Wisconsin diocese demands Catholic priest’s resignation after he opposes COVID-19 vaccine

On May 24, 2021, a Wisconsin bishop demanded a Roman Catholic parish pastor resign after video surfaced showing him encouraging his congregation to avoid the COVID-19 vaccine and ignore pandemic safety measures. The pastor, who preached throughout the pandemic that COVID-19 was a hoax, resisted the bishop’s resignation request. 

Key Players

Rev. James Altman is the head priest of St. James the Less Catholic Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Before his vaccine rants, Altman had gained notoriety for denouncing climate change, the LGBTQ+ lifestyle, and the Black Lives Matter movement during previous sermons posted to Facebook. Before the 2020 presidential election, he declared in a video produced by a right-wing organization that “you cannot be a Catholic and a Democrat,” NBC News reported. 

William Patrick Callahan, the Bishop of La Crosse’s diocese, officially called for Altman’s resignation, a move that jeopardized significant financial support from right-wing parishioners, according to NBC News. 

Further Details

Altman first caught the attention of church leaders with an Easter sermon, delivered April 4, 2021, in which he claimed that the pandemic was a “hoax.” A few days after the service — which drew between 300 to 500 mostly maskless attendees, according to NBC News — Altman posted a bulletin to the church’s website telling parishioners to avoid being “a guinea pig,” calling the vaccine “an experimental use of a genetic altering substance that modifies your body – your Temple of the Holy Spirit.” In the same message, he stated that “God is still the best doctor and prayer is still the best medicine.”

The following month, Bishop Callahan asked for Altman’s resignation, arguing that Altman’s sermons and posts were “divisive and ineffective,” according to the Catholic World Report. Altman had addressed the demand in a sermon the previous Sunday, May 23, 2021.

“Unfortunately in our cancel culture, if the left whines like they do, like a spoiled brat, often enough, they succeed in canceling so many voices of truth,” Altman said in the sermon. “And now that they are whining like, if I may say it, the pansy babies that they are to cancel me.” After he said this, audible protests of sympathy emanated from the crowd, according to the La Crosse Tribune.

It was during this sermon that Altman also announced his decision to fight Callahan’s request, kickstarting the Catholic Church’s legal proceedings for expelling him from the church. Officially, the Catholic Church supports COVID-19 vaccinations. In December 2020, the church announced that the vaccine was “morally justified” for Catholics. In January 2021, the Church publicized Pope Francis’s own vaccination and encouraged other Catholics to be vaccinated, according to Vatican News.

Altman’s videos and the diocese’s response have divided local Catholic groups, and significant support from right-wing Catholics across the country began pouring in through social media. Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, issued a public statement claiming that Altman was under fire for simply “speaking the truth,” according to the National Catholic Register.

A Facebook group defending Altman, called “Friends of Father James Altman,” attracted approximately 4,000 members within a month of the video’s first surfacing. Multiple posts in the group asserted that there was “no science behind the false religion of covidism.” 

Rev. Nathan Empsall of Faithful America, a Christian advocacy group, launched a petition campaign in support of Altman’s firing, claiming that “this is the kind of action that protects us all from misinformation, from the coronavirus, from hatred,” according to Wisconsin Public Radio. 

Outcome 

Crowdfunding raises over $600,000 for Altman’s defense

By June 3, 2021, a crowdfunding website for conservative Christians called LifeFunder had raised over $322,000 to defend Altman. By June 5, 2021, another Christian crowdfunding website, called GiveSendGo, had raised another $300,000 for Altman’s cause, The Associated Press reported.

Altman faces a lengthy trial process

On May 24, 2021, the Catholic Church announced that Altman would be able to submit a defense that would subsequently be reviewed by Bishop Callahan and two other pastors from the diocesan priest’s council, as per protocol dictated in the church’s Code of Canon Law. Canon lawyer Nicholas Cafardi told the National Catholic Reporter that “the process for removing a pastor is extremely fair, with protections for a pastor built in, including an option to appeal the decision to the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy.”