Robert McKenna

His Excellency, the Most Reverend Robert McKenna
Orders
Ordination	1958 by Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani
Consecration	22 August 1986 by Guérard des Lauriers
Personal details
Born	8 July 1927
Died	16 December 2015 (aged 88)
Nationality	American
Denomination	Sedeprivationism/Sedevacantism
Profession	Bishop and exorcist
Ordination history
showHistory Priestly ordination Ordained by Amleto Giovanni Cicognani Date 1958 Episcopal consecration Consecrated by Guerard des Lauriers Date 22 August 1986
showEpiscopal succession Bishops consecrated by Robert McKenna as principal consecrator 2 July 1987 17 December 1987 21 October 1988 20 May 1999 Geert Stuyver 16 January 2002 Donald J. Sanborn 19 June 2002 28 April 2005
Source(s):[1]
Styles of Robert McKenna Reference style His Excellency The Most Reverend Spoken style Your Excellency Religious style Bishop

Robert Fidelis McKenna (8 July 1927 – 16 December 2015) was an American sedeprivationist bishop who used to be a Catholic priest 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).^[2] He was also known from the Fox TV-movie The Haunted, which is about the Smurl haunting where McKenna conducted two exorcisms.

Life[]

He was ordained a Catholic priest for the Dominican Order 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 he was defrocked. He continued as a Dominican priest while joining other priests in the Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement (O.R.C.M. or ORCM), a traditionalist Catholic organization founded by Father that represented itself as preserving authentic Catholicism from what its members viewed as radical modernist changes in doctrine and liturgy. The ORCM still exists as a corporation for legal purposes, but has long ceased to be used to represent a religious organization. As early as his October 1985 issue of Catholics Forever, Father McKenna referred to his involvement historically as "in ORCM days".

Fr. McKenna was consecrated a bishop on August 22, 1986 in Raveau, France by Mgr. Michel Guerard des Lauriers, O.P, one of the bishops consecrated by Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục with questionable papal mandate.^[3]

Bishop McKenna also consecrated Rev. Donald Sanborn as Bishop; Bishop Sanborn, who has his seminary in Florida, also works with Bishop Daniel Dolan and Fr. Anthony Cekada in West Chester, Ohio at St. Gertrude the Great.

Bishop McKenna retired from his duties at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in Monroe, Connecticut due to health concerns. He resided in Michigan until his death.

Exorcist[]

Bishop 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. Most of McKenna's attempts at exorcisms did not actually work nor did it do any good for the families afflicted by the demons present. One notable case of this is the Maurice Theriault case where although McKenna felt that he was successful in removing demons from Maurice, he never took into account Maurice's severe mental health issues. Later on, Maurice went on to kill himself. In multiple cases where McKenna was present in attempting an exorcism, there were consistent cases of suicide right after the attempted exorcisms.^[4][5]

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.^[6] 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.^[7] In this case, a young boy and his family members claimed to have seen apparitions and have heard sounds so they then turned to the Diocese of Bridgeport who the mother claimed had left her astray. The mother then turned against the Church in getting a Protestant pastor to "bless" the house which they claimed seemed to resolve the case for a couple of weeks. The mother then claimed that she went with her son through two psychiatric evaluations which she claimed showed that they were fine. She then went and got "paranormal investigators" from a group called in order to investigate her claimed hauntings. She then went to fetch McKenna who performed a traditional with his apostolic powers as bishop. After this, the family says that whatever McKenna had done had lessened the problem although her son still claimed to see "ghosts".

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."^[8]

Public stand[]

Since being consecrated a bishop, McKenna had been one of the main promoters of the Cassiciacum Thesis developed by his consecrator, which states that the papal claimants since the death of Pope Pius XII have not been true popes due to their public heresies, but have only been papa materialiter. According to McKenna, by teaching that men have a natural right to worship as they see fit, the successors of Pope Pius XII have attempted to put the heresy of ecumenism in place of Catholicism. Referring to this heresy as "a spiritual insanity," he wrote in, 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.^[9]

Concerning the bishops who are in union with Rome, McKenna 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.^[10]

Although he is sometimes classified as a sedevacantist or a sedeprivationist, McKenna considered himself to be a Catholic bishop just dealing with the Church crisis of the present day.

Death[]

Bp. McKenna died at the age of 88 on December 16, 2015.^{[citation needed]}

References[]

Audiovisual material[]

• 1999-2000 documentary on an exorcism performed by bishop McKenna O.P. on YouTube includes images from his chapel and nuns, while McKenna describes the exorcism.