Fabian Bruskewitz

Early life and ministry

Fabian Bruskewitz was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 6, 1935. He attended a local parochial school before studying at St. Lawrence Seminary High School in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin and at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee. He then furthered his studies at the Pontifical North American College and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he was ordained to the priesthood by Luigi Cardinal Traglia on July 17, 1960, at the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli.

Upon his return to the United States, Bruskewitz served as an assistant pastor in parishes near Milwaukee. He later returned to the Gregorian for graduate study, earning a doctorate in dogmatic theology in 1969. He briefly taught at St. Francis Seminary before being assigned to the Congregation for Catholic Education in the Roman Curia, where he worked for eleven years. He was raised to the rank of Monsignor in 1976, becoming an Honorary Prelate of His Holiness in 1980. That same year, he became pastor of St. Bernard Parish in Wauwatosa.

Episcopal career

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 is considered one of the most conservative bishops in the Church, having described homosexual acts as "intrinsically disordered" and as not coming "from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity". 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.

Retirement

In May 2015 Bruskewitz issued a statement telling Catholics that they should abstain from yoga, arguing women that it risked jeopardizing their faith. The main concern seemed to be yoga's roots in Hinduism which Bruskewitz argued was 'incompatible to Christianity'.

LGBT issues

In 2016, Bruskewitz stated that efforts to legalize same-sex marriage and to secure other rights for LGBT people would lead to persecution of Christians who oppose such measures. Bruskewitz described homosexuality as "a perversion that is repulsive to normal human beings".

National guidelines on sex-abuse programs

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 appealed to Rome against his decree, but in 2006 the Congregation for Bishops upheld his action.

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".

Denial of Communion to politicians who support abortion

In 2004, Bruskewitz stated that he would deny the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who supported abortion, including 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.

Tridentine Mass

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.