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Sharp Criticism. A tougher action was taken against California's Father William DuBay, 31, the angry curate who in 1964 called on the Pope to remove Los Angeles' James Francis Cardinal McIntyre (DuBay felt the cardinal was not sufficiently active in civil rights drives). Transferred five times and finally suspended from curate duties in Santa Monica after he advocated a white-collar labor union for priests (TIME, March 4), DuBay hardly boosted his case with the hierarchy by sharply criticizing it in his recently published book, The Human Church (Doubleday, $4.50). Among his many radical suggestions: priests and bishops should be elected by their parishioners, and parochial schools should be abandoned in favor of more informal religious instruction.
Last week, rapping his "public expressions of insubordination," the Vatican not only turned down DuBay's appeal of his suspension but also ordered him to end the sale and distribution of his book. What were the legal grounds? The book did not have his bishop's imprimatur, as required by canon law. DuBay protested that many other Catholics have published without imprimatur, that the church is making a special case out of him, and that he had been "tried in absentia by anonymous judges." Contending that the order "goes completely against the Vatican Council's statement on freedom of religion, conscience and expression," DuBay argued that "prior censorship is a ghost that has been hovering around the Catholic Church since the Spanish Inquisition."
He has no intention of withdrawing his book from circulation, and nearly 11,000 copies have already been sold. Unless the Vatican gives him the ecclesiastical trial that he wants, Father DuBay threatens to bring a lawsuit against the church in U.S. civil courts for which there is little precedent.