Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Times –
Intended for Publication
Although the Roman Catholic Church universally demands celibacy for its clergy, Thomas McMichael, a married Evangelical Lutheran minister with a wife and two teenage sons, was recently ordained to the priesthood to serve in a Bellingham parish.
As Catholics, we have grown accustomed to dealing with such inconsistencies from our religious leadership.
Despite the church’s harsh rules on personal sexuality and marriage, it managed to create the worst sex abuse scandal in the history of religion in the United States. Its hard line against gay and lesbian love is contrasted by the fact that over fifty percent of priests and bishops are gay and many are in active relationships. This is so well known that one famous Catholic author, Father Donald Cozzens, refers to the priesthood as a “gay profession” in his writings.
The ordination of McMichael hits a particularly strident chord in the lives of over one hundred and forty Roman Catholic priests here in the Puget Sound area. Over the past twenty five years, those priests left the homosexual culture of the priesthood to start new lives, find new jobs, marry women and raise their own families. Time has shown that the straight priests tend to leave and the gay priests tend to stay. While I wish Father McMichael success in his newly won position, I cannot help but wonder how his family and those who invested in his growth and development in the Lutheran church feel over his abandonment of their beloved religious tradition.
This ordination creates an interesting mirror image irony. A married Lutheran priest is now working with a predominantly gay Roman Catholic clergy while, outside the walls, shunned cradle Catholic married priests spiritually serve the seventy percent of Catholics who also feel alienated from church leadership and their policies.
I believe this irony could resolve itself for all involved if the church would reinstate its original tradition of a married clergy and if society would accept those gay men who find it easier to hide behind religious institutional masks than to openly be the people God created them to be.
John Shuster
5647 Perdemco Ave SE
Port Orchard, WA 98367
360.649.2055 cell
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2 comments:
>"...inconsistencies from our religious leadership."
There are no inconsistencies in the McMichael case. He was validly married before entrance into the Catholic CHurch. He was then ordained a priest. That is entirely consistent with Catholic teaching and practice.
>"it managed to create the worst sex abuse scandal in the history of religion in the United States."
This isn't remotely germaine any discussion on to ordaining married men to priesthood or to McMichael.
>"wonder how his family and those who invested in his growth and development in the Lutheran church feel over his abandonment of their beloved religious tradition"
Why is this germaine to a discussion on ordination of married men to the priesthood. Should feelings be a criteria for rejecting converts to the Catholic Church? That seesm to be your point.
>"...shunned cradle Catholic married priests..."
Therein lies the rub. While McMichael is a married man ordained to the priesthood, those shunned are ordained priests who then married, for which authority is not found neither in scripture nor Sacred Tradition.
Jesus spoke to this situation in the parable of te vineyard workers. Those hired in the morning were angry at those hired at noon and late in the day receiving the same wages. Jesus pointed out that the "wages" are for the vineyard owner to do as the owner likes. The early hires agreed to their wages. Ditto the priests who are now envious of the wages McMichael is receiving.
God bless... +Timothy
To Timothy with a + before his name,
It sounds to me like you are very much against the position of those who write this blog. You do not think that there is any place in the church for priests who marry after ordination. You back up you belief with talk about sacred tradition and scripture. Isn’t there also enough in the Gospel about forgiveness and the compassion of Christ? What about the prodigal son, or the hundreds of other examples of Jesus forgiving the sinner? Or is all about legalism for you? Why is it so important for people like you to make sure that others should not be given a second chance or believe that they could even contemplate asking? Perhaps the church was made only for folks like you, but I am consoled to know that heaven was made for all.
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