. [ED.: Dear Lord, not that! Funny thing is that Bishop DiLorenzo isn't even close to being one of the more conservative bishops in the country - it's just that he replaced clearly one of the most liberal prelates in the country]

"We're going to have the church that used to be, [ED.: Please God] and that's it -- no collegiality, no contemporary understanding of the Bible. Most people don't want it to be that way anymore. They don't if they're honest."

(emphasis added)

Bwaaaaahahaha! Paging Bishop Gumbleton! We've found you a shuffleboard partner.