RALEIGH, N.C. — The Diocese of Raleigh has announced the retirement of the priest who has been involved in a long controversy regarding a reported affair he had with an Arlington nun.
"Reverend Philip G. Johnson, a priest in good standing of the Diocese of Raleigh, requests and is granted retirement for medical reasons with full faculties to exercise priestly ministry as his health permits," a statement from the diocese said.
Johnson first drew attention more than a year ago after he was connected to Rev. Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, the head nun of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington.
The controversy began in June of last year after the Bishop Michael Olson of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth accused Gerlach of violating her vows of chastity with Johnson.
The nuns in a statement last month called that accusation false.
The monastery then filed a civil lawsuit against Olson and the diocese, accusing them of theft and defamation. That civil suit was dismissed in June of last year.
The Vatican placed the nuns under new authority, Mother Marie of the Incarnation, President of the Association of Christ the King, earlier this year, but the nuns wouldn’t allow Mother Marie onto the premises.
Most recently, the nuns called the announcement of their dismissal from religious life by their Vatican-appointed leader a “moot point.”
"The Vows we have professed to God cannot be dismissed or taken away. By virtue of them we belong to Him and are His,” the nun’s statement reads. “Given that we pray every day for the Holy Father, Pope Francis and our Ordinary, Michael Olson, any claim that we have departed from the Catholic faith is ridiculous.”
That statement came about a month after the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity announced it had completed the final steps necessary for the monastery to be associated with the Society of Saint Pius X.
In response, Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson told members not to participate in sacraments at the monastery or offer them financial support as doing so, he said, would associate them with the "scandalous disobedience and disunity" of the nuns.
