Incident Report #4556
Vatican Keeps Deacon Excommunicated; His Son’s Abuser Is Still a Priest
The Vatican upheld a Louisiana deacon's excommunication for joining another church after a priest abused his son, while the confessed abuser, per the bishop, remains a priest.
What happened
The Vatican’s doctrinal office has turned down a former Louisiana deacon’s appeal of his excommunication, as the Guardian reported. Scott Peyton, ordained a deacon for the Diocese of Lafayette in 2012, learned of the ruling on a Friday, in a meeting with the diocese’s bishop, J Douglas Deshotel. It came from the DDF, the Vatican’s doctrine office, which handles discipline for Catholic clergy.
The file opens with a crime. In 2018, priest Michael Guidry admitted molesting Peyton’s teenage son, an altar server, at St Peter’s in Morrow, Louisiana, where both men served. Guidry was arrested, pleaded guilty and received a seven-year prison sentence. His church later threw him a farewell lunch, for which the diocese had to apologize. Peyton said the family reached a $350,000 settlement with the diocese out of court in 2021, and the Peytons became advocates for survivors of clergy abuse.
In December 2023, Peyton decided he could no longer serve as a deacon in Lafayette. He resigned, spent time in an Anglican congregation and said so on social media. About three months later, Bishop Deshotel decreed that Peyton had cut himself off from the Church and was excommunicated, effective immediately. Peyton appealed in May 2024. Such appeals are generally meant to take around three months; he wasn’t told the office was even reviewing his materials until October 2024. The rejection came on 22 May, roughly two years after he filed.
In documents shared with the paper by his canon lawyer, Dawn Eden Goldstein, who represents him free of charge, the Vatican office said that joining the Anglicans and publicizing it amounted to refusing to submit to the pope. In its words: “This act of joining a separated faith community by its very nature is an act of refusal of submission to the Roman pontiff” (the Vatican’s doctrine office (DDF), as quoted by the Guardian) It said the penalty took effect through the act itself, called the circumstances tragic and voiced hope for eventual reconciliation.
According to Goldstein’s statement, Deshotel acknowledged at the meeting that Guidry, now 83 and in prison, is still a Catholic priest. Peyton understood that Guidry had been barred from ministering publicly, and pointed to Guidry’s remarks at an unsuccessful parole hearing about offering spiritual direction behind bars and still regarding himself as a priest. Peyton, who now attends a nondenominational church, intends to appeal again. The paper has asked the diocese for comment.
Hellpdesk’s take
Hellpdesk processes a great many disciplinary files, and we know a priority queue when we see one. This one has two entries. Entry one: a clergyman confessed to sexually abusing a child, pleaded guilty and went to prison. By the bishop’s own acknowledgment, as relayed by Peyton’s lawyer, he is still a priest. Entry two: the child’s father stepped down, worshipped for a while with Anglicans and mentioned it online. He was excommunicated on the spot, and after two years of review the Vatican confirmed the paperwork was in order.
To be precise about where the problem sits: not with Peyton, and certainly not with his son. Nothing done to that boy is a joke, and nothing here treats it as one. The problem is a rulebook in which, by the Vatican office’s own reasoning, the harshest penalty attaches automatically to a father leaving, no hearing needed. The family went looking for somewhere to pray that didn’t mean facing the institution where the harm happened. The institution’s reply was to lock the door behind them.
Peyton summed it up better than any ticket summary could: “Apparently, according to Bishop Deshotel, finding a faith community where my family can worship without reliving the trauma endured is a greater scandal to the Diocese of Lafayette than the sexual abuse of a child” (Scott Peyton, as quoted by the Guardian)
Down here we are often accused of running the most unforgiving bureaucracy in existence. We would like to formally withdraw from the competition. Our compliance team found the Vatican’s logic internally consistent, and that is the trouble: a system where disloyalty to the pope triggers itself is working exactly as written. That is what working as intended means when the intention is wrong. The office called the situation tragic and hoped for reconciliation. Hope is not a remedy, and a victim’s father should not have to apply for one.
The Church’s own source material has views on priorities. On those who harm the little ones: But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6, KJV). And on institutions that obsess over small infractions while swallowing large ones: Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:24, KJV). Filed under Known Issues: documentation exists; nobody upstairs appears to have read it.
What the record shows
Excommunication is not a clerical footnote. Devout Catholics see it as among the gravest penalties there are, meant to shock a sinner into changing course before death. It bars the person from certain sacraments, including communion, central to Catholic life. Peyton now shares the status with Henry VIII, cast out after divorcing and remarrying; Martin Luther, for launching the Protestant Reformation; and Napoleon, for annexing the Papal States to France.
Peyton’s appeal argued the excommunication achieved no pastoral good and left his wife and six children feeling unwelcome in the Church too: eight Catholics pushed out by one decree. Goldstein, while rejecting the ruling, said the Vatican office had shown more sensitivity to the family’s suffering than Bishop Deshotel ever had.
The setting matters. America’s reckoning with the global clergy abuse crisis effectively started right here: in 1985 a Lafayette priest, Gilbert Gauthe, pleaded guilty to molesting several boys he had come to know through his ministry. In March, Louisiana prosecutors charged another Lafayette priest, Korey LaVergne, with a felony count of indecent behavior with a juvenile, based on allegations that he touched a child inappropriately; he has pleaded not guilty, and the case was unresolved at the time of the report. Local outlet KADN reported in July that the diocese had hired bankruptcy attorney Frank LoCoco, though as of Peyton’s meeting it had not joined the more than 40 US Catholic institutions that have sought federal bankruptcy protection over the scandal’s fallout.
The ledger, then. The courts handled Guidry with a guilty plea and a prison term. The Church, by Peyton’s account, handled him with a suspension from public ministry. It handled his victim’s father with excommunication. Peyton called that contradiction the real scandal. Our audit concurs.
Ticket status: Working as intended, which is precisely the defect. Appeal noted; Hellpdesk will keep this file open for as long as the Vatican keeps its priorities exactly where they are. 📋
Receipts
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