Robert McKenna

Robert McKenna
Robert McKenna
Orders
Ordination	1958; by Amleto Giovanni Cicognani
Consecration	22 August 1986; by Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers
Personal details
Born	8 July 1927; Danville, Illinois, USA
Died	16 December 2015 (aged 88)
Nationality	American
Denomination	Traditionalist Catholic
Profession	Bishop and exorcist

Robert Fidelis McKenna (8 July 1927 – 16 December 2015) was an American Catholic bishop of the Dominican order. He was known for his traditionalist Catholic positions and was an advocate of sedeprivationism. McKenna was one of the leaders of the Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement (ORCM).^[1] He was also known from the Fox TV-movie The Haunted, which is about the Smurl haunting where McKenna conducted two exorcisms.

Biography

He was ordained a Catholic priest for the Order of Preachers in 1958 by Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani.

After the Second Vatican Council, while working as a translator and scientific researcher for his religious Order, he became increasingly concerned with the ramifications of the Vatican reforms, and finally removed himself from his Order. He continued as a Dominican priest while joining others in the Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement (ORCM), a traditionalist Catholic organization founded by Fr. Francis E. Fenton that represented itself as preserving authentic Catholicism from what its members viewed as radical modernist changes in doctrine and liturgy.

McKenna was consecrated a bishop on 22 August 1986, in Raveau, France, by the French sedeprivationist Bishop Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers OP, one of the bishops consecrated by Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục.^[2]

He died at the age of 88 on 16 December 2015.^[3] The sermon at his funeral was preached by Donald Sanborn.^[4]

Exorcist

McKenna participated in a number of exorcisms and worked for many years with demonologist Dave Considine and Rama Coomaraswamy, M.D. Some of his cases were also investigated by psychic researchers such as the Warrens. He attempted exorcisms in the Smurl haunting case, which case was described in various books and in the Fox TV-movie The Haunted.

Another exorcism he performed in 1985 in Warren, Massachusetts was featured in the Boston Herald and later recounted by the same reporters in the book Satan's Harvest.^[5] A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Hartford, said that whatever ritual was performed on the boy was not sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church and therefore could not be called an exorcism.^[6]

Furthermore, he believes that "the official establishment does not believe in the Devil ... but the Devil believes in them. They do not believe, and when they do, they don't want to get involved."^[7]

Public stand

According to McKenna, the successors of Pope Pius XII have attempted to put the heresy of ecumenism in place of Catholicism by teaching that men have a natural right to worship as they see fit. Referring to this alleged heresy as "a spiritual insanity", he wrote in an article "On Keeping Catholic":

Now while the Popes of Vatican II, including the present Benedict XVI, can function on the purely natural level in running the Church as an organization or legal corporation, they have on the supernatural level - in view of their spiritual madness - no divine authority to speak for the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ or to govern the faithful in His name; no power, that is to say, to function precisely as the Vicar of Christ for so long as this insanity continues. They and the bishops under them, blindly following them, are lacking the jurisdiction they would otherwise have under normal circumstances. We must simply ignore them and carry on as best as we can without them.^[8]

Concerning the bishops who are in union with Rome, he published a similar view in 1980:

Practically all bishops who are not definitely heretics are at least gravely suspect of heresy by reason of the sacrilegious outrages they have tolerated in their dioceses. As a consequence, they have either lost their jurisdiction or possess a very doubtful jurisdiction, and Canon Law itself expressly supplies priests jurisdiction in such cases.^[9]

References

^ Dugan, George (6 January 1974). "Latin Mass of Old Is Luring Catholics". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
^ Edward Jarvis (2018). Sede Vacante: the Life and Legacy of Archbishop Thục. Apocryphile Press. Berkeley CA. pp. 109-111 ISBN 1949643026
^ Novus Ordo Watch. "R.I.P. Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P." 16 December 2015. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
^ Most Rev. Donald Sanborn. Bishop McKenna Funeral Sermon.
^ Michael Lasalandra (1990). Satan's Harvest. Dell. ISBN 0-440-20589-1.
^ Davis, Eileen. "Catholic church Disputes Exorcism", Hartford Courant, March 17, 1998
^ Chris Wright (June 20–27, 2002). "The Fright Club". Boston Phoenix. Archived from the original on 2005-11-23. Retrieved 2006-05-20.
^ Rt. Rev. Robert McKenna. "On Keeping Catholic". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.
^ Fr. McKenna, OP. "Common Law and Common Sense". The Angelus. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved 2006-05-20.