Fabian Wendelin Bruskewitz is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the eighth Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, and retired in 2012. He is known for his extremely conservative stances on social issues.
On March 24, 1992, Bruskewitz was appointed the eighth Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. He received his episcopal consecration on May 13, 1992, from Archbishop Daniel E. Sheehan, with Bishops Glennon Flavin and Leo Brust serving as co-consecrators, at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ. The diocese has the highest priest-to-Catholic ratio in the United States. It has been suggested that this is due to Bruskewitz' emphasis on orthodoxy, though it has also been ascribed, at least in part, to the presence of a seminary within the diocese; it has also been noted that the adjacent diocese of Omaha has the second-highest ratio. With regard to Lincoln and other dioceses with many priests, it has been noted: "Fidelity to the magisterium and traditional spirituality are strikingly manifest." Bruskewitz himself notes that "the orthodoxy, conservatism, and enthusiasm of the clergy, both young and old, bear witness to the splendor of the Catholic priesthood in southern Nebraska." Bruskewitz was considered one of the most conservative bishops in the Church. Under Bruskewitz, the Lincoln diocese was the only one in the United States where female altar servers were not allowed diocese-wide. Bruskewitz published a book entitled Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz: A Shepherd Speaks. On September 6, 2010, Bruskewitz formally submitted his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75 for bishops. Pope Benedict accepted his resignation on September 14, 2012, and appointed Bishop James D. Conley, auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Denver, as his successor.
Views
Opposition to LGBT movement
In 1997 Bruskewitz publicly attacked an attempt by the US Bishops Conference to reach out to parents trying to cope with the discovery of homosexuality in their adolescent or adult child through the pastoral document, "All our children". He called the document “Calamity and frightening disaster” and advised other Catholics to ignore or oppose it. He has suggested that the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church is linked to clerical dissent from Catholic sexual ethics more broadly dating to dissent from the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae", which reaffirmed Catholic teaching on artificial birth control. He unsuccessfully attempted to get the US Bishops Conference to commission a study to examine potential links between sexual abuse by priests and allowing homosexual men into Catholic seminaries. This is because he believes that most sexual abuse by priests is against adolescent boys and rooted in "society's acceptance of homosexuality". He has emphasized that gay men should never be permitted into the priesthood because it encouraged temptation "since priests are regularly in close proximity with children and young men". In 2016, Bruskewitz stated that efforts to legalize same-sex unions or marriage and to secure other equal rights for LGBT people would lead to persecution of Christians who oppose such measures. Alongside this he described gay relationships as a "degeneration" and "a perversion" that is "repulsive to normal human beings".
Bruskewitz has been occasionally at odds with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. For example, he rejected an audit by the Conference's National Review Board of his plans to implement national guidelines on sex-abuse programs, making reference to both the Review Board and the former president of Pace University:
Some woman named Patricia O'Donnell Ewers, who is the chair of something called 'A National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People,' has said that her board 'calls for strong fraternal correction of the Diocese of Lincoln.' The Diocese of Lincoln has nothing to be corrected for, since the Diocese of Lincoln is and has always been in full compliance with all laws of the Catholic Church and with all civil laws...The Diocese of Lincoln does not see any reason for the existence of Ewers and her organization.
The issue brought his diocese to national attention. Bruskewitz was the only one of 195 bishops attending a June 2002 meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who refused to sign the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
1996 decree of automatic excommunication
Bruskewitz gained national attention in 1996 for decreeing automatic excommunication on Catholics in his diocese for membership in the following groups. In his statement, he asserted "Membership in these organizations or groups is always perilous to the Catholic Faith and most often is totally incompatible with the Catholic Faith."
Call to Action, with its Nebraska affiliate Call to Action Nebraska, which aims to get the Church to change its teachings in areas such as mandatory celibacy for priests, male-only priesthood, the selection process for bishops and popes, and opposition to artificial contraception
The Society of Saint Pius X and its St. Michael the Archangel Chapel for "fraudulently advertising themselves in Lincoln as 'in full union with Rome,' causing confusion, ambiguity, and uncertainty on the part of many of the faithful in Lincoln..."
Freemasonry and its affiliate organizations, for beliefs and practices that the Vatican considers incompatible with Catholicism.
Call to Action appealed to Rome against his decree, but in 2006 the Congregation for Bishops upheld his action. Bruskewitz wrote in a letter to Call to Action at the time of the excommunications that "the difference between a Protestant and a dissenting Catholic is that a Protestant has integrity." Regis Scanlon considered that the controversy created by Bruskewitz's decree may have been one of the factors that led Cardinal Joseph Bernardin to initiate without success his "Catholic Common Ground Project" to bring American Catholic factions together, based on the belief, which Scanlon decried, that "limited and occasional dissent" from the Magisterium of the Church was "legitimate".
Abortion and capital punishment
In 2004, Bruskewitz stated that he would deny the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, including 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry. In 2005, Bruskewitz voted to approve a resolution calling for an end to the practice of capital punishment. However, he said, "One can disagree with the bishops' teaching about the death penalty and still present himself for holy Communion, but one cannot disagree with a teaching about abortion and euthanasia and present himself for holy Communion."
Bruskewitz was one of the earliest proponents of the Tridentine Mass. Before Summorum Pontificum, Bruskewitz was identified in The Wanderer as one of the few U.S. bishops "...who have been generous in the Ecclesia Dei indult application, as requested and emphasized repeatedly by the late Pope John Paul II." The others were Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, Bishop Álvaro Corrada del Rio of Tyler, Texas; and Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, Illinois.
In 2015 he issued a public letter urging women not to engage in yoga. He argued that yoga has its root in Hinduism, and thus “incompatible to Christianity.”
