Rentapriest

Celibacy in priesthood is 'soon to be a thing of the past'

2012-01-24T13:13:00.002-05:00

The Vatican might be a little surprised at the prognostication delivered by Fr. Shay Cullen (photo) during an interview with the Irish TV program "The Meaning of Life." Fr. Cullen, a priest in the Missionary Society of St. Columban and founder of the Preda Foundation which works primarily to protect the human rights of women and children in the Philippines, told program moderator Gay Byrne that celibacy in the Catholic Church was a "business arrangement" that would soon be a thing of the past.

"Celibacy is only a practice mostly to keep property out of the hands of married couples," Fr. Cullen said. "It's more sort of a business type of arrangement...All of the other Christian churches manage very well and many Anglicans who were married and had family and children and came over to the Catholics and were warmly accepted. Now we have many married priests in the Catholic Church and it is working, so why not? It is only another step to abolishing this celibate thing and getting on with life."

The priest, who has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, then went on to discuss his work protecting children from the abuses of the sex trade...

My life as a married Catholic priest

2012-01-17T12:41:00.002-05:00

By R. Scott Hurd
Washington Post
1/13/2012

This priest is a married RC priest with three children and Vicar General for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.

"...In my new role as Vicar General of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, established on January 1 by Pope Benedict XVI, I’ll continue to serve with married clergy. This time, however, they will be married priests. I happen to be one of them. By the end of 2012, there may be as many as 140 married priests in the U.S....

...When we answered God’s call to Catholic ministry, we didn’t set out to break the mold. None of us, to my knowledge, want to be “poster boys” for a new paradigm of priesthood. Instead, we wished to be obedient, and wanted an opportunity to serve. We’re deeply grateful for the opportunity we’ve been given...

...In our day, debates about celibacy swirl in Catholic circles. This ancient and biblical discipline has both its defenders and critics. Speaking for myself, I feel uncomfortable when circumstances like mine are used to further an argument or make a point. I’m simply honored to serve the Lord I love while being blessed with a family I love. I can’t imagine life without either--and I’m glad I don’t have to. .."

Well, you get the idea...I find this whole "I've got mine, Jack, so I'm not gonna risk my position by denouncing injustice so you can get yours too" attitude that Fr. Hurd and the other married pastoral provision priests have adopted to be really infuriating. Yes, you men ARE poster children for why the Church can -- and should -- make celibacy optional. Every day, just by doing your jobs, you prove that there's no fundamental conflict between a vocation to the priesthood and married life. Maybe if the Vatican opened its eyes, it would see that too.

Losing his vocation, not his religion

2012-01-17T12:15:00.003-05:00

By Manya A. Brachear
Chicago Tribune
January 15, 2012

Like many Roman Catholic men who feel called to the priesthood, the Rev. Jim Hearne wrestled with whether ordination was right for him.

The youngest of seven in an Irish Catholic family, he saw the joy of family life firsthand and never could quite extinguish the desire to one day have children of his own. But spurred to help stem the priest shortage and strengthen the integrity of the cloth, Hearne donned a priest's collar in 2005 at age 25.

Now he wonders if his six years in the pulpit as "Father Jim" might have been preparation to become Jim, the father. After a six-month leave of absence from St. Giles Roman Catholic Church in Oak Park, Hearne has decided he will not return to the pulpit, but he will stay in the pews and pray to one day start a family of his own.

He has no intention of turning his back on Catholicism. Rather, he wants to be more faithful to the church he calls home, and faithful to his feelings.

Hearne has fallen in love....

Full text of article...

Photo: Jim Hearne in his new uniform as a security guard.

The Vatican's problem with fathers who are fathers

2012-01-06T19:31:00.001-05:00

by Sophia Deboick
The Guardian
January 6, 2012

Last week it emerged that Gabino Zavala, the auxiliary bishop of the Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles for nearly 18 years, has a secret family. The existence of his two teenage children has been deemed a sufficiently "grave cause", as defined by Canon 401 of the code of canon law, that he has been obliged to resign. Memories of other notable cases resurface: the Eamon Casey scandal of the early 90s, when revelations that he fathered a child two years before his episcopal appointment led to his resignation as Bishop of Galway; the more recent case of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, who had as many as six children (although accusations of paedophilia and incest make this alleged offence pale into insignificance). Zavala is hardly the first priest to break his vow of celibacy in such spectacular fashion, and in fact the church has struggled with the problem of "Fathers who are fathers" for centuries.

The children of Catholic priests have historically presented a double problem to the Latin Rite church: clearly they give the game away about dad's lack of conformity to the requirement for celibacy, but they also put a financial burden on his employer....

Full story...

Bishop resigns after disclosing he is father of two children

2012-01-04T10:14:00.002-05:00

By John Thavis, Catholic News Service
National Catholic Reporter
Jan. 04, 2012

Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala has resigned after disclosing to superiors in mid December that he was the father of two minor teenage children who live with their mother in another state. Bishop Zavala told Archbishop Gomez that he had submitted his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI. Since that time, Bishop Zavala has not been in ministry and "will be living privately," Archbishop Gomez said.

"The archdiocese has reached out to the mother and children to provide spiritual care as well as funding to assist the children with college costs. The family's identity is not known to the public, and I wish to respect their right to privacy," Archbishop Gomez said...

Bishop Zavala, a native of Guerrero, Mexico, has also been the bishop-president of Pax Christi...

The Catholic priest with nine children

2011-12-19T17:22:00.002-05:00

by Joanna Moorhead
The Guardian
12/16/2011

Father Ian Hellyer is a Roman Catholic priest – but far from being celibate, he's a father. Not just to a couple of children, either: in true Roman Catholic fashion, Father Ian has lots of them – nine, in fact, ranging from 18-year-old Clare to seven-month-old Rose – taking in Teresa (17), Angela (15), Martha (11), John (nine), Luke (seven), Simeon (four) and Gregory (two) in between...

For more information on Fr. Hellyer, a recent "pastoral provision" convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, see full text of article.

Catholic splinter expands

2011-12-19T17:07:00.002-05:00

By Hilton Otenyo
The Nairobi Star
12/16/2011

A Roman Catholic Church splinter group, the Kenya Ecumenical Reformed Catholic Church has said celibacy forms the basis on which the church would grow and expand. Head of the church archbishop Godfrey S. Wasike said the rule requiring that catholic priests live a chastity life is promoting faster growth of his church. “The catholic church should re-look at the rule with a view of opening up to realities of nature and allow the church priest to marry and raise families if it expects to remain relevant to the dynamic world,” said Wasike. He said that celibacy in the church has rocked families of faithful and it was not good for the practice to continue.

He spoke during the ordination of four priests of the church in Kakamega. Wasike, an ordained Roman Catholic priest is married to Stella. Wasike conducted the ordination of Fr Lucas Musamali who now becomes the parish priest for the Ikonyero church in Kakamega, Fr George Musembi (Thika) Fr Gregory Maeke, lecturer at Masinde Muliro University and Fr John Muyore (Trans Mara). The church head also ushered in Saustine Nalianya from Bungoma and Protus Asiango (Shibuye, Kakamega East district) to become church deacons.

On Saturday, Rev Wasike conducted the wedding ceremonies for two priests; Fr Maeke who wedded Jackline Mumbi and Fr Chrisanthus Shikokoti who wedded a teacher Evelyn Nanjala...

Between a rock and a hard place: love or the collar

2011-12-01T17:50:00.003-05:00

By Carmen Villar (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Faro de Vigo
11/27/2011

It's now been 14 years since former priest José Antonio Fernández lost his job as teacher of religion because he was married. It seems that a photograph in a newspaper in which he came out with his wife and children as a member of Movimiento pro Celibato Opcional was to blame. Now the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is reviewing his case. What José Antonio Fernández denounces is the hypocrisy surrounding his dismissal since, he argues, the Bishop of Cartagena is hiding behind "respect for parents' feelings" in order not to renew his contract, when he states that he introduced himself in each class -- from 1991 to 1997 -- to his students and their parents as a priest who didn't hide his status.

Fernández Martínez isn't the only case among priests who formalize their relationships with women. Movimiento pro Celibato Opcional ["The Optional Celibacy Movement"], whose very name already proclaims one of its objectives, estimates that around a quarter of the priests who are working in Spain got married between 1970 and 1990 or 1995, a figure that one of its members, Ramón Alario, who represents MOCEOP in the European Federation of Married Priests, thinks can be extrapolated to Galicia. In some countries in South America, such as Brazil, the number would even increase to one third, without the Christian communities raising many objections. "Many believers accept it as normal that the priest would live a normal life, but since it isn't lawful, practical acceptance is limited to small communities," he states.

This man who has a degree in Philosophy and a doctorate in Theology from the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas is happy that, since this organization was founded in the mid-70s, "many married priests have come out of the closet", which he considers an "achievement". "From living clandestinely, in hiding, with feelings of guilt, they have managed in many cases to help people live normally and not have problems of conscience and many communities have no problem with having a married priest who lives a normal life," he asserts.

Alario, who compiled the book "Curas casados. Historias de fe y ternura" ("Married priests: stories of faith and tenderness" - MOCEOP, 2011) that pulls together 23 of these cases -- acknowledges, nonetheless, that the married priests "boom" happened from the 70s to the 90s. "From that point on, we have questions. The younger priests who have been falling in love, do it secretely. There's no way to contact them," he explains. For Alario, this situation can be explained in part -- but only in part, he stresses -- by two factors. On the one hand, the economic situation. "It's not that it was easy for us, but some more, some less, found a civilian job and that's how we lived. The current situation means that anyone who abandons the ministry has more problems when he enters the labor market," he says. On the other hand, he adds, there's the generation gap and the concept of what the Church is. "Today's priests are more obedient and submissive to the hierarchy," he says. However, the priests of MOCEOP, he emphasizes, "are priests, and if the community "needs" them, they're "available."

This is the case, for example, of Galician former priest Juan Caamaño, now a driving instructor, who left the priesthood, not for love but to devote himself to that profession. "I changed because of life circumstances; I felt that my work was valued more," he explains. Love, he says, came later, and the family too, "a plus I hadn't counted on that gives me a lot of satisfaction."

Victorino Pérez Prieto: "God isn't jealous when the priest has a family"

2011-11-30T16:37:00.002-05:00

La Opinion Coruña
11/27/2011

He was born in León, but almost all the publications of theologian Victorino Pérez, a member of the Movimiento pro Celibato Opcional ["Optional Celibacy Movement" in Spain], are in Castillian Spanish. He studied in Santiago -- although he got his doctorate in Theology in Salamanca, he was ordained a priest in Mondoñedo in 1981 and he was a pastor for 25 years in Galicia until he got married.

Is the priesthood compatible with being married?

I think it's perfectly compatible. God isn't jealous if you have a family and, moreover, things are going to have to change in the Church with respect to that. The problem is that the change that is already happening in practice is very slow at the level of the judicial structure of the Church, which has an atavistic rule that keeps it from seeing that this is not an impediment to being a priest. In fact, the priests in the Eastern rite Catholic Church can get married and married Anglican priests with their families have recently been admitted into the Catholic Church. So you can see how absolutely secondary this is. Moreover, in my case, I'm a theologian. I'm married and I work in Theology as much as the Church will allow me.

What does the fact that they can't get married mean?

The most serious problem for the priests who have a partner and can't get married is the tragedy of having to hide something beautiful that should be in the light. This makes them suffer unnecessarily. To those who claim we knew this before getting ordained as priests, I would say that we human beings evolve in life. Like what happened to me and to other priests -- you meet someone you love, and the love is reciprocal. And what love seeks is to be out in the light, not having to hide itself in any closet.

Many are in these hidden situations.

The lives of the those who live as a couple and who, legitimately, don't want to give up either their partner or the normal priesthood, are tragic. Sometimes it leads them to a shameful, sad, and hard situation, and even more so for the women than for the priests. Because they are the biggest victims. They live in an abnormal situation and in certain cases feelings of sin or abuse because of the lack of a normal emotional life can occur. It's true that there's a higher percentage of pedophiles among non-priests than among priests, but in most of these cases it happens because of not having normal healthy emotional lives. Loving and being loved by someone is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person. Having to hide it creates a violent situation that's disastrous. Although celibacy isn't bad per se -- it has its good aspects and some live it out well -- it being mandatory for all has caused a lot of unnecessary suffering that is harmful to the Church.

The younger ones think about it more when the time comes to give up the priesthood for love. Is that due to the crisis or a different mentality?

There's a growing tendency for the younger cleric to be more conservative. But certainly in the current crisis situation, not having a normal working environment is a reason to live as a hidden couple. A somewhat important part is that the young cleric is more ritualistic than vocational -- he's simply a performer of rites and services through which he earns a living, but there's also a lot in the young cleric that's vocational and is healthy and well. But what's serious is that the Church isn't making a decision that it could have already made over 40 years ago at Vatican II. John Paul II said that he knew that in the future priests would be able to get married but he didn't want it to happen during his papacy, and now the same thing is happening [with Benedict XVI]. They keep passing the buck and not making a decision and by not making it, more suffering and tragic situations will continue to occur. Not to speak about when there are already children...

Parishes usually don't take it badly when their priests get married. What happened in your case?

I was a priest in Ferrol, in a large parish. When I announced it to the parish, one of the more conservative women told me I was worth as much to them married as single and she asked me if they could talk to the bishop, even though I explained to them that it didn't depend on him. And it's not about whether the people are more or less progressive, but common sense -- what the people want is for the priest to serve them. If there were a referendum, there would be all sorts [of responses] but those who agree with married priests would win.

Where's the future heading?

There's no going back on the fact that priests will marry. Thinking the opposite is going against history. But it doesn't seem like it's going to change immediately. It's something that should have changed through reflexion, not because the shameful situation of the Church, which has mortaged itself economically because it has had to pay for the abuses of its members, is going to make it change forcibly. Meanwhile, I won't allow my human and moral quality to be judged for having done it.

"Hi. My name is José Antonio Fernández and I'm a married priest"

2011-11-22T16:12:00.003-05:00

by J.A. Aunión (English translation by Rebel Girl)
El País
11/22/2011

"Hi. My name is José Antonio Fernández and I'm a married priest." That's how the teacher of religion introduced himself to his students in each course. To their parents too, since he always sought work as a tutor. Then he explained to them that he had been a priest for over 20 years and that he had asked for dispensation to marry -- "I fell in love", he says -- even though he still had not been granted it in 1991 when he began to teach in the public institutes in Murcia. By then he already had five children.

Therefore, Fernández didn't understand the reasons the diocese gave him when they fired him from his teaching job in 1997 -- they took away his Ecclesial Declaration of Eligibility, which is essential for teaching a religion class, when his situation was made public through a photograph of a Movimiento Pro Celibato Opcional ("Optional Celibacy Movement") action published in a newspaper, arguing that some of the parents might be offended. "Which parents?...since they all knew me", and moreover they wrote publicly in support of him, he says indignantly. In fact, it seems so deceitful to him that he has been fighting for 14 years for recognition of the injustice that he states has been committed against him. He has come to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, that today will review his case in open court. The Spanish Constitutional Court rejected his arguments in 2007.

"I want to show that it was an unfair decision, that I had always performed responsibly as a teacher, with respect for the Catholic faith." A respect and love he maintains, because of which this process has been twice as difficult for him. "I love the Church. My children have never heard me speak against it," he states, but he can't say the same about the Catholic hierarchy because, in their case, "lies have been told," he says in the local Red Cross in his town, Cieza, in Murcia. At 74, he gives training courses to future volunteers. He says the "scandal" business is a lie and so is what the Spanish Bishops' Conference is now arguing in Strasbourg -- that José Antonio "has held a position contrary to the faith he committed himself to teach."

In any case, the defendant at the European Court is not the Bishops' Conference, but the Spanish government which is, ultimately, who hires teachers of religion, but only from among those who have the bishops' approval, according to 1979 agreements between Spain and the Holy See. A power that has already caused hundreds of lawsuits and millions of euros in compensation -- paid, for the most part, by the government -- in cases in which the bishops had decided on dismissal, for example, for marrying a divorced man or exercising the right to strike. "No accord can be above the Constitution and the law," Fernández complains.

Now his life is quieter. Nothing like that period when, in his fifties, he left the priesthood after more than 20 years, nine as a missionary in Ecuador. It was complicated then -- he worked in a jam factory while getting a degree in Classical Philology.

Once he had his degree, the then bishop of Cartagena called him and said: "Why don't you work as a religion teacher? We need people like you." It was 1991 and José Antonio had already been married six years and had five children, but he still hadn't been granted dispensation. "When I left, the bishop said to me: 'You're a poet, and all this will pass,' but it didn't pass. From the moment I asked for the dispensation [in 1984; he got married the following year] I acted as a layman; I took the silence to be a concession," he says. The dispensation came almost at the same time as the dismissal, in 1997.

One year earlier, he had been invited to a Movimiento Pro Celibato Opcional meeting which he attended. "It was a sort of field day, so I went with my whole family." When he, his wife and five children, got out of the car, a newspaper photographer took a picture to go with a news story on optional celibacy. "You're in the newspaper; you're important," one of his students said to him. But the photo deeply disturbed some people in the Catholic hierarchy and they fired him. "Can you believe that we have spent 15 years showing that going to a meeting of the optional celibacy movement isn't a crime? I am truly amazed."

Now, Strasbourg will decide if Fernández's rights to privacy and freedom of ideology and expression have been violated. The Church argues that it's its job to establish the moral criteria with which religion teachers must comply and that the Spanish government doesn't have the voice or the vote to select them or withdraw their approval.

US Melkite bishop urges study of ordaining married men as priests

2011-11-22T15:09:00.002-05:00

By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
November 16, 2011

To address a shortage of priests in his nationwide eparchy, the Melkite Catholic bishop of Newton, Mass., is exploring the possibility of ordaining married men as priests.

Bishop Nicholas J. Samra of Newton notes that of the 40 parishes in his diocese, eight have no resident priest. And, while the answer is more priests, the question is how to get them.

The strategy Bishop Samra prefers is to develop priests from within the diocese rather than ask Melkite Catholic bishops from the Middle East, where the rite has its roots, to supply priests.

Bishop Samra made his views clear during an address he gave Aug. 23, the date of his installation as bishop.

"God calls men and women to religious vocations. And I believe he also calls married men to the priesthood," he said in his remarks. "We need to study this situation in our country and develop the proper formation for men who are truly deemed worthy of this call."

He added, " The (diocesan) deacon formation program is a good program; however, (it) is not the back door to the priesthood. Married men who are called to priesthood need the same formation as those celibates who are called. I have already discussed this issue with those involved in priestly formation and hopefully soon we can see the growth of properly formed married clergy. Of course there are also major financial issues to be looked at and we will embark on this also."

In a Nov. 9 telephone interview with Catholic News Service, Bishop Samra said his comments should not provoke any surprise at the Vatican.

"This is not new that I said this. I've said it before. They must have known this when they named me (bishop)," he said, adding he has even published his views in a book. "I know a copy went to Rome and I'm sure they saw that.

"I haven't hidden the fact that it's a necessity for our church," he said, noting that any such initiative would need to be "properly managed, and not just ordaining somebody who thinks they have a vocation."

The Vatican began placing limits on the ordination and assignment of Eastern Catholic married priests in the West in the 1880s. In 1929, the Vatican, at the request of the Latin-rite bishops of the United States, ruled that married priests could not serve the Eastern-rite churches in the United States. The ban was applied to Canada in the 1930s and to Australia in 1949.

But by the early 2000s, the Vatican had stopped suspending married men ordained to the priesthood for service in the Eastern Catholic churches of North America and Australia.

Archbishop Cyril Vasil, secretary of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, told CNS in Rome that the Vatican reconfirmed the general ban in 2008, "but in individual cases, in consultation with the national bishops' conference, a dispensation can be given" allowing the ordination.

Eastern Catholic bishops say the Second Vatican Council's call to respect the traditions and disciplines of the Eastern churches, and the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches affirmation of that call, in effect nullifies the ban, or at the very least makes the ban a "disputed question" and therefore not binding.

But practical questions abound for the Melkites. "The Melkite Church never had a married clergy (tradition) in the USA," Bishop Samra told CNS.

"We have a bunch of people who want to be ordained, yeah, but we need to have men who have the credentials," he said, adding there are priests in the diocese who have complained, "If I had to go through all that training to get it (ordination), why shouldn't they?" To that end, Bishop Samra said he planned on meeting with representatives of the Byzantine Catholic seminary where Melkite seminarians are educated to work out those issues.

There are some married priests serving the diocese; four are assigned to small parishes that struggle to pay the expenses incurred by the priests' families. To address that, Bishop Samra said he would like to reinstate a dormant philanthropic arm of the diocese, and apply 30-40 percent of the funds raised as an escrow account to have the dioceses pay the costs of a priest's family, leaving the individual parish to pay the same costs whether the priest is celibate or married.

One solution Bishop Samra said he would no longer pursue is bringing in Melkite priests from the Middle East. "Everyone we brought over we had problems with, and they're all gone," he said, noting they did not adapt to U.S. culture.

He added that he has told his brother Melkite bishops, "I'm a little afraid now of requesting priests from the Middle East. I'm just afraid you're going to send us people who have problems and those problems are going to be multiplied."

Bishop Samra is the Melkite Catholic diocese's first U.S.-born bishop.

He said other approaches include having "working priests" who make a salary outside the diocese staff parishes during the weekend, and "asking a couple of our birituals to help out a little more." Biritual priests have permission to celebrate Mass in two rites, often the Latin rite and an Eastern rite.

Melkite parishes have been closed, not for a lack of priests but for a lack of parishioners, according to Bishop Samra. He said Melkite Catholics without a priest will typically worship at a Latin-rite church, but that the longer they attach themselves to a Latin-rite parish, the harder it is to bring them back to the Melkites once a priest becomes available.

"I haven't had people calling me up complaining they have no priest. They just don't understand modern-day assignment procedures," Bishop Samra said. "I'm a bishop, but that doesn't mean I can be a dictator. ... Although they sing 'despota' in the liturgy, I can't be a despot."

He added, "God provides, and that's my faith. We're working on it."

The need for new kinds of priests

2011-11-14T15:55:00.001-05:00

by José Manuel Vidal (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Religión Digital
11/14/2011

The data is chilling. It was unveiled yesterday during the presentation of the Diocesan Church Day in Zamora: The average age of its priests is over 68. Specifically, the Diocese of Zamora is composed of 111 active priests, to whom can be added another 50 retired ones, whose average age stands at 68.7, although most of the priests are aged between 70 and 80. And Zamora is not an exception among the Spanish diocese.

The average age of the Spanish clergy as a whole isn't clear. Various statistics circulate which place it at 64 and go up to 67. In any case, twice as many priests die as enter, while about two hundred leave the priesthood each year. There are clerics who have to care for twenty-five parishes and towns that see a priest only once a year.

The priests are coming to an end and increasingly fewer remain, but the institution still stands idly by, living nostalgically in the past and gambling on a single model of how to be a priest and on mandatory celibacy. If the Eucharist is the center of Christian life and we don't want to leave the faithful without it, it's essential to open the door to new priestly models.

Repealing the law of mandatory celibacy and establishing optional celibacy is no longer enough. It's urgent to take steps toward new models of priests, from married priests to women priests. From priests (viri probati) elected by the community and at its service to a kind of minister-priest, who is not even remotely official, to become truly the servant of the community.

If the Church will not make the transition gradually, reality will force her to make it suddenly. Or even rebellion itself by grassroots faithful which has already begun, as evidenced by the Catholics of Austria. And they'll have to put up with it. It's no longer worth looking elsewhere, not even patching with imported vocations. New ministries for a new era. So that the salt of the Gospel doesn't lose its flavor.

Choosing love in the Netherlands

2011-11-13T13:04:00.003-05:00

An 81-year old Dutch priest, Fr. Jan Peijnenburg, and his 85-year old woman friend, Threes van Dijck, have been ordered to separate after having lived together for 46 years. The Eindhoven couple have been given until December 1 by the Diocese of Den Bosch to end their relationship or Fr. Peijnenburg will have to leave the priesthood.

The diocese acknowledged that it was quite common for priests to be living with partners, implying that it usually turns a blind eye to such matters. According to the couple, the Church knew about their relationship for dozens of years. Peijnenburg and van Dijck were targeted because they were open about their relationship and had written several pamphlets critical of the Church's celibacy requirement. Michiel Savelsbergh, a spokesperson for the diocese, told Agence France Press that the brochures "confirmed what we already knew....We gave him a choice: either he leaves his companion or he leaves the priesthood. We can't allow this priest to do what is forbidden to others." He called celibacy a "tough choice" but said it was one the priest accepted when he was ordained.

Fr. Peijnenburg plans to stay with his partner. "Naturally, I'm choosing Threes. We're staying together." A family friend, Harrie van Tuijl, has told the press that the priest is looking into legal avenues, specifically whether the Church's mandatory celibacy policy can be challenged under the country's human rights laws. According to van Tuijl, who described the diocese's stance on the matter as "pretty traditional", church members feel like the priest is being left out in the cold.

Is this the beginning?

2011-11-12T08:29:00.003-05:00

About one month after the last time a group of Catholics from a closed Roman Catholic parish contacted RentAPriest to ask for help, members of the small parish of St. Patrick in Dougherty, Iowa contacted us asking for help as they expect to receive a closure announcement at a meeting the parish council has with diocesan officials Tuesday November 15, 2011. First, please keep these catholics in your prayers. Second, RentAPriest is actively looking for married Catholic Priests from the area of North Iowa, or bordering states, that might be able to directly assist the people of St. Patrick's as they step out to take a new Journey of Faith. We will know more and keep everyone posted after the meeting November 15, 2011.

Turning to a Support Group to Deal With Celibacy

2011-10-14T17:10:00.002-04:00

We've seen countless reports about how the Church is not doing enough to provide priests with the training and ongoing support to live out their commitment to celibacy. Now some priests are taking matters into their own hands by organizing celibacy support groups. From the New York Times 10/14/2011:

"Publicly, he is a religious brother with a Roman Catholic order.

Privately, although he took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, he said, at 23 he was a sex addict, anonymously cruising bars, parks and Cook County Forest Preserves for quick hookups.

Six years ago, his superiors found out and encouraged him to seek help...

...Now 49, a California native with a singsong lilt to his voice and John Lennon-style wire rim glasses, he is a founding member of one of the country’s few celibacy support groups for priests and religious....

...“Unfortunately, the church has embraced the notion that once you’ve chosen this profession your sexuality goes away,” Brother Patrick said. “But it doesn’t. God would never expect something so absurd as that.”

Instead, he added, you have to nurture it in different ways. “If you can’t and you’re afraid to talk about it, and your sexuality becomes a big, dirty secret, then eventually, somehow or other, it’s going to get vented in an unhealthy way,” he said...."

Full text of article

For more information about the celibacy support group mentioned in this article, which meets at the Claret Center in Chicago, visit the center's website.

The Holy Spirit's calling.

2011-10-08T06:24:00.004-04:00

Because of some very interesting correspondence from a member of a group of Roman Catholics who lost their parish three years ago, and the discussions on the RentAPriest site about growing into a post-denominational or more inclusive spirituality and faith. I have begun thinking about how these two ideas might work together to answer the Holy Spirit's call to us as priests and to the people of God who find themselves hurt and without their long established parishes. The following questions quickly come to my feeble mind:

1. If a group of Catholics actually reaches out and (using the 21 Canons) calls on a resigned/married priest to minister to them is the priest required to respond as the community expects?

2. If the resigned/married priest decides to respond and offer his pastoral care and the community accepts does his vision and beliefs as pastor form the main focus of the community's parish life (as in the past) or does the calling community' s faith experience and beliefs become the main focus of parish life?

3. If there is a great difference between the priest's vision/faith/belief and the community's vision/faith/belief, how is that negotiated especially since the people and priest do not have the option of seeking relief from a diocese or bishop?

4. Again using the 21 Canons that support the people's right to call a priest to ministry how is this experience or process different (or is it) than the Minister hiring process as practiced in many Protestant denominations?

5. Is it important that there be a difference?

6. The call and position of RentAPriest seem to be clear, at least to me, about the use of Roman Catholic Canon law to keep Roman Catholic faith communities Roman Catholic and Eucharistic when the diocese closes their parish. Why do so few communities use this option?

Tough Love: Wives of Priests Speak Out

2011-10-07T19:57:00.002-04:00

by Noemi Ciollaro (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Página 12
9/30/2011

They question the Catholic Church hierarchy, demand a place for women in the structure that not only forbids them from the priesthood but also from any other possibility to influence decision-making and, above all, they call for celibacy to no longer be mandatory for nuns and priests. These four women, two Argentinians, a Brazilian and a Mexican, are married -- civilly in one case, blessed privately by another priest in the others -- to priests and belong to a movement that, they state, is more and more numerous and represents many of the concerns of the majority of Catholics. But, they say resignedly, change will not happen as long as Benedict XVI is pope. Nevertheless, they and their husbands continue to demand a place in the same Church that denigrates and marginalizes them.

The priests' wives receive us in the old house on Calle Gaona, in the Caballito neighborhood, where the meeting of the Latin American delegates of the Movimiento de Sacerdotes Casados y sus Esposas (Movement of Married Priests and Their Wives) took place.

In the library of the home that Bishop Jerónimo Podestá, who died in 2000, and his wife Clelia (85) shared for years, between religious carvings and secular craftwork, photos and books, some of the priests who participated in the conclave are reading.

Our chat takes place around the table in the big kitchen that evokes the past, huge families, meetings of wise women used to weaving the fabric of their lives with dignity and rebellion, ritually cultivating boldness and freedom.

They are women who have had to leap over barriers and move boulders aside, bear slurs and face their choices about love, as intrepid as they might seem.

"Saint Paul said clearly that the apostle has the right to bring a wife with him; those are his words, not mine. And Jesus picked the apostles who accompanied him from among married men. In the Church today we are experiencing a time of darkness, but we have also had times of great light such as Medellín and Puebla," says Clelia, the founder and president for life of the movement that promotes optional celibacy for priests and nuns.

With her at the meeting are Aglesia Gonzaga, a Brazilian woman married 37 years to Gilberto Gonzaga, Adriana Di Tomaso, an Argentinian married for 30 years to José Farías, and Teresa De la Torre, a Mexican woman who has been married 8 years to Lauro Masías. Their husbands are still priests, even though they're married because "once ordained, you're a priest until death," they explain.

At the meeting of the Movimiento, couples from Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Aregentina, with membership in Colombia and Guatemala, analyzed the situation of their churches and alternatives in the economic, social, political, and human rights areas. And they discussed the situation of married priests and their spouses, at the same time as they reitereated their commitment to the poor, the oppressed and the people, stressing their willingness to dialogue with the Church and the bishops on these subjects.

"During these days, we reviewed our position within the Church, which none of us has quit. We would like to be in a different place within the Church, not in the exclusion we are experiencing today," Adriana stressed.

It has been estimated that there are about 150,000 married priests worldwide, although it's known that is many countries these situations don't come to light because of fear of reprisals and media scandals. The number of nuns who have left religious life to get married is unknown and hushed up by the Church, and since they aren't "in the ministry" (women can't perform marriages, baptize, or officiate at Mass), they pass unnoticed.

Dispensation from celibacy

When a priest or a nun wants to get married or leave the religious life for other reasons, they have to solicit what is known as a "dispensation" from church auhtorities. It isn't always granted.
The dispensation keeps the priest from ministering in public. He can do so privately, but never in a church or a parish.

"They can continue to minister in the base communities. In Spain, for example, there are priests who celebrate Mass and the bishops don't say anything," Clelia explains.

Aglesia stresses that in Brazil her husband, Gilberto, "performs baptisms, weddings, and celebrates (Mass) too. Not in church, but in homes, halls, and meeting places."

Many married priests continue to minister this way in poor neighborhoods and communities with the support of a priest who registers the weddings and baptisms that require the signature of a parish priest.

Clelia and Jerónimo Podestá's house was the scene of countless weddings, baptisms, and blessings. The issue is that celebrating isn't prohibited; what's prohibited is doing it in parishes or public places.

"We respect celibacy and celibate priests who fulfill what they set for themselves. Our husbands were celibate; being against celibacy was never our thing. What we want, and what we'll get some day, is optional celibacy, and voices are being raised in many countries; there are petitions worldwide. But with this Pope it's difficult. If celibacy were optional, the seminaries would be fuller, because young people no longer agree with mandatory celibacy. We don't lose hope. The movement is prophetic; it denounces and announces. And this is something that also has to do with human rights, because it's a prohibition of the human right to love one another and be a couple," they point out.

Clelia and Jeronimo

They met in 1966. After ten years of marriage and pregnant with the youngest of her six daughters, Clelia left Salta where she had practiced preventive medicine among the native people and developed her Christian service vocation. She separated and came to Buenos Aires where she met Jerónimo Podestá at a meeting with the Brazilian bishop Helder Cámara. He was bishop of Avellaneda and his questions about the Church, his involvement with the worker priests, and his popularity contributed to the rise of the Movimiento de Sacerdotes del Tercer Mundo (Movement of Third World Priests). So an intense friendship began. At the time, she started to work as Podestá's secretary and the love grew that led him to leave the diocese among intense arguments and sanctions from the Church leadership, to get married in 1972. Podestá thus became the only married bishop in the world, and Clelia, his wife. There was a major media scandal and, rather than hiding, they decided to fight and promote optional celibacy.

"Well, obviously it was a hectic life, since in the middle of the dictatorship in '67, Jerónimo was declared an enemy by Onganía. Ultimately they asked for his resignation because of his theological and political stands. And thus began a life of struggle, persecution, threats from Triple A [an Argentinian right wing paramilitary group in those days], poverty, and exile in Rome, Mexico, and Peru. I was always struggling, Jerónimo in Peru and me with my daughters here. And Jerónimo and Clelia were always a couple. He was 'the bishop' and I was Clelia, but... we always lived publicly as a couple. In those days it was huge, but nowdays it's normal and people are now asking for priests to get married. We're in a different cultural situation. We love each other deeply, and he is still present in this house, in my life, in this kitchen itself among us...Unfortunately, Jerónimo is gone. He died at a very sad and dark time for the country, in 2000. He was never able to experience the political resurgence of today, or the Latin American union. He was a patriot and a prophet; we always struggled. The country and the Church caused us suffering. Pepe Sacristán once said to us ‘but they strike you and you stay in the Church’, and I asked him 'and you, why do you stay in the Communist Party?' 'Because I want to change it,' he told me. 'Well, we want to change the Church too,' I answered. That's why I go on today with the hope that some day, not too far off, when this Pope finishes his term, a big change will come. Our movement is prophetic. It's prophetic because it denounces and announces what is to come, an open and renewed Church, because the world is changing and the younger generations don't accept medieval issues," she concludes.

They both had to bear strong pressure from the Church leadership and the Vatican where she was taken by Jerónimo and argued in person with the authorities who were determined to separate the couple. Deprived of her name, she came to be known in the media and in public opinion as "that woman" or "that lady". Jerónimo in turn shouted that his relationship with her was "a grace, not a sin."

It has been many years since then, however Catholicism keeps the obligation of celibacy for priests and nuns, grounded in "the Platonic idea that the soul is a prisoner of the body and the body is bad," the Brazilian representatives said during the meeting, mentioning the economic issue. "The Church never considered the possibility of maintaining a priest with his wife and children." In fact, those who get married remain priests for life, but they're excluded from any compensation or work that depends on the ecclesiastical structure.

Adriana and Jose

Adriana entered the novitiate at 17 and was over 30 when she met José, who was a priest in Córdoba too.

“I was working in vocational ministry in my religious life, and he was working with a group of young people. We met there and it was a whole complex process to resolve our respective vocations. I had worked with the neediest since I was very young, I had devoted my life to that. Well, we fell in love and said why not have a life together...", she says, serene and unhurried.

Ordained women also have to seek dispensation when they decide to leave religious life whether to get married or for another reason, and it isn't a simple step "because the Catholic church structure is absolutely vertical and we women don't have a voice or carry any weight. In other faiths like the Lutheran or Anglican ones women are recognized and have an active role. But in the structure of the Church, it's the priests, the pastors, who rule. It's very closed and if a nun leaves, everything happens silently."

The road to the decision wasn't easy because asking for dispensation to some extent means being exposed to the elements in many ways. Adriana and José left their respective orders and "a lot of difficulties came up. Even though José was a pharmacist before becoming a priest, he had to look for work. We were in the interior, in Cordoba, and we came to Buenos Aires. I began to work in teaching and he, as a pharmacist. We didn't know anybody and we got in touch with Jerónimo and Clelia. It was very hard because the Church didn't make even a little bit of room for us, even if it were just to keep sharing what had been so strong for us in faith, in service to others. But this house became a place where we could immerse ourselves little by little in the new life."

Adriana and José have two children and they relied on the support of their families in the most difficult moments of decisionmaking when doubts, uncertainties and fear for the future got mixed in.

“I had problems in the religious community I was in, but some time later I was able to get in contact with some of the women who had been my companions and they told me honestly that we should have had the freedom to choose whether we wanted to be celibate or not. As Clelia says, we are prophetically announcing something that for now, isn't for everyone but which, well, we have experienced. My papa used to say to me 'it took me so long to accept you going into religious life and now you're telling me you're leaving...well, you know I support you.'"

Adriana is a clinical psychologist "in a poor suburban neighborhood, in family strengthening, a lot with women in violence situations. I'm retired from teaching; I taught for 31 years. I'm a teacher of theology and philosophy, so I could cover religious formation in some of the poorer areas, but under these conditions I don't want to. Yes, of course I think that women could be priests, of course. Why not? If Catholicism would accept optional celibacy, women could also get to a different place. That's why our movement is for married priests AND their spouses, for couples, it's in our statute. We have the same rights and responsibilities. But the Church structure is extremely harsh to women. In the area of intellectual production, we have distinguished theologians, doctors, but they are never quoted or consulted. And if they know you left the religious life, you don't participate in anything. It's 'Get out of here', to sum it up," she states.

Aglesia and Gilberto

She is tiny, restless, dynamic and expeditious. He shows up every now and then in the kitchen, smiles, and at one point he comes over and she stands up to give him a kiss or a caress. They have been married for 37 years and are Christian activists with an option for the poor in Brazil.

"When Gilberto and I met, I was a teacher. He went to get therapy in Rio de Janeiro shortly after our relationship began. He needed to know what he really wanted. It's very disturbing for a priest to fall in love when he has planned a life of celibacy, service and dedication to God and religion. Guilt is inevitable," she states.

For the women the choice isn't simple either, especially when they share the religious beliefs and feelings. Celibacy as a taboo weighs heavily.

“The one who gave me the most grief was my father. My mother and father were very pious, very religious, so for them it was a shock when I fell in love with a priest almost forty years ago. However, my father now has Alzheimer's and the only person he recognizes is Gilberto," she says.

Aglesia spins out memories as a mischievous light dances behind her glasses. "Gilberto was one of the most advanced priests, a leader of the New Church. When he finished his therapy and clearly knew what he wanted, it took two months to obtain his dispensation. We do everything together in Brazil. For our people, he is 'Father' and I 'Mother'. We work with a lot of freedom and respect. A very significant number of bishops support us. Gilberto worked three years at the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops. They all say 'priests should marry'. It's true that in our country we have better conditions and a degree of freedom in terms of the limitations imposed by the Church."

She's a social worker. "I have a lot of dedication to people living with HIV, on a voluntary basis. Also in a women's league that fights against cancer. And we're putting an enormous effort into a team of volunteers that we set up in Portobello for individualized work with children with addictions. It's a tourist place of great poverty where the resource is fishing. The boys work on the boats, six months at sea, fishing. They need help and support. Gilberto and I have two sons and a granddaughter. He's also a social volunteer, a group leader. That's how our life is. We aren't rich; we live with what is necessary and our house is always full of people, so we're happy." She smiles brightly.

They both edit a monthly magazine, Rumos ("Directions"), in which the issue of mandatory celibacy is discussed regularly and articles critical of the Vatican's rigid stance are published. Themes such as the need for women in the priesthood, optional celibacy, the importance of revising the training of priests, and the need to reform the hierarchy, are the order of the day, indicating a sidereal difference from the situation in the rest of the Latin American countries, including Argentina.

Teresa and Lauro

"Our story is a little different," this Mexican mix of Maria Felix and Frida Kahlo, with piercing eyes, a sensual figure, and confident statements, announces.

"I began my relationship with Lauro after he celebrated the marriage of one of my daughters. We're both divorced. The year after my daughter got married, I separated and when Lauro, who had gotten divorced, learned that I was separated, we met and began a relationship. It was a little difficult for me to make the decision because I had to break from many of my notions. My divorce from the father of my children was difficult, very painful. My children accept him perfectly, they love him, and if they want advice, they turn to him, not their father. It's sad, but that's how it is. Lauro's children from his previous marriage also look favorably on me. We've been together eight years."

The weight of ancient Mexican religious culture is evident in Teresa's speech, and repression filters out beyond the desire and willingness to keep on breaking the established rules.

"Sadly, in Mexico the movement is a little bit asleep, as if tired because everything is very hard there; the diocese is very closed. Many priests don't even want anybody to know they're married because they could lose their jobs. If the bishop knows that they're teaching in a religious institution, they order the nuns to fire them. Everything is very difficult for us. But we mustn't throw in the towel; we keep on fighting for this. As companions and wives of the priests, we have a dual commitment to stand by them through thick and thin. We are committed to their ministry, we want it to stay alive to work for the Kingdom of God, which is what we're looking for after all," she says.

Teresa draws a very different picture of the work she's developing in Mexico and it's clear that the situation of women is light years behind the Brazilians and even the Argentines. "In Mexico, I do what I can because I'm a merchant and Lauro is director of a school. The task I have proposed is to seek out women, ladies who have relationships with priests, but where they have been relegated, hidden, told 'you shut up if you want me to keep you, you can't say you're my wife, you can't say that our children are mine', given orders. We have also encountered cases of nuns who have been raped by priests. They are very difficult cases and we've tried to integrate them into our group. One of them became pregnant from the abuse, but there was no consideration from the convent or the bishop. They ran her off as if she had been the one guilty of rape. It was awful. There's a lot of chauvinism. Through one of my sisters who's a nun, I know about situations of women who need help. Another brother of mine was in seminary and left because he felt insecure and wanted to try a year away. He went to study at the University of Guadalajara, met a girl and fell in love with her, and said 'I'm not going back to the seminary again unless they tell me they'll accept me as a married man and then, yes, I would get ordained. Otherwise not, because I want to have children'."

Teresa recalls that her father "lost the ability to speak in 2000. His expressions are now gestural, shaking hands, hugging you, and when he sees Lauro, it's clear that he's showing him affection. When I ask him what he thinks of all this, in his own way he makes it clear that it's something from God...My grandmother used to say to him, 'you have to be content because God didn't give you a priest son, but He gave you a priest son-in-law, give thanks to God.' Lauro's mother was distant from him for a while because of his decision, but now she has accepted him. Our children are proud of us because of our love and our courage," she concludes.

To the reiteration of a question which they had avoided answering throughout the interview, they answered demurely that, yes, "at the beginning they felt like sinners, not all of them, but in general there's a period of crisis through which we need to go, each one by themselves and then together."

Married priest gets Human Rights Court hearing over termination

2011-10-05T12:24:00.003-04:00

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has set November 22nd as the date when it will hear oral arguments in the case of José Antonio Fernández Martínez, a former priest from Murcia, Spain, who was fired from his job as professor of religion at an institute in Caravaca de la Cruz because of his activism in support of optional celibacy and the right of priests to marry.

Fernández Martínez, who has five children, turned to the European Court of Human Rights, represented by lawyer José Luis Mazón, after his appeal to the Constitutional Court of a lower court ruling in Murcia was dismissed. The Spanish courts dismissed his lawsuit against the Diocese of Cartagena over his firing. The higher court dismissed the claim because it did not believe the priest's rights had been violated.

The plaintiff was ordained in 1961. In 1984, he asked for dispensation and got married. Later, in 1991, he began to work as a professor of religion in an institute in Caravaca de la Cruz and then in another one in Mula, but was terminated in 1997, after his involvement in the optional celibacy movement Movimiento Pro Celibato Opcional (MOCEOP) became public.

Let dispensed priests play active parish role, Vatican urges bishops

2011-10-03T14:46:00.001-04:00

By Madeleine Teahan
Catholic Herald (UK)
9/29/2011

The Vatican has appealed to diocesan bishops to encourage priests who have left ministry in order to get married to play a more active role in parish life.

In a copy of a letter seen by The Catholic Herald Cardinal Ivan Dias, the prefect for the Evangelisation of Peoples in Rome, placed more discretionary power in the hands of bishops for discerning a dispensed cleric’s involvement with parish life. The letter, dated February 2 2011, was sent to a priest, who had written to the congregation on behalf of an Australian missionary society that is seeking a relaxation of the prohibitions on dispensed clergy.

Cardinal Dias wrote of his confidence that the Vatican’s reforms would enable dispensed priests to lead a more active life in the Church as committed Catholics under their bishop’s guidance. The usual mode of laicisation and dispensation from the priestly vow of celibacy is through a “rescript of the Apostolic See”, meaning a response from the Pope or a sacred congregation granting a favour and the conditions upon which it is granted.

The rescript permitting the laicisation of a priest prohibits celebrating Mass, delivering homilies, administering the Eucharist, teaching or working in seminaries and places restrictions on teaching the faith in schools and universities. The cardinal’s letter means that the enforcement of half the prohibitions stipulated in the rescript will now come under the discretion of the local bishop.

Prohibitions that are no longer absolute include teaching theology in schools or universities, both Catholic and non-Catholic, contact with the parish where the priest used to serve and administering the Eucharist.

Latin American married priests and wives call for end to mandatory celibacy

2011-09-26T12:47:00.002-04:00

By Gustavo Sarmiento (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Tiempo Argentino
9/24/2011

"The Church has been growing apart from the community. It needs to change and hasn't renewed itself in a long time." That reflection was heard during the meeting of the Federación Latinoamericana de Curas Casados y sus Esposas ("Latin American Federation of Married Priests and Their Wives"), which opened on Wednesday with the participation of 30 representatives from six countries at the home of Clelia Luro de Podestá, widow of Monseñor Jerónimo Podestá, the former bishop of Avellaneda, who has been promoting the organization that today represents some 150,000 priests worldwide, although the Vatican only acknowledges 60,000.

During the meeting, which will end today, the couples analyzed the churches in the region, the economic, social, political and cultural movements, the relationship with each community, with the hierarchy and with the political sectors of each country.

One of the main demands was that the Vatican agree to optional celibacy, something that 75% of priests support, according to a survey commissioned four years ago by the Argentine Bishops' Conference. "Celibacy emerged in the 4th century, when marriage was common among priests. The Bible says nothing about it. On the contrary, Jesus chose married apostles," said Mario Mullo, the current president of the Federation, who is from Ecuador. João Tabares, from Brazil, thinks that "if priests marry, an economic factor comes in. It's easier for the Church to keep a priest with a minimum wage than his whole family. The Church's assets are safeguarded and not passed down. Originally, there was this platonic idea that the soul is the prisoner of the body, which is evil."

Father Lauro Macías, who came from Mexico with his partner, Tere, recalls that it "came to be decreed that priests who didn't leave their wives were jailed, and that the wives and children would be sold as slaves."

The Eastern rite Catholic Church allows marriage, but in the West, the heads of the Church have refused to discuss it. According to them, John Paul II said to one bishop who consulted him on the issue, "change the subject or our conversation ends here." Sebastián Cozar, from Chile, remarked: “We're asking for dialogue, like Vatican II talks about. We don't want confrontation and we're not doing this out of any resentment but out of love for the Church. The married priest is one more contribution to the Church."

According to the Federation's data, more than 60% of its communities are in favor of married priests, and don't consider marriage to be an impediment to vocation. For Mullo, "it's equally essential to conceive of a Church that's renewed, open to the world and to the social organizations."

Marriage is not the only thing that unites all the participants. The main thing is their commitment to their communities -- the fight for social justice and human rights, and the search for a gospel anchored in the barrios among the neediest classes, anchored in liberation theology. "upon leaving the ministry, many turned the page but others participated in parish and community activities, seeking a new church, which is what we need today," those present stated.
Lauro, father of three children, founded the second ecumenical church ever in a Mexican jail and he still celebrates the Eucharist at funerals of his friends or weddings at which the Catholic Church has refused to officiate. "I left the clerical state but not the priesthood," he explains. For Cozar, "the new church should have more community participation, more charity; it should be a church of freedom that doesn't impose, but should be open."

Sr. Marie-Paul Ross "would like to talk to you about love...and sex"...and celibacy

2011-09-21T17:54:00.002-04:00

Dr. Marie-Paul Ross, a Canadian nun in the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, sexologist and founder/director of the Institut de Développement Intégral, is already making waves with her new book, Je voudrais vous parler d'amour... et de sexe ("I would like to talk to you about love...and sex", Michel Lafon, 2011), which is due to come out this week.

In her book, Dr. Ross alleges that 80% of priests and religious violate their celibacy vows at some point in their lives. She argues that many priests suffer because they really are not able to live their celibacy requirement well.

While she roundly condemns pedophilia and suggests that the celibacy requirement should be lifted, Dr. Ross doesn't consider allowing priests to marry to be the answer to pedophilia. "With all these people in sexual distress who can't fulfill their celibacy requirement, it destroys the message," she says. "The Church should hurry up and give diocesan priests the freedom to choose between married life and celibacy." But she adds: "A pedophile priest would make a bad husband and a worse father. For one simple reason: he is sick and dangerous person who must be treated."

Dr. Ross's book also contains eyewitness accounts of sexual activity between priests and nuns and instances she has learned through her practice of nuns who have been raped by priests.

The Quebec Catholic Bishops Conference has already responded to Dr. Ross's allegations, saying that, rather than indicating a need to lift the celibacy requirement, they reflect a need for a better selection process for candidates for the priesthood. "There are priests who are not in the place that's right for them just as there are fathers and mothers who never should have had children," says Mr. Germain Tremblay, assistant to the secretary-general of the bishops' conference. "We must modify our approach. Perhaps one of the mistakes has been to call men to the priesthood and then teach them to be celibate and chaste, while the opposite should have been done instead." He acknowledged that such an approach would probably yield even fewer vocations than the current one.

In a separate interview, Dr. Ross said that she feels that a lot of the problems have come from the fact that the Church has historically not adequately prepared priests and nuns for celibacy. She said that consecrated religious were simply told to "be careful" without any instruction in how to deal with sexual impulses. She said that the resulting tensions have led to depression, suicidal urges, and sexual deviance, among other behavioral issues.

Dr. Ross knows that her book, with an initial printing of 6,000 copies and plans already in place for more, will cause a major uproar. She has met with her provincial superiors to discuss the controversial topics in her book and says that she has their full support. "They agree with me that it's time for this hypocrisy to stop," she says.

Fr. Rémi Bouriaud and Michèle: A Double Life Comes to an End

2011-09-16T12:05:00.003-04:00

By Juliette Demey
France Soir
9/16/2011

From La Baule to Pornichet, they have called him "Rémi" for a long time. From now on, it will be the only name that Fr. Rémi Bouriaud will be allowed to use. On September 4, this 70 year-old priest was suspended a divinis by Msgr. Jean-Paul James, bishop of Nantes. He isn't allowed to celebrate Mass or perform any sacrament. His mistake? Having chosen to "live with a woman companion" for 11 years, putting into question "the commitment to celibacy he made when he asked for and received ordination," the diocese said in a communique on Thursday.

Father Rémi Bouriaud, who was ordained in 1967, has always wondered about "women's place in the world, in the Church, and in his life." He had already had a five year relationship with a woman when, in 2000, at almost 60, he met Michèle. "We gambled on trying to live together while knowing the Roman Catholic Church's position on celibacy for priests," he told the Presse Océan. Though not showing off, he never really hid this relationship. In the parishes of La Baule and Pornichet, where he had ministered since 2006, the faithful knew about his double life. The priest often left at night to join his companion, who lived a couple of dozen kilometers from there. Nobody was really offended. They understood, and they didn't talk about it.

"The Church is ten centuries behind"

Today, they no longer understand. "He's just a man who had a girlfriend. He had informed his peers, even the bishop, and he continued to do his job. We're going to miss him," said one of the faithful in the presbytery. He was a priest who was "friendly, open", "not preachy", "convivial." Father Rémi looked after the high school students. He asked them to call him by his first name and "didn't wear a Roman collar." A modern priest, "like they all should be," a parishioner from La Baule said. "Among the parishioners, there are always some self-righteous folk. They preach morality, but they know nothing about charity."

This nonconformist priest, who confessed to RTL that he had always had "a need for affection, for physical touching, for solidarity with the feminine world", ended up in trouble. Why today, when he asserts that he informed his hierarchy years ago? It was an anonymous letter, sent this summer to the bishop of Nantes, that stirred up the hornets' nest. "I think it's because I was always frank that I'm being punished," he said. Both disappointed and relieved, Rémi is still heavy-hearted: "There were married priests pretty much everywhere until 1450. The Church is ten centuries behind on this issue," he complained.

"This relationship makes us happy"

Some hope that his story will relaunch the debate on celibacy for priests. According to the European Federation of Catholic Married Priests, approximately one in four priests has (or has had) a clandestine relationship. "It's time for the Church to think. At least this priest knows what life in a couple is like, like pastors and rabbis do. Enough of the code of silence," said an angry parishioner. To Bernard, a priest who resigned from the priesthood forty years ago, "it's total hypocrisy. When you talk to the bishops, they understand. But if they want to keep their position, they have to keep quiet, exclude, not question the Church." Dominique Venturini, former companion of a priest, who runs the organization Plein Jour, has written a letter to Benedict XVI demanding an end to the celibacy requirement for priests. "Let the Church grant the same freedom, the same human rights to everyone!," she urges.

Rémi Bouriaud doesn't want to become a standard bearer. "It's going to be very hard for him," Bernard sympathizes. "As a human being, having spiritual responsibilities, he must feel destroyed." Bouriaud says he doesn't regret anything. "This relationship makes us happy. We knew that sooner or later this double life might end," he admitted to Presse Océan. At La Baule, the other priests organized a lovely farewell meal for him. At his last Mass on Saturday, he was given a standing ovation by the faithful. A few days ago, he came back to pick up his few belongings from the rectory. He can now live his love affair with Michèle in the open.

Former Bishop of Derry calls for end to clerical celibacy

2011-09-13T13:06:00.004-04:00

UPDATE 9/14/2011: The Association of Catholic Priests has supported calls by the former Bishop of Derry Edward Daly for a removal of the compulsory celibacy requirement where Catholic priests are concerned. (Irish Times, 9/14/2011)

The Journal (Ireland)
9/13/2011

The former bishop of Derry Dr Edward Daly has called for an end to mandatory clerical celibacy for priests in the Catholic Church, saying that removing the requirement would “ease the church’s problems”.

Daly, one of the most well-known figures in the Church, describes the issue of celibacy as “the other conflict” in his memoir, A Troubled See: Memoirs of a Derry Bishop.

Daly said he believed that not allowing priests to marry was causing potential candidates to turn away from their vocations, writing: “I believe there… should be a place in the modern Catholic Church for a married priesthood and for men who do not wish to commit themselves to celibacy."...

Click here for the full article and also be sure to vote in the newspaper's poll: Should priests be allowed to renounce vow of celibacy?

More quotes from the book from the Irish Times:

“I ask myself, more and more, why celibacy should be the great sacred and unyielding arbiter, the paradigm of diocesan priesthood?...Why not prayerfulness, conviction in the faith, knowledge of the faith, ability to communicate in the modern age, honesty, integrity, humility, a commitment to social justice, a work ethic, respect for others, compassion and caring?...Surely many of these qualities are at least as important in a diocesan priest as celibacy – yet celibacy seems to be perceived as the predominant obligation, the sine qua non."

Celibacy is “an obligation that has caused many wonderful potential candidates to turn away from a vocation, and other fine men to resign their priesthood at great loss to the church.”

"Sex, Celibacy and Priesthood"

2011-09-01T11:33:00.004-04:00

By Donna Beth Weilenman
The Benicia Herald
7/12/2011

While pursuing a degree from the University of San Francisco, then-doctorial candidate Lou A. Bordisso wrote his dissertation on “The Relationship between Moral Development, Sexual Orientation, and Roman Catholic Priests.”

He took vows with the Society of the Divine Savior (Salvatorians) in the Roman Catholic Church, but changed his alliance when his mother became critically ill and his father was diagnosed with cancer, because he didn’t want to be assigned to another state while his parents were ill.

Attracted to the American Catholic Church, under the umbrella of the Old Catholic Church, Lou Bordisso became a member of the Order of Saint John Vianney. After becoming an ordained priest, he was named Presiding Bishop of the Diocese of the California American Catholic Church until his retirement in 2010, when he became Bishop Emeritus.

He had long considered writing a follow-up to that dissertation, perhaps incorporating and Richard Sipe’s 25-year study of 1,500 Catholic priests that indicated that 50 percent or fewer attempt celibacy, and only 2 percent achieve total chastity, he said.

But Bordisso didn’t want to write just a sequel or make a new study. Instead, he wanted priests to relate anonymously how they deal with the vow of celibacy they take on their way to priesthood.

Recent health issues that led to his retirement also convinced him “to put the rubber to the road” and get the book written.

And a diagnosis of dementia caused the bishop to begin “living in the moment,” he said.

“It’s a spiritual gift: ‘Be still and know that I am God,’” he said of his diagnosis. “I’d been putting (writing the book) off, but there’s no better time than now.”

Bordisso said the diagnosis caused him to shed unimportant battles and focus instead on new priorities.

One of these is hosting the public access program “Political Inquisitions,” which can be accessed online at the Vallejo Independent Bulletin.

And of course the book, to be released later this year, has been another priority.

It’s titled “Sex, Celibacy, and the Priesthood,” though Bordisso said he wanted it called “The Elephant in the Middle of the Sanctuary,” because, he said, few care to comment publicly about celibacy.

In researching the book, the Mare Island priest cast his net wide to hear from the largest number of North American Roman Catholic priests. Though he openly gay, he sought responses from all orientations.

He spoke at conferences, placed advertisements in the National Catholic Reporter, posted requests on message boards and sent letters to schools of divinity.

He sought a cross section of priests rather than a single pool, he said, before sending his questions. The primary one: How do you resolve conflicts, if any, between your sexuality and vocation?

Because the American Catholic Church doesn’t require priests to be celibate, Bordisso sent the questions to Roman Catholic clergy. He offered those responding anonymity in exchange for their stories, so the priests could be truthful about the ways they deal with their vows when challenged by human sexuality.

Some told of professing celibacy publicly while having relations with men or women — in some cases, both — in secret. One declared, “I have a right as a person to healthy sexual expression” — though he elaborated it was his right “as long as I am prudent …”

Some described how they realized the promise to refrain from sexual relations would be impossible for them to keep. But instead of having affairs, they chose to leave the priesthood, instead.

Others, Bordisso found, have yet to resolve their struggle.

One priest told of his regret he would never have children. Another called the requirement a “foolish law,” saying it guarantees that noncelibates would become priests.

“I think I am one of these, and have wrestled with the question of leaving the priesthood for years,” the priest wrote. Saying he was happy to be a priest, he added, “In no way, though, am I a true celibate,” saying he would consider a long-term commitment though he no longer engages in “anonymous sex.”

Bordisso also heard from priests who accepted the vow as their calling, and through prayer and meditation lived chaste lives.

One told him that personal growth and experience made celibacy a free choice after mistakes. Another compared his vow of celibacy to the promises made by those who marry, except that his commitment is to the priesthood. Others cultivate a support system.

Bordisso waited until the end of the book to offer his own reflections, including that of the definition of “celibacy.” He said that members expect it to mean that priests won’t marry, and that they aren’t to engage in sexual activity.

But the priests’ own response showed him they are at odds with what Bordisso called “the orthodox and traditional definitions of celibate chastity.”

“This is not a scholarly book,” Bordisso said. “My review is not exhaustive, but it has substance.”

One topic it didn’t cover is pedophilia, another issue with which the Roman Catholic Church is wrestling.

Bordisso said those engaged in pedophile behavior aren’t just people who are involved with minors. Comparing it to rape and saying it was more about violence and power than sex, he said it can involve others over which a person in authority has power.

And when priests are involved, it’s comparable to marriage counsellors who take sexual advantage of vulnerable clients, Bordisso said.

For his book, Bordisso said he wanted to explore only relationships between consenting adults — for priests, alternatives to celibacy.

“The purpose is to contextualize the reality versus the ideal,” he said, explaining he wanted the book to have “a sense of integrity, and movement away from duplicity, and toward the value of transparency in the church.”

Bordisso has suggested that churches that impose celibacy redefine it as a continuum rather than an absolute. And he added, “I don’t take a position in the book — on purpose. I wanted the voices of the priests to speak for themselves.”

40 Catholic priests quit over church celibacy rule

2011-08-26T14:06:00.003-04:00

By Mathews Ndanyi
Nairobi Star
8/25/2011

More than 40 priests have in the last two years defected from the Catholic Church in Kenya seeking freedom from celibacy. The priests have joined the Ecumenical Catholic Church headed by Bishop Geoffrey Shiundu who also quit the Catholic church after he married against rules of priesthood.

Shiundu says his church is growing stronger and more priests were seeking advice from him on the celibacy issue. He, however, said that his church was ready to work with the Roman Catholic Church if Pope Benedict agrees to change the constitution to make celibacy optional. Shiundu said many priests are under pressure to marry and have families. He was speaking in Kitale during the ordination of a priest from Uganda, Fr John Angelo Msaazi. Said Bishop Shidundu: “It’s right to allow those who want celibacy to remain so but for those who want to marry let them also enjoy their rights," said Shiundu.

Meanwhile, Shiundu has criticised a proposal to change the constitution to remove the clause providing that women take a third of elected positions. Bishop Siundu said that together with his priests were among the first group of church leaders to have endorsed the new constitution because of the provisions that favour marginalised groups especially women.

One man's long and lonely crusade against Vatican opposition to married priests

2011-08-23T12:40:00.004-04:00

by David Rice
Irish Times
8/23/2011

One night in 1952, a German boy of 19, in the throes of a youthful romance, became overwhelmed with the certainty that God wanted him as a priest. In the following days he felt he could not pray “Thy will be done” if he refused the call.

And yet during those same days he found himself weeping uncontrollably, “shadowed with darkness because, for the sake of the priestly vocation, I had to accept the renunciation of marriage”.

Heinz-Jurgen Vogels stayed with his vocation all the way to ordination, for the call had taken place “with such inner force that it carried me over the threshold of priesthood, yet only to drop me burnt out immediately after that.”

The couple of years that followed Vogels’s 1959 ordination were years of unrelieved depression, inability to function in his priesthood, leading him eventually to the brink of suicide.

“Only years later was I able to recognise that my subconscious, at the ordination, had concluded: ‘Now, finally, the door to marriages has closed; now there is no longer any rescue for my desire to have feelings for the other half of humankind, which is, however, part of my nature.’”

The crisis came in his little Cologne room overlooking the Rhine: “The abandonment in the colourless grey room was felt so greatly that I stopped again and again at the washstand, and took the razor blade to cut open the arteries in my wrist. Only with extreme effort could I return it to the glass plate. The window, the Rhine, the rail tracks, everything attracted me almost irresistibly.”

Vogels was sent to a rest home for a while and then resumed duty, living with an understanding old parish priest in a village in the Eifel mountains.

“It was a time of long conversations in the evenings, seated in comfortable armchairs. Yet it should take another five years before the fog was dispelled.”

It happened after a pilgrimage to Kevelaer: “It may sound strange that during my prayer I found rising in my soul the dear wish: ‘Oh would I be allowed to use sexuality!’”

And then came the revelation in a verse from St Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians: “Have we perhaps not the right to take a wife along with us, like the other apostles . . ?” (1 Cor 9:5) – the word “mulier” being open to interpretation as “wife” as well as “woman”.

That linked up with the sudden realisation that there were already married priests in the Catholic Church – all the Eastern Catholic churches in union with Rome had their married priests, and even here in the West, Protestant pastors could become Catholic priests and then live openly with their wives and families.

The rest of Vogels’s life has been a one-man crusade to convince the authorities in Rome to abolish compulsory celibacy. This story is told in his extraordinary book, Alone Against the Vatican , now available in English.

Unfortunately the publishers have chosen a less striking title, Catholics and their Right to Married Priests, with the subtitle, Struggles with the Vatican. It’s readily available in paperback from Amazon and is also on Kindle eBooks.

Those struggles make for a fascinating story. The first declaration of his views in a sermon led to such a rumpus that he was diagnosed with “endogenous mania”, church authorities holding that anyone with such views had to be round the bend. But Vogels stayed sane, dangerously so, grew as a theologian and disputant and gradually his crusade developed.

Inevitably came marriage to Renata, plus a challenge to Vatican authorities to declare his marriage invalid, which they declined to do.

All these years later, Vogels is still fighting his case, alone against the Vatican. The kernel of his argument is that the gift of priesthood and the gift of celibacy are separate, and only rarely are bestowed on one person.

Hence the horrors that we see around us here in Ireland, when attempts at staying celibate fail. Vogels even has the support of Vatican II, which declared that celibacy “is not required by the very nature of priesthood”.

This fascinating book is just Vogels’s latest salvo. But what comes out most clearly is the steadfastness, devotion, support, indeed heroism, of Renata. She, indeed, is the best of all arguments for what a helpmate could be for a priest.

David Rice directs the Killaloe Hedge-School of Writing. His books include the best-selling Shattered Vows: Priests Who Leave.

Married priest: 'Single clergy better placed to serve God'

2011-08-18T15:52:00.002-04:00

by Joe Wilson
BBC News
8/17/2011

"Father Paul Blackburn is the most recently ordained priest into the Salford Diocese. He is married with three children. A former Anglican minister, Father Paul embraced Catholicism after growing dissatisfied with the direction the Church of England was taking on some moral issues. He said single priests are better placed to serve God by giving their entire life to his ministry...

...Many Catholics believe that a married priest is a more rounded priest whose experiences can help deal with family issues better than his single colleagues. Father Paul disagrees. "A celibate priest can give so much more," he said. "They can give themselves and everything about them. They can give to the church and to the service of God. I can give what I give but a proportion of my time will always go to my family."..."

Well, you get the idea. For more, click on the link to get the full article. It always amazes me that these Pastoral Provision guys embrace celibacy for other priests and it makes me wonder: If they had to separate from their wives and children as a precondition for becoming Catholic priests, would they have joined the ranks and would they be so enthusiastic about the celibacy requirement? Just asking...

Celibacy and the Church

2011-07-28T12:16:00.002-04:00

A letter to the editor from Dr. Daniel Maguire, a former Jesuit priest now professor of theology at Marquette University, in the New York Times, 7/25/2011:

To the Editor:

Re “In Philadelphia, a Changing of the Guard in the Shadow of Scandal” (news article, July 20):

The problem of Roman Catholic sexual abuse by priests will not be solved by the appointment of a new archbishop, especially by an archbishop like Charles J. Chaput, with his blunt-instrument approach to discipline. The root of the problem is mandatory celibacy.

There is a reason religions with a married clergy have no comparable problem — not that they are problem-free. Celibacy is not a bona fide occupational qualification for ministry. To insist on it insults the institution of marriage, branding it as an impediment to religious service.

Also, as recently publicized priestly scandals and crimes around the world attest, this attempted suppression of human sexuality in priests does not work and is arguably an invitation to pathology.

DANIEL C. MAGUIRE
Milwaukee, July 20, 2011

Married priests: A Few Reflections

2011-07-14T18:59:00.002-04:00

by Antonio Duato (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Atrio
July 12, 2011

Speaking of married Catholic priests is not an issue for the future, something that could one day be allowed in the Catholic Church. Or a marginal issue -- the Eastern Rite priests or those who have come from Anglicanism. It is a reality that already exists, one with which there is vast experience already present in every diocese in the world and in statistically significant numbers -- that of the priests who have left their priestly ministry because of having chosen married life. Sociological studies are beginning to appear on this subject, which gather not only statistics but, above all, vivid stories of those lives [1] .

Based on these accounts, on knowledge of many other lives and on my own experience -- I was an active Catholic priest for 34 years and have been married and a family man for another 20 years -- I would like to offer some reflections on the life of a married priest:

There is the clandestine married priest. He doesn't leave his ministry although he lives a full married life, sometimes even with children and some sort of civil recognition of the marriage contract. And although this situation is known, often the bishop's permissiveness and the community's understanding allow him to continue in ministry, while the cohabitation is disguised as some other supposed family tie. It seems that this kind of married priest is increasing, avoiding the departure of many priests needed for the care of communities. Married life and fatherhood often makes the priest a more understanding and centered person in his ministry. However, I believe that true love demands making it public, to the leaders and members of the Christian community before anyone else. Having to hide it is a cruel violence. And it is especially unfair to the spouse who, even though freely, gives everything to her loved one without being recognized and taken into account in his priestly work or social life.

There is the married priest who, despite having made his family life public, has not requested a reduction to lay status or resigned from continuing his ministry. It is usually because the Christian community he serves, even if it's an official parish, defends him against the bishop's attempt to send a substitute. The parishioners have full confidence in him, as his married status is fully accepted and positively valued by most of them. In these cases, the love is not secret and the presence of the woman is recognized, but there is an unhealthy tension between maintaining the institutional character of his ministry and expressly contradicting a legal norm of that institution. It is possible, as in the previous case of clandestine married priests, to justify this violation of a canonical rule on the basis of fidelity to the Christian community to whose service he feels devoted. But it means continually rethinking why he is acting officially as a minister of an institution whose norms are manifestly instilled. And I don't feel this is psychologically or spiritually healthy. I would add for Atrio that this option of not giving up ministry, even after the engagement to the partner is public, should perhaps be valued more strategically. Sometimes it happens with impressive serenity and consistency, as in the case of Julio Perez Pinillos in Spain.

The situation on which I would like to reflect further is, however, the priest who at some point in his life has been fully open to conjugal love and parenthood, making it public in his church and in society, with all the consequences. This involves a formal application for or the de facto practice of laicization, with the loss of any position in the church that is linked to priestly ministry. Usually it also involves the loss of teaching jobs in church schools and even in civilian centers if he was a professor of religion. This priest doesn't regard remaining in the Church as a layperson as punishment. For him, it is rather a choice and liberation, despite the many sacrifices it entails. This is the type of married priest I will be referring to in the following reflections:

1. The choice of lay status made by a Catholic priest should be a fully free and well thought out act. For a person who has been marked by ministry for many years (ten, twenty, and even thirty or forty) it isn't a trivial matter, nor can such a decision be made under pressure of events or other people, in a state of depression or at a "time of turmoil." The person should have sufficient background knowledge and emotional intelligence to analyze the complexity of that change at a given moment of his life. He should consider his own good (including his feelings and inner stirrings) and also the spiritual good of those who depend on him. Discerning the best path to follow should be done alone. In any case, he can follow the classic rules for discerning of spirits, such as those St. Ignatius puts forward in the Exercises. But I don't recommend raising it with the bishop and fellow priests or others until the personal decision has been made. It's also important to be fully honest with oneself. And if the idea of changing status has emerged from the encounter with a woman, opening a new life project, one should take this factor into account and not try to put the emphasis on other motives. Falling in love is not a weakness but a moment of light and creativity. And the woman is not there to be a temptress, but a life partner.

2. Communicating the decision to one's superior, peers, close friends and the community is usually done naturally and with the utmost openness. Fortunately the days are gone when these difficult situations would lead to social stigma, being characterized -- which is sometimes internalized -- as a traitor and usually a secret flight to a distant place. It is appropriate at this early stage not to let negative judgments come to harm one's conscience and self-esteem. Nor let praise or the mere curiosity of others make such a priest a hero or a visionary. I think at that time of rupture, with all the energy that a vital decision of this kind provides, it's appropriate to retreat a bit from the public and build the foundation for the future life --the family and civilian work above all.

3. It is important that ties with the church community be kept in the new life so as not to feel completely displaced from it. In my experience, many colleagues have found a new dimension of being a Christian and a member of the church community from this new perspective -- participating in the Eucharist, but as one among others without presiding, taking some responsibility for catechesis or social assistance, continuing with a base community or with a theological working group ... Leaving the ministerial priesthood, new experiences of being a Christian and the common priesthood are discovered.

4. What those who have gone through this experience most tend to agree upon is that they have matured as adults, knowing what it is to work like anyone else to feed a family, being responsible for very specific beings with very specific needs. Life becomes more real. The married priest realizes that his clerical life took place in an unreal setting of privileges. Theoretically, he was deprived of a family to better serve others, but in practice he was a capricious bachelor. It seemed that he was once a busy person, but he has now learned that one can do much more than he did. Many called him father, but he was nobody's real father.

5. The married priest fundamentally changes the understanding of what women and sexuality are. There may be priests who live out their celibacy with full integrity and peace. Very often, the married priest recalls that the occasional or professional relationship with a woman represented an awakening of sexual attraction, a temptation that required control and made normal treatment difficult. But now, his life being centered on a woman, he treats other women with ease as colleagues or friends. Moreover, the married priest suddenly notices that a certain undefined and unacknowledged attraction his persona used to have for women, especially celibate ones but also unsatisfied married ones or those with maternal instincts, suddenly disappears. He stops being the hidden desire of many women because it is public knowledge that his life belongs to a particular one. With a few exceptions I take for granted, although I have known very few, celibacy is usually a mechanism for sexual obsessions, both active and passive. Each one deals with them through dreams, playing, substitution, sublimation or repression, as he can. It's all very human and understandable, as long as it's not an abuse of power, which often occurs and not only with children. But the married priest learns for the first time what is really normal between a man and woman and realizes with regret how much time and spiritual energy he has had to use for so many years to face the unresolved issue of sex and women.

6. Even with difficulties -- because since adolescence and youth he wasn't prepared for a healthy couple relationship but the exact opposite -- the married priest usually arrives at the essence of conjugal love, total mutual gift of life, in body and soul. Experiencing the realism of this boundless love, in which the most corporal and the most spiritual vibrate in unison, is a unique experience for personal fulfillment. The Christian spirituality that we have experienced made flesh the enemy of the spirit and sexual inclinations, a disordered passion. Paul and, above all, Augustine have much to do with it. And there has been much talk about love, without taking into account that the analogatum princeps of love has been and will always be specific marital love, in which eros and agape unite. From this basic experience, the person is naturally open to love and respect for other people. Speaking of this, a famous theologian used to tell me: "I understand your way, but I realize that I have not been called to the love of proximity." Unwittingly, a lucid but extremely anti-gospel expression had come out of him. [2]

7. But if the married priest has received the gift of being a father, this experience changes the deeper structures of his personality even more than conjugal love. If marital love is experienced as a novelty by the priest, the experience of actually being a father was generally not expected by him prior to his change in status. If this experience is transformational for the lives of even the youngest, it is much more so for the one who comes to it with the maturity of years and experience. That long ongoing process, hour by hour, day by day, in the closeness and complete self-giving to the child that makes you a father from the moment of conception, is the big surprise for most married priests. That which is most yours is least yours. The begotten son is totally dependent on the parents, but he isn't for the parents. When you are a father, you understand God, you feel that you are a creator like God and at the same time the recipient of an unexpected gift that in and of itself gives meaning to your entire life. Responsibility arises, with no need for any other basis, from the experience of paternity. It's absurd that an organization like the Church universally deprives its cadres of this experience as a matter of principle. Any attempt to assume that same sense of responsibility with respect to spiritual children cannot substitute for the primary experience of actual paternity. Any married priest who has lived the dual experience of pastoral and paternal responsibility can attest to this.

8. Finally, the spirituality of a married priest tends to be deeper and more realistic. It is possible that some, in the traumatic moment of rupture, may have prefered to leave faith or spiritual work in a corner. Many others, from the outset or later, have continued the search for the God of Jesus in their new lives. In that case, the married priest experiences his faith being purified and made stronger. He will reject beliefs and practices that he no longer believes in. But the deep sense of adoration of the mystery that is at the depths of his real life and that of all people, will be bonded in him.

The married priest who has gone through the process described here, absolutely aspires to return again to priestly ministry, as it is conceived in the Church today. But he doesn't stop feeling responsible for the future fate of his original community of faith. So he suffers when he sees those responsible for the latter --bishops and hierarchs who were often his companions or disciples -- living so far from reality, awaiting the return of a premodern world and leading the Church into a ghetto. They dare not take the steps that are now necessary to make the church a real hotbed of believing followers of Jesus in the 21st century. The married priest would be willing to make available his experience and journey, which could surely be very useful to them.

[1] In Spain, Núñez i Mosteo, Francesc. Les plegades. Capellans secularitzats. La identitat dels Ex. PhD thesis presented at the School of Sociology, University of Barcelona in 2005. The full text (in Catalan, with abstract in English) at http://www.tdx.cat/TDX-0721106-124528 (accessed 09/23/10). AA. VV.: ¿Por qué nos salimos los secularizados? Carena Editors, Valencia 2009, (http://www.carenaeditors.com/). Fifteen laicized priests (including the author of this article) relate their experience. Also Moceop-España (http://www.moceop.net/) is about to publish a book of 23 similar stories.

[2] On this and other points I have in mind both the analysis of E. Drewerman (Clérigos. Psicograma de un ideal, Trotta, Madrid 1995) on clerical life and Marcel Légaut (El hombre en busca de su Humanidad, AML-http://www.marcellegaut.org/, Madrid 2001) on the foundational experiences of the human person.

Antonio Duato is a married priest and theologian. He is the publisher of Iglesia Viva and promoter of the Spanish progressive theological online forum Atrio.org

Associação Rumos - Married Priests in Brazil

2011-07-04T18:53:00.003-04:00

We have added a new link to our directory of Married Priests Web sites. The Associação Rumos was founded on August 16, 1986, in Brasilia to gather Roman Catholic clergy in Brazil who have left the priesthood to get married.

It represents moe than 5,000 married priests in Brazil and their families that form the Movimento das Famílias dos Padres Casados (MFPC). The Associação Rumos was created to serve MFPC as a legal entity with a structure and defined objectives, according to the legal requirements of the country.

Thus, the goal of Associação Rumos is to provide legal and financial support to the Movimento das Famílias dos Padres Casados – MFPC, and to promote mutual aid among the members, contributing to their personal, family, professional and religious fulfillment, cultivating friendship between priests who have left the ministry and their families.

We seek dialogue with institutions, religious and social organizations, from an ecumenical perspective. We are not a protest group against the Catholic Church or any ecclesial authority.

We are fighting for the recognition of the ministry of married priests, optional celibacy in the Catholic Church, and appreciation of women's role in the Church.

We encourage pastoral practice in many new forms of ministry, respecting the various options taken by married priests in their new path to serve God and their brothers and sisters. The fact of having left the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church has not stopped many married priests from continuing to be active in many types of pastoral activities in the communities in which they live. Some of these married priests have even chosen full priestly ministry in other Christian churches.

Associação Rumos and the Movimento das Famílias dos Padres Casados – MFPC – promote, every two years in different cities in Brazil, national meetings to elect their board and establish new guidelines, as well as have a joyful fraternal gathering of our families. We also publish a bimonthly Jornal Rumos.

There you have it. Portuguese speaking viewers can go to the web site and check out these fellow warriors in the fight for optional celibacy.

Open Letter from Clelia Luro de Podestá to Pope Benedict XVI

2011-07-02T22:04:00.003-04:00

The original Spanish version of this letter can be found on Clelia's Web site. Clelia Luro de Podestá (now 85) with her late husband, Argentinian Bishop Jerónimo Podestá, is a founding member of the Latin American Federation of Married Priests.

Rome
June 27, 2011

TO: Benedict XVI

Father:

I'm here in Rome. I wanted to bring a book with me to present it here and then I will go to Madrid.

Jerónimo's life was always a life commited to the truth and the defense of human rights that were so damaged in our beloved country.

He was exiled because of a death threat from AAA -- Alianza Anticomunista Argentina. He had to live in Lima, Peru for six years.

He never wanted to resign from his priesthood nor from his consecration as bishop. He chose to go as Saint Paul did to the Gentiles. His diocese was the diaspora, that of all those who in order to be faithful to their consciences, resolved to consecrate their lives as couples. Many were suspended, but none excommunicated. All are waiting and being faithful to the Roman Tree and to their original vocation, helping men and women in the world, taking up their struggles in the political, social and religious arenas.

For 34 years, I have kept his words that today are a digitized archive within the Archivo de la Memoria in Argentina. Through his writings I have managed to finalize a posthumous autobiography through which one can know his life commitment as a priest, as a bishop, and as a man among others, until his final years. Always faithful to his consecration as bishop from which he never wanted to resign, except that he was carrying a canonical disciplinary sanction on his shoulders because Rome is still not open to what will come one day evangelically, that is, optional celibacy.

There are thousands who would fill St. Peter's Square today with their wives and children, but the Pope still can't see them.

I believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit until the end of time, and this is why my hope is not tested.

I don't just want to talk to you about celibacy, which I respect when it is truly lived out.

I just want these words to get into your hands and tell you that today's world needs the integration of man and woman as it came from God's hands. United in love and commitment to a life together, woman with the baptismal priesthood, together with man.

In the book you will find the story of a brother bishop like you, who always felt collegiality deeply.

There are so many things I would want to say to you if we were face to face and both before God, that I am leaving in His hands what my words aren't able to tell you.

Our marriage was blessed by Dom Helder Cámara. You will find that in the pages of this book.

I only went into the Holy See in 1967 when I was called by Paul VI but he got sick when I arrived in Rome, and I was received for more than an hour by Cardinal Benelli who was able to listen to me as a priest and not as a functionary.

May God enlighten the Pope so that as Jesus said, and this was also Bishop Jerónimo's motto, "That all may be one so that the world might believe." And how can the world believe if we are not united in Him?

God bless the Pope

Clelia Luro de Podestá

Photo: Clelia joins in the Eucharistic celebration at a gathering of married priests in her home in 2008.

Argentinian Bishop's Widow Writes Book About His Life

2011-07-02T20:59:00.004-04:00

by Elisabetta Piqué (English translation by Rebel Girl)
La Nación (Argentina)
July 2, 2011

ROME -- As if closing a circle at 85, Clelia Luro de Podestá, wife of Jerónimo Podestá, the bishop of Avellaneda who in the 1960s and 70s was a scandal for the Vatican, has presented her book Jerónimo obispo, un hombre entre los hombres; su vida a través de sus escritos.

"It's a posthumous autobiography. Through his letters, writings and documents, I make him speak about himself," Clelia says, characterizing Podestá as a patriot and prophet, and she hopes to also have published in Italy this 500-page book that was recently published in our country [Argentina] by Ediciones Fabro.

In a presentation at Casa Argentina on Vía Véneto, Clelia, lucid and combative, remembers that she met Jerónimo when, in the 60s, he was preaching enthusiastically about Populorum Progressio, Paul VI's encyclical which he said was "profoundly revolutionary but unfortunately has been muted."

Clelia, 32 then, separated and a mother of six daughters, became Podestá's personal secretary and right hand woman. They were twin souls who didn't imagine that years later they would become "an exceptional couple, committed for life," according to her.

"As Jerónimo soon became a charismatic political leader, the military regime of Onganía was very disturbed that there was a bishop who was stirring up the people," Clelia said. And she added that in order to make Podestá resign from his diocese, they used the priest's "scandalous" friendship with her, which was open on all sides, in an affair the repercussions of which also reached the highest peaks of the Vatican.

An encounter of "grace"

The book recalls when Podestá -who died on June 23, 2000-, before being suspended a divinis in 1972, traveled with Clelia to the Vatican to speak directly with the Pope about the subject.

In a writing reproduced in the book, Podestá states: "I explained to the Pope the meaning and breadth of our relationship, concluding that ours was an encounter of "grace" and not sin [...]. In the end, Paul VI asked me absolutely to tear this affection from my heart. All this sat very badly with me because I was and am convinced that nobody had the right to demand such a thing of me."

It was the famous Brazilian archbishop Helder Cámara who later blessed the couple. "Without knowing me, Cámara told me: 'You two must make the journey together.'"

In 1972, after getting married, Clelia and Jerónimo, who lived in exile in Peru, formed in several countries the Federación Latinoamericana de Sacerdotes Casados, which fights for the Church to pay attention to the poor and so that celibacy for priests will not be mandatory, but optional. "Because the Church must be whole, like Jerónimo, who was whole", said Clelia, who remembers that with him, they were never able to let a problem of the poor or with the military dictatorship pass.

At the presentation of the book, Giovanni Franzoni, the prestigious progressive Italian theologian and ex-Benedictine abbot of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, suspended a divinis in 1974 for supporting divorce and who later got married as well, also spoke. Franzoni offered words of praise and admiration for Podestá, a good friend of his.

"Jerónimo was an honest bishop, whose memories should be living subjects for today," he said. "Because the Beatitudes in the Gospel don't say that purity of love is chastity, but rather that one shouldn't be a hypocrite," he added.

Argentina's ambassador to Italy, Torcuato Di Tella, recommended reading the book "not just from a religious point of view, but also a political one". "Podestá was one of those people like Luther or Calvin who fought, for better or worse, to transform the Church," he concluded.

FAITH, LOVE AND POLITICS - A TIMELINE FOR JERONIMO PODESTA

The Journey: He studied in La Plata and Rome. In 1963 he was ordained a bishop, together with Eduardo Pironio and Antonio Quarracino.

Ideology. He joined the Movimiento de Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo. He was bishop of the Diocese of Avellaneda-Lanús from 1963 to 1967.

Love. In 1966, Podestá met Clelia Luro. He resigned as bishop in 1967, and married Clelia in 1972. The de facto president Juan Carlos Onganía considered him to be the "main enemy" of the military government. In 1974 Podestá went into exile from the country, threatened by Triple A [the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance -- a right wing death squad]. He returned in 1983.

33 and out: A former Franciscan provincial chooses Lutherans and love

2011-06-29T13:14:00.002-04:00

Il Gazzettino
June 29, 2011

BOLZANO - At 56, he has decided to change churches because he doesn't agree with the Church hierarchy about celibacy. This is why Georg Reider (photo) has decided to abandon the role of Franciscan priest to go into the Evangelical Lutheran church.

The affair came to light after the announcement that the priest, who was formerly a Franciscan provincial, has been relieved of the last position he held, managing a Franciscan welcome center in Appian, near Bolzano. The cleric had kept the job despite the fact that he had reported to his superiors the decision to move over to the Protestants because the Catholic Church had found his religious position to be incompatible with his relationship with a woman.

The former Franciscan told the diocesan weekly Sonntagsblatt that "it's a valuable relationship, which I can not and will not give up. It would not be fair either to the persons concerned or in respect of my testimony of faith."

According to an article in Südtirol Online published in March when he decided to change denominations, Fr. Reider had been a Franciscan friar since 1977. From 1992 to 2000, Reider, who has a PhD from the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, taught religion and spirituality at the Higher Institute of Theological Education in Bressanone. Reider was Provincial of the Franciscans in Alto Adige from 1996 to 2001.

The priest told Südtirol that he no longer wanted to hide, that he felt his relationship helped him to have a better understanding of what his parishioners were going through and to be a better minister. He said that he anticipates going through hard times but that, in the end, "I want to go my way."

All-male, celibate Catholic priesthood is an embarrassing relic

2011-06-13T12:38:00.003-04:00

By John Veal,
Kansas City Star
6/11/2011

Should Bishop Robert Finn resign? It would be a rare example of accountability. But this question, I believe, is largely irrelevant to the central problem behind the ongoing priestly sexual abuse scandals.

I am a lifelong, devout Catholic and a historian. To me, the central problem is not the fact that a relatively few priests have sexually abused children, evil as that is. Priests are prone to the same failings as everyone else. Like anyone else, they should face appropriate criminal penalties and civil liabilities.

Neither is the real issue those bishops who have been negligent in confronting the problem or complicit in covering it up. They too must be held legally accountable.

Most absurd of all, the main problem is not the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. A recent study blamed in part the “patterns of increased deviance in society” at that time. This implies the existence of a golden age of priestly celibacy that never existed.

As I see it, the central problem behind the ongoing clerical abuse scandal is the all-male, celibate priesthood. It is an embarrassing holdover from the Middle Ages.

Da Vinci Code aside, real historical evidence shows that women’s roles in the Catholic Church were increasingly restricted as the early church became established. At the same time, the view of all sexuality as evil crept into the church. The origins of this sex-denying ethic were cultural, not scriptural.

Other issues, such as the inheritance of church property for the many priests with families, also led to the church increasingly to insist on absolute priestly celibacy.

The result today is a closed society of men held to a standard Jesus never established, the apostles did not follow, and many fine priests cannot meet.

There is simply no valid scriptural or theological basis for the celibate male clergy. Almost all other Christian churches rejected celibacy centuries ago. Many have also admitted women to their clergy. Yet Rome still condemns these changes as strongly as it once condemned Galileo’s proof of a sun-centered universe.

Would a Catholic clergy composed of men and women, single and married, prevent clerical sexual abuse? Of course not. But can anyone doubt that women priests would be less likely to protect their deviant peers?

Just as Pope Urban silenced Galileo but not his truth, Rome today has banned discussion of a female priesthood. Yet the “sense of the faithful” has moved beyond the sexism and sexual dread of Church leadership.

Bishop Finn, your people are angry. Your many good priests are humiliated. I do not call on you to resign or to implement weak reforms of the current system. I call on you to speak out for sweeping reform of the priesthood — for women’s ordination and optional celibacy. That would be more powerful than any apology.

John Veal is a lifelong Catholic and a history teacher. He lives in Kansas City.

Member of Les Prêtres drops out of seminary

2011-06-10T14:51:00.003-04:00

The youngest member of the French priest trio sensation Les Prêtres, seminarian Joseph Dinh Nguyen Nguyen, has stunned his public -- and his bishop -- by revealing that he will not be returning to seminary. Nguyen, who had been studying in France since 2003 with permission of the bishop of Saigon, had been on a routine leave of absence for vocational discernment since 2007.

Les Prêtres was founded by Msgr. Jean-Michel di Falco, Bishop of Gap and Embrun (Hautes-Alpes). In addition to Nguyen, it includes Fr. Jean-Michel Bardet, pastor of the Cathedral of Gap, and Fr. Charles Troesch, chaplain of the Basilica of Our Lady of Laus. The trio recorded their first album, Spiritus Dei, last year to fund the construction of a church in their diocese as well as the construction of a school in Madagascar.

Les Prêtres' recordings have been a huge success in France. Spiritus Dei, which came out in March 2010, has sold 850,000 copies and gone platinum. Their second album, Gloria, which came out in April 2011, has already sold 250,000 copies. Both albums are currently in the Top 10 for sales in France.

But his experience touring with his clerical colleagues affected the young seminarian. Nguyen told Le Nouvel Observateur that he has decided not to return to seminary because he wants to get married and have a family. "During the concerts, I saw it was possible to live out one's faith in a family, and it made me want to do that," he explained. "The road has been long but that's it; my decision is made."

But he's not abandoning his singing partners yet. The trio's concerts are guaranteed at least until the one on November 13th at the Palais des Congrès in Paris.

Married man to become a Catholic priest in Sacramento

2011-06-06T14:46:00.003-04:00

by Jennifer Garza
Sacramento Bee
Saturday, Jun. 4, 2011 - 10:33 am

This morning, in an elaborate ordination ceremony at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento, Jeff Henry will make diocesan history.

With his wife and daughter watching, Henry will become the first married man in the region ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.

A former Lutheran minister, Henry felt called to the Catholic priesthood seven years ago.

"I decided to pursue it until God said no, and God never shut the door," Henry said.

The door was opened by church leaders. Since 1980, the Roman Catholic Church has had a special provision for married ministers of other faiths to become Catholic priests after converting.

Henry, 51, will join a brotherhood of about 100 married men across the country who are now Catholic priests, according to Mary Gautier, senior research associate of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. "Most are former Episcopalians, but there are a few Lutherans and one Baptist that I know of," she said.

Henry is not the only man who will be ordained at the cathedral today. Jose Beltran and Brian Soliven will also become priests. In front of a packed church, they will promise chastity and obedience.

Henry will promise fidelity to God and to his marriage and obedience to the bishop. He and his wife, Peg, have been married 26 years.

"I'm very proud of him," said Peg Henry. "This is a real gift for us all to share this together."

Peg Henry and daughter Teresa, 21, will participate in the two-hour ceremony. They will help Jeff Henry don his vestments, a job typically done by other priests and close friends.

"At first it caught me off guard because I didn't know he could do this," she said. "But it's his calling."

The Catholic Church already has married priests in its Eastern rite, which never prohibited a married clergy. But the Latin-rite church has made celibacy a condition for ordination for centuries.

Those pushing for change in the church say ordination should be open to anyone called to serve.

"What about the lifelong Catholic men who had to leave? It's painful for some of them to see married priests being accepted when they had to leave simply because they fell in love," said Sister Chris Schenck, executive director of FutureChurch, a coalition of Catholics working toward full participation in the church.

She cites the priest shortage and its impact on parishes around the country as one reason for the church to change its celibacy requirement. "There are many married Catholic men, good men, who would be willing to serve again," she said.

Sacramento Catholic Bishop Jaime Soto said "every priest brings richness of his own experience and uniqueness to the priesthood." He is impressed with the Henry family. "Jeff's marriage will bring an added quality to his preaching ministry as well as his pastoral ministry."

He said the priests in the diocese are supportive of Henry. "Priests will laugh and say that the church is a very jealous spouse and Jeff Henry now has two of them," said Soto.

Peg Henry said that, as the only wife of a Catholic priest in the diocese, she will "take it slow and see what God has in store for me." The couple will not live in a church rectory, as most priests do. They will continue to reside in their Vacaville home.

For now, Henry will continue working at St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School in Vallejo and will celebrate Mass on weekends at St. Vincent Ferrer in Vallejo. He has not been assigned a parish.

"People are supportive and willing to give me a chance," Henry said. "I have faith that God's spirit will work in the way it's supposed to."

German Catholics call for reform, many leaving

2011-05-26T17:48:00.001-04:00

USA Today/Associated Press
5/26/2011

AUGSBURG, Germany (AP) — A year after a widespread sex scandal rocked Roman Catholics in Pope Benedict XVI's homeland, German intellectuals and faithful alike are turning their backs on the church, calling for change or simply leaving the congregation.

German theologians and others have aired their discontent in a series of petitions to church leaders calling for changes including more transparency, an end to celibacy, and women's ordination.

"After their initial horror, many responsible Christians, women and men, in ministry and outside of ministry, have come to realize that deep-reaching reforms are necessary," wrote leading German theologians in a petition to the nation's highest Catholic officials.

Germany has long been a cradle of religious thought and agitation for reform, stemming from Martin Luther in the 1500s up to today's outspoken Swiss-born Vatican critic, Hans Kung. The pope himself, before moving to Rome, taught theology at German universities.

The Vatican has not responded to the petitions, but the German Bishops Conference sought to address the issue in March by announcing a series of platforms for dialogue "aimed at giving our church in Germany a theological profile and sense of cohesion in this new century."

Many would welcome a signal from the pope that he supports such discussion, but there are no exchanges with parishioners or lay people scheduled during his Sept. 22-25 visit to Berlin and eastern Germany.

Gerhard Kruip, a theology professor at Mainz University who helped write the petition from the theologians does not expect that to happen.

"The bishops will not want to confront the pope with the problems facing Germany's church," Kruip said.

There are nearly 25 million Catholics in Germany, but numbers gathered by The Associated Press indicate a spike in people leaving the congregation last year as allegations of sexual and physical abuse of hundreds of children by clergy surfaced.

"These major abuse cases need to be taken into account by church leaders," said Rev. Max Stetter, a priest in the Augsburg diocese who formed a group calling for change.

While tens of thousands of Germans formally "quit" the church every year, 2010 saw a jump in the number of walkouts. German authorities easily track the numbers, because members pay a church tax, unless they formally leave the congregation.

Official numbers from the seven archbishoprics and 20 dioceses have not yet been released, but data acquired by AP show an increase ranging from 19% in Magdeburg, to more than 60% in diocese of Passau and Wuerzburg in the pope's homeland.

Augsburg, also in Bavaria, was among those hardest hit. Some 12,065 Catholics resigning their membership last year, compared with 7,000 in 2009, the diocese said. Fearing such a bleeding of the faithful, Stetter joined hundreds of other priests and lay people to appeal to their bishop to change.

"There is the impression that a page has been turned and things are going on, without anyone looking into the cause of the scandals and finding new structures to avoid such things," Stetter said.

Austria, which also taxes church members in a way similar to those in Germany also saw a significant drop in the number of departures. Figures published by the Austrian Bishop's Conference said 87,000 Austrian Catholics left in 2010 — a 64% increase over the 53,000 who formally had their names struck from church registries in 2009.

The Catholic church in the pope's homeland forms the backbone of everyday life, and despite the discontent, the decision to leave does not come easily to its members.

Margit Becker, who lives on the outskirts of Augsburg with her husband and two children, is one of thousands of German Catholics who feels disconnected from and disillusioned by the church. She stopped attending services months ago, but has not yet brought herself to formally resign.

"We were really born into the church and socialized in the church," Becker said of herself and her husband. "Our parents would have a heart attack if we were to leave the church. It is unthinkable."

Becker, in her early 50s, said her generation followed the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s — in which the pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, took part. The council changed everything from the role of lay people to the direction priests face while celebrating Mass and inspired a young generation with hope for a more open church.

Yet Benedict has revived some traditions and prayers that had been largely abandoned since Vatican II, disappointing many in his homeland.

"The church is no longer speaks to the people. I don't feel that it speaks to me, I don't feel comfortable with these traditions that date back centuries," said an administrator who works in the Augsburg dioceses, but refused to give his name for fear that he would be fired for criticizing the church.

Nevertheless, theologian Kruip believes the call for dialogue from the Bishops Conference shows that the discontent is being heard, and taken seriously. He concedes that change will take time, but will come.

"We wouldn't have done this if we were not convinced that we had a real chance," Kruip said.

Italy shuts out Sex and the Vatican

2011-05-14T17:19:00.003-04:00

It promised to arouse discussion and create a bit of commotion, said a dispatch from the Italian agency, Ansa, on April 18

And, indeed, that is the way it seemed when Carmelo Abbate's book, Sex and the Vatican, was published last month. The book grew out of an investigation by the author, published last year by Panorama news magazine, into the double lives of some gay priests in Rome. But Sex and the Vatican goes much further.

It looks at such taboo issues for the Roman Catholic church as the women who become priests' mistresses and the children they have (and those they abort). It details allegations of the rape of nuns by priests. And it concludes that large parts of the clergy are leading double lives because of the crushing burden placed on them by the Vatican's insistence that they lead lives of celibacy and chastity.

...The French edition shot to number 12 in Amazon.fr's non-fiction bestseller list as the initial print run sold out in under a week...In Italy, by contrast, the publication of Sex and the Vatican has been met with a wall of embarrassed silence. It is as if it had never happened...

More from The Guardian's John Hooper...

A Swiss bishop supports relaxing the celibacy requirement

2011-03-26T15:33:00.003-04:00

APIC/KIPA
March 23, 2011

Msgr. Markus Büchel, bishop of St. Gallen, is not in favor of abolishing the celibacy requirement for priests. But he is proposing that "one should also be able to become a priest, without having celibacy imposed." In his diocese, the pastor of Gossau has resigned due to paternity. The priest, Niklaus Popp (44), became sexually involved with the parish housekeeper who is expecting the couple's child. He has chosen to leave the priesthood and stay with his partner and child.

This support for relaxing the celibacy rule is widespread in Europe, Msgr. Büchel stated in the March 23rd issue of the daily Blick, edited in Zurich. However, he adds: "We have to admit that basically, celibacy is on a voluntary basis. Nobody is forced into it. Every man who wants to become a priest decides freely to keep this promise and bear the consequences." He himself has never regretted opting for celibacy.

In the case in Gossau, the rule is as follows: the priest involved "must decide -- either the woman and his child, or the priesthood. It's clear; he can't choose both."

Msgr. Büchel stated in the St. Galler Tagblatt: "A relaxation of the celibacy requirement could help address the problem of the lack of priests in the Western countries." In ten years, there will only be about 30 priests under 65 in his diocese. But the bishop puts the problem in perspective. "There are many countries -- like France, or in Africa or Latin America -- where there are fewer priests per number of Catholics than there are here."

Father Mora Got Married!

2011-03-13T16:43:00.004-04:00

This story is extraordinary because this priest, who left the ministry in the Honduran Catholic Church because of a woman -- as he now reveals -- was Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga's right hand man before his resignation. In the original story in the photo captions, Father Mora's wife (photo right) is only identified by a pseudonym, "Paty". RG

La Tribuna (Honduras)
March 12, 2011

Father José de Jesus Mora was born in Granada, Nicaragua, but nothing reveals his Nicaraguan origins. He arrived in Honduras in 1984 when he was 15, his parents having decided to send him and his two brothers to Honduras to evade compulsory military service in the Sandinista army. In Tegucigalpa, he finished high school at the Vicente Mejía Colindres Institute, but he had begun it in the Salesian College in Granada where, at age 7, he felt called to the priesthood. He entered the Diocesan Seminary and in 1994, was ordained a priest by the then Archbishop Oscar Andrés Rodríguez.

Father Mora quickly became a confidant of Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodriguez, who appointed him Vicar of Communications of the Catholic Church and spokesman for the Archdiocese. Mora even lived in the same residence as Cardinal Rodríguez, but wasn't the only confidant in his circle and in December 2006, he resigned from his post and from the priesthood.

There were many rumors about the reasons for Father Mora's departure. He and Bishop Juan José Pineda appeared together on a television program, on which they said there were no lawsuits or grievances. The subject stopped being news and Mora disappeared from public view. He moved to San Pedro Sula to live as a layman with all that that implies: having a home, his own family, a wife, a child and another on the way, and working at the Universidad Tecnológica de Honduras (UTH). Four years later, Father Mora tells us about his new life and casts a critical eye on his journey through the Catholic Church.

Who is Jesús Mora outside the Church?

A completely satisfied person. In my current work with UTH, I am valued and held in high esteem by the president of the University, Roger Valladares, academic colleagues and the students...

Don't you miss the priesthood?

Contact with the people, yes, I miss that a lot -- the communities where I was, Ojojona, Teupasenti, San Martin de Porres parish, the Cathedral, Yaguacire, La Divanna, many communities that I served.

Are you happy outside of the Church?

As a baptized person, I'm still a member of the Catholic Church. I was definitely happy in the priesthood and now I'm happy in family life. I want to shout it out!...and how good it is that you are giving me the opportunity to do so now. I left the priesthood of my own will and chose to share my life with an extraordinary woman, with great human values and an excellent profession. She's a doctor, with a specialization, she has a dominant and attractive personality, a good sense of humor, she's very intelligent...I always say that before falling in love there was admiration for this person. She's a great wife and mother. Just as I fell in love with the ministry life, I fell in love with a person I admire and love. I made a very conscious decision...

Had you made this decision before leaving the Church or did the relationship emerge later?

It was simultaneous. It's not a situation one deliberately seeks out, but I'll tell you this: in this time that I've known her, I think I should have left sooner! (laughs)

Do you wonder why you didn't do it earlier?

No. I don't regret the ministry, quite the contrary. It's been a blessing and an undeserved grace that has marked my whole life.

I don't think God made a mistake in calling me to the ministry and I can say that I didn't make a mistake either at the point of choosing this life, so I don't feel the ministry and family life are incompatible...

Do you have any children?

Yes, a boy age one year and nine months; his name is José Alejandro. The second is on the way; she will be named Valentina…

What has this meant for you?

It's indescribable, all words fall short. Through experiencing paternity and family life, one's ability to love doubles, triples, multiplies; one becomes more human, more sensitive...

How has your life changed in terms of routine?

Even though he's one year and nine months, I still don't sleep the same (laughs). One is attentive to anything he might need. Living alone is not the same as living attentive to others, the wife, a child, and now two (laughs)...Some would say that I left with much desire to make the mandate of the book of Genesis -- "Grow and multiply and fill the earth" -- come alive, but it has been a blessing from God and a decision by mutual agreement and we are both so happy...

What's it like to share a house, to sleep with someone, after so many years?

(Laughs). Before, I used to be able to get out of bed on either side, now only on one ...

It's really a strange sensation at the beginning, but that's when one becomes convinced that God gave human nature the ability to love and at the same time, complementarily, added the need to be loved.

Before, I loved weekends for the pastoral work, for contact with the people; now I love them and I want them for the time to share with the family...

Do you think that a married man can be a good priest?

Of course! It's been demonstrated in the Orthodox and the Eastern rite church where the candidate to the priesthood chooses if he wants to get married or remain celibate. I can't state that the Catholic Church made a mistake on celibacy; I think celibacy is a great resource and it is oriented towards a greater consecration to God. A priest who lives out his celibacy and directs his strength to self-giving is very useful in the service of the gospel, but a priest who has agreed to celibacy and then has to live a divided life, "playing hide and seek", doesn't have the same commitment; it's not an ideal situation in the life of the priest.

What happens is that the Orthodox Church speaks clearly of the practical advantages of celibacy, while the Catholic Church stresses that this disciplinary norm is the express will of Christ and tries to sublimate it, to contain it with angelic spirituality.

But you made a commitment...

Yes, one takes on the commitment, in writing, in a letter, and asks for ordination. I did it, I signed it by hand. I promised to live out the ministry forever. Yes, I do feel I failed in this and I acknowledge that it was a half-hearted commitment, and I'm not going to justify myself now by blaming others...

This shows that under the cassock there are just human beings...

That's the main point, one that many don't want to acknowledge. One can't deny one's human nature; you ask for celibacy as a gift from God and it isn't reduced to just the sexual aspect. Some would say that "the fever hit him just like Padre Alberto." It's not that; it's the emotional dimension. Love is greater than the passion aspect; what fulfills people is living together, companionship, knowing you matter to somebody and now the existence of children who, whichever way you look at them, are one of the greatest blessings...

It's a human need...

More than 100,000 of us priests have abandoned the priesthood and they are an underutilized evangelizing force, because that's 20% of all priests. The Fifth CELAM Conference at Aparecida, recommended that bishops seek out those priests who have left the ministry because the contribution we can make within the Church is important, but it's clearly obvious that the bishops aren't interested in this.

Where is that treatment coming from?

I'm now being treated differently by many people than when I was in the clergy. Many didn't like or appreciate me as a person, but as a priest. I'm the same, but many people aren't treating me the same...

If the Church were to abolish celibacy, would you go back to the priesthood?

Yes, I've thought about it, I think so. Obviously, my wife would have to consent...(laughs)

Why didn't you go over to the Anglican Church where you could minister and be married?

Because I love the Catholic Church; I have a lot of gratitude and affection for it.

Jesus said: "Happy are those who haven't seen and yet believe" but I would paraphrase this and say: "Happy are those who keep on believing in spite of what they have seen."

I've seen many weaknesses in the Catholic Church and I've also seen the work it does, the self-giving of some priests, the good witness of some bishops. I really feel so united to the Church that, although I would like to minister and can't because of the decision I made and the current norms, I'm not going to renounce my Catholic faith...

You prefer to be just another layman...

That sounds derogatory. It's better to be a good layman than a priest who isn't giving the witness that's expected of him. Yes, I prefer to be a layman, to not renounce my faith and love for the Catholic Church.

There's a special person who's influenced my love for the Church a lot and that's my mother; it's a love that was spread rather than imposed. I'm certain that Jesus instituted the Church; we have a great wealth: the legitimacy of the sacraments, its Biblical and theological teaching, the witness of the saints throughout the history of the Church. I can't now tell the faithful that everything I professed, lived, celebrated and taught, was a lie...

Why leave something you loved so much?

There are a lot of things. I can't deny that each is responsible for his actions, but one becomes disenchanted...Although they won't admit it or say so, there may be gradual disenchantment in the life of some priests. Though they continue to minister, they don't have the same passion and that's not due to physical, but to existential fatigue. And when there's no openness, there aren't any channels through which to express that disillusionment or disenchantent and other compensatory mechanisms are sought -- emotional, economic, psychological, egocentric ones, etc...

As long as we're more concerned with good image, control and sanctions, less effort is devoted to what's really important: evangelization.

Did you feel frustrated?

Yes, there were situations in which I felt frustrated that many things were being handled in a businesslike way, for convenience, not seeking the truth so much as drowning it. It was frustrating to know that there were things that, in my opinion, could be solved differently. But what motivated me to make the decision wasn't frustration so much, but something more beautiful: the possibility of loving and being loved, of having a family. And my heart wasn't wrong; I'm very happy. I didn't leave, running away; I left, seeking.

What's missing in the training of clergy?

I think that seminary training fails to take the bull by the horns, to talk clearly, explicitly. Sometimes they talk metaphorically and ethereally. We've had a problem in the Church: we talk more to the head than to the heart, we make rational arguments, but the human being isn't just reason. He's freedom, will, desire, he's many things...They should recognize that those of us who are called to the priestly vocation are made of the same human clay as everyone else, with qualities and defects, virtues and weaknesses. I think that there's a human aspect that isn't being given the importance it should have: affective maturity and emotional balance. But as long as an ingenuous separation is being made between "we, the good and you, the bad", dialogue and maturity aren't possible.

There's no worse hypocrisy that faked virtue and you can't fool everyone all the time...

You know Padre Alberto. Do you identify with him?

The way it came about was a scandalous situation; it offended the sensibilities of many Catholics. I contacted him; there's a relationship of friendship, and I was with him a few months earlier and knew he wanted to take that step. We talked about it; I won't go into details because I'm respectful, but I saw him making the decision ...

Did you know he had somebody?

He didn't say it, but you could read between the lines. What's more important is that he told me that he loved the priesthood so much that he decided to continue in the ministry and the closest one is the Anglican Church. He has said that it's the same and yes, there are similarities, but canonically one cannot state that it's the same Catholic Church...

He used to tape his program here on channel 48. How did he react when they closed it down?

He felt uncomfortable, annoyed, and he even said, "what about the other scandals?" But I don't share this opinion of "why me and not the others?" I don't think Padre Alberto's exit was the best and I'm not saying that he wasn't within his right, but personally I would say that if they're legitimate programs, from someone whose development or subject will do good for a lot of people, why condemn or stigmatize him?

How's you relationship with Cardinal Rodríguez?

My affection for the Cardinal is unconditional; I have a lot to thank him for. He has a difficult job in difficult circumstances. Often he would say to me half seriously half jokingly: "Son, never ask God to be a bishop." I don't know if he said it from tiredness or because he was afraid I would stir up a revolution at the heart of the Church. (laughs) I appreciate him a lot, I maintain occasional communication with him. When I made this decision, I had been living in his house four years and I certainly got to know more about his human qualities, his pastoral charity. He works tirelessly, is a man of prayer, and was so fatherly and brotherly. When I visited him after my departure, he expressed particular appreciation towards me.

Father Mora was a faithful defender of the Catholic Church, its postulates and its authorities for many years. Time and circumstances have led him to take a more critical posture.

Father Mora knows that history isn't linear and that everything is subject to change and perhaps that's why he closes the conversation with this phrase about the mutual affection that has united him with Cardinal Rodriguez: "I'll tell you later if it's still there after this interview."

New Ways of Being Catholic

2011-03-08T12:34:00.001-05:00

PR Newswire
3/1/2011

BRUNSWICK, Maine, March 1, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As Lent and Easter approach, many Catholics are finding new ways of being Catholic. Judy and David Lorenz are just two Catholics who, in the tradition of the first Christians, host Masses at home with married priest Rev Donald Horrigan. "I wanted to worship God, use my gifts," says Judy, and we wanted to "reach out to other Catholics who may have lost their spiritual connection for some reason."

Every year, many US Catholics are turning to married priests to celebrate thousands of Masses, weddings, baptisms, and other sacraments. Many of them had no spiritual place to call home -- their church was closed for lack of priests, they felt unwelcome due to divorce or other circumstance, or, like the Lorenz', they sought out a married priest affiliated with CITI Ministries/Rentapriest.com (Celibacy Is the Issue) when they felt disenchanted with the institutional church.

Judy says, "It's sad that Fr. Don's 'priestly' ministry had to be put on hold for so many years, though it is clear to me from my experience with him in Emmaus that he was as much a follower of the Lord in his roles as husband, father, and school principal. It's just a bonus that now he can minister to the rest of us again!." While Catholic priests who marry lose their clerical positions, the church's own theology and canon law state that sacraments by married priests are valid because a priest is a "priest forever" and "cannot refuse" sacraments and permission is not needed from anyone no matter where it takes place (Canons 1335, 290, and 843).

CITI Ministries is a nonprofit organization that offers free referrals to married priests in almost every state. Married priests are available for special one-time services such as Holy Week or Easter Masses, weekly or occasional Masses, first or second marriages, baptisms, Holy Communion, Anointing of the Sick, funerals, spiritual guidance or group discussion, such as those among vigiling parishes who are trying to discern their future as a congregation. The extensive theological backgrounds and experience of these priests has been invaluable to those who might otherwise have fallen away from Catholicism.

For the first 1100 years of the church, popes, bishops, and priests married and fathered children. Celibacy was made a law in 1139 to prevent priests from bequeathing their homes to their spouses and children rather than to the church.

For persons seeking a new path to reconnect with their faith, a married priest may provide an acceptable pathway. A special individual or group Lenten retreat workshop entitled "Strengthening Our Spiritual Immune System" is also available on the rentapriest.com website.

For more information: go to www.rentapriest.com; 1-800-PRIEST-9; info@rentapriest.com, or CITI Ministries, 14 Middle Street, Suite 2, Brunswick, ME 04011, 207-729-7673. See links also on YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook.

CONTACTS: David and Judy Lorenz (MD), jlorenz@verizon.net; Jerry Siegmund (SC), 843-399-8065; Louise Haggett (ME), President/Founder, 207-729-7673; Rev. Rich Hasselbach (NY), 914-804-1944; Rev. John Shuster (WA), 360-551-9982

Catholic priest shortfall an 'imminent disaster'

2011-03-08T12:30:00.001-05:00

Barney Zwartz
The Age (Australia)
March 5, 2011

Wednesday morning Mass at St Aloysius in north Caulfield, and barely a dozen of the faithful are scattered through the handsome old Catholic church built to house 1000, as Father Gerard Diamond celebrates the sacrament.

Two hours later, he is leading Mass again at St Anthony's in Glen Huntly for a healthier congregation of about 50. Father Diamond has no idea how many times he has said Mass but, at an average of nearly 450 a year for 44 years, he is verging on 20,000.

He has been parish priest at Glen Huntly since 1992, but in 2003 he ''acquired'' the Caulfield parish, and in 2008 the two parishes were formally merged.

Advertisement: Story continues below Father Diamond's telescoping parish ministry is a fine example of trends in the Australian Catholic church, which a new report says faces ''imminent disaster''.

The report, Catholic Parish Ministry in Australia: Facing Disaster?, is a statistical analysis by former priest Peter Wilkinson, a senior research fellow at the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs on behalf of an active lay group, Catholics for Ministry.

It shows that from a peak of one priest for every 518 Catholics in 1966, there is now one for every 1895 Catholics. But that ratio counts 1431 retired priests and those not in parish ministry - the real figure is much higher. In New South Wales in 15 years, it could be one priest for as many as 22,000 Catholics, one for every 13,000 in Victoria.

The catastrophic decline in parish priests - which will intensify as the boom clerical generation ordained between 1955 and 1975 retires or dies - comes as the Catholic population is rising rapidly, largely due to immigration. In 2010, based on Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, the Catholic population was 5.6 million, up 470,000 from the 2006 Census.

Already one in four Australian parishes is without a full-time priest. The Australian bishops - banned by Rome from even mentioning the possibility of married priests or women priests - are trying to meet the challenge by merging parishes and recruiting priests from overseas, often on short-term arrangements - a strategy, according to Dr Wilkinson, ''of despair and desperation''.

Since 1994 184 parishes have merged. Today 1282 Australian parishes have 1523 priests but by 2025, the report says, there may be as few as 600 home-grown priests for a Catholic population estimated to top 7 million.

But Dr Wilkinson says importing overseas priests - now 20 per cent of the Australian total - is no solution. Soon recruitment countries such as Nigeria, India and the Philippines will not be able to spare priests, and those who come now often struggle to adapt to Australian life and have a different focus - they see themselves as missionaries engaged in the re-evangelisation of Australia.

Catholics for Ministry co-founder Paul Collins shares that concern. ''Many of these foreign priests are inexperienced and come from cultures that are tribal and patriarchal. They have little or no comprehension of the kinds of faith challenges that face Catholics living in a secular, individualistic, consumerist culture that places a strong emphasis on equality, women's rights and co-responsibility between clergy and lay people,'' he said.

Dr Wilkinson says the situation is far more serious than he anticipated. ''The crisis is real and the scale is huge. The question is, what are the bishops able or prepared to do, and, from what I can gather, Rome keeps a very tight rein on them.''

He said the figures showed priests would be forced to focus on the sacraments and Eucharist at the expense of other important duties such as pastoral care.

Father Diamond accepts that priestly ministry is changing, but thinks a well-run parish can still cope. In a secular job he would have his feet up already, but priests do not retire until 75, seven years away. In fact, he knows he will be needed much longer - as long as he is mentally and physically capable.

So, the number of priests has risen…

2011-02-24T15:05:00.002-05:00

Exactly what I was thinking when I read the news reports on the supposed increase in the number of priests but didn't have the time to do the research to refute the official conclusions. Thank you, Fr. Kelly!

by Fr. Michael Kelly, SJ
UCA News
2/21/2011

Great attention has been paid over the last week to the Vatican’s announcement that the gross number of priests in the world has risen in the last decade. On our own site, the story rated the highest number of visitors on the day of the announcement and across the world, the story gained extensive exposure.

Without being as cynical about the announcement as the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli might suggest that we be (”There are lies, damn lies and statistics”), the figures merit more considered assessment if they are to reveal what the real condition of the Church’s clergy is.

The abiding question about any claim that a number is growing is “growing relative to what?” If anyone who has a business were told their profit had grown or the owner of a piece of property were told it had increased in value, the real question for both is: in relation to what?

Has the value of the property increased ahead of or behind the rate of return on shares or money? Has the profit on the business provided its owner with an appropriate rate of return on the investment that created the business in the first place?

Simply saying that the price of property has risen or profits in a business have increased without these qualifiers is not really very helpful.

So, the number of priests has risen in the last decade. But relative to what? The number of Catholics has risen in the same time by 128 million according to the Vatican’s own figures. Even if the number of priests has risen by 50,000 (as the growth reported for the previous year suggests) in the last decade, that still represents half the rate of growth of the Catholic population the priests are ordained to serve.

Relative to the number of priests needed to serve the growing Catholic population, the number of priests has actually declined. The Church was better off, in relative terms, a decade ago.

But the questions about gross numbers need to be even more searching. Where are the large populations of Catholics and how are they faring in ordinations? What is the median or even average ages of the clergy and how do they compare with a decade ago?

Are the Vatican statistics including those priests who have left active ministry but are not laicized? Many leaving priesthood today don’t bother with applying for laicization because it takes so long and the Vatican is very reluctant to grant it. So priests leave, take other jobs, may get married but still appear in the books, misleadingly, as priests.

With a few exceptions - India, Thailand and Korea in Asia and Nigeria and the Congo in Africa - the number of priests per Catholic is going south.

The spread of the clergy worldwide is very uneven. In an aside to an Australian bishop on his Ad Limina visit to Rome, Pope John Paul II lamented that Italy alone had 35,000 priests and asked what impact they made when other countries with large populations of Catholics had so few. Italy has about nine percent of the world’s clergy for just on three percent of the world’s baptized Catholics. The Philippines has just on 2.2 percent of the world’s priests for 4.5 percent of baptized Catholics worldwide.

The Western world, as is widely known, is witnessing not just the decline in gross numbers of priests but their rapid aging as well. In Australia, the average age of priests is nearly 70 where it may be little more than half that in some developing countries.

In other words, unless figures are set in their real and relative contexts, they aren’t very helpful.

But these statistics prompt even more basic questions. What are we talking about when we use the word priest? What is at the core of a priest’s ministry? Compare that to what priests actually do. What are the things priests do that in many places around the world that are done by unacclaimed and unordained lay people? What are the terms of access to priestly ministry and why are they restricted to celibate males?

Aren’t there plenty of ministries in the Church - teaching, financial and staff administration, service of the sick and poor, introductions to the Christian faith as catechists, etc - that should have a way of being recognized, celebrated and commissioned as part of the service of the Church to the faith community and beyond?

More than 20 years ago, a priest now in his late 80s asked me a question: “Michael, do you know what the two issues were that Paul VI reserved to himself and would not allow their discussion on the floor of Vatican II?”

I replied that I didn’t know, that I was nine years of age when the Council began and 12 when it closed.

“Contraception and clerical celibacy,” he replied. “And what are the two things that bedeviled the Church since? Female anatomy and the nature of ministry.”

Celibacy was slated for consideration at the 1971 Synod of Bishops but got bumped off the agenda in favour of social justice and produced the groundbreaking document Justice in the World. It has been the fountainhead of extensive action and reflection in the Church ever since.

But maybe it’s time to put ministry back on the agenda.

Father Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of UCA News. He has worked in radio and TV production since 1982 and as a journalist in Australia and Asia for various publications, religious and secular.

German man married to nun ordained as priest with pope's approval

2011-02-22T11:51:00.003-05:00

What's even more curious about this article than the Pastoral Provision finally striking in Germany is that this man's wife, also a former Lutheran, first became a Carmelite nun while still being married to him. So we have a double challenge to the celibacy/chastity requirements...

By Kirsten Grieshaber
Canadian Press
2/22/2011

BERLIN — In a rare move that needed the pope's approval, a Lutheran convert was ordained Tuesday as a Catholic priest in Germany and is being allowed to remain married to his wife — who has already become a nun.

Harm Klueting, 61, was ordained by Archbishop Joachim Cardinal Meisner in a private ceremony at the city's seminary, the Cologne archdiocese said.

Pope Benedict XVI gave Klueting a special permission to remain married to his wife Edeltraud Klueting, who became a Catholic Carmelite nun in 2004.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's chief spokesman, said the exception is rare but there have been similar cases.

"It doesn't happen every day," he said.

Klueting and his wife were Lutherans when they married in 1977 and both served as Lutheran clerics before converting to Catholicism several years ago. They have two grown children.

The Cologne archdiocese said in a statement that the couple would not have to take the traditional vow of celibacy as long as they remain married — a highly unusual move since celibacy is normally a key requirement for Catholic priests.

Klueting and his family could not be reached for comment, and it was not clear whether they still lived together as a couple.

Lombardi said he didn't have any specific information about the Kluetings, including what the pope said about the case.

Klueting is a professor for historical theology at the University of Cologne and teaches Catholic theology at Fribourg University in Switzerland. From now on, he also will provide services as a spiritual counsellor for university students.

The archdiocese published pictures of the ordination ceremony showing Klueting with short grey hair and a beard, wearing a simple white priest vestment as he received his blessings from Meisner, who was wearing a festive yellow embroidered robe and a golden cardinal's hat.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII first allowed clergymen who had converted to Catholicism to remain married, the Cologne diocese said in its statement. However, each case has to be approved by the pope himself, the statement said, adding that in the past married priests also had been ordained in the German cities of Hamburg and Regensburg.

Last month, three former Anglican bishops were ordained as Catholic priests in London, becoming the first ex-bishops to take advantage of a new Vatican system designed to make it easier for Anglicans to embrace Roman Catholicism.

Seven out of ten Flemish priests oppose celibacy, support women priests

2011-02-21T12:30:00.002-05:00

La Croix
2/19/2011

Brussels (AFP) - Seven out of ten Flemish priests are against celibacy for priests, are for the access of women to the priesthood and don't consider themselves in line with the Belgian primate André-Joseph Léonard, according to a poll taken by De Standaard newspaper among priests in the north of the country.

According to this survey taken between the end of December and the middle of January among all the priests in Flanders (the north of Belgium) and which approximately one third of them answered, 73.3% think it would be better to end the celibacy requirement for priests.

Around 15.6% have the opposite opinion, and 11.1% didn't respond.

Moreover, 68.7% believe women should no longer be excluded from the priesthood, 14% oppose this and 17.3% didn't respond.

In addition, 69.1% don't think they are in line with the head of the Belgian church, Mgr André-Joseph Léonard, who has been in office since January 2010 and is thought to be very conservative. Moreover, 77.8% think the Belgian clergy is in a state of crisis.

The poll was conducted by the newspaper among 724 Flemish priests between December 24, 2010 and January 10, 2011, by letter or e-mail. Two hundred and forty eight agreed to participate in the poll.

The Belgian church, after those in the United States, Ireland and Germany, has been shaken for over six months by pedophilia scandals.

In April 2010, the Bishop of Bruges acknowledged having abused his nephew over a dozen years and resigned. Some 475 people have stated that they were abused by priests in their youth.

A Valentine's Gift for a Married Priest in Argentina

2011-02-19T12:45:00.003-05:00

by Maria Martinez (English translation by Rebel Girl)
La Voz
2/19/2011

Rio Tercero: This year's Valentine's Day will be a memorable one for the Vitalis. Adrian (43), who left the priesthood 14 years ago to marry Alejandra (41), showed her the dispensation letter he had received several days earlier from the Vatican that day.

They have been waiting almost ten years for this paper which will now allow them to get married in the Church. They will be able to do it now, accompanied by their two sons, Bruno (13) and Renzo (10).

The Pope doesn't sign dispensations frequently. In this case, it strips the former priest of the obligation of celibacy and reduces him to lay status. For the Church, the lay person is a Christian who performs his religious mission outside of the priestly area.

Dispensation is the formal process through which a priest regularizes his situation in the Church after his separation.

Vitali, like many others who have resigned from the priesthood, really remains a priest, since ordination is considered a "character sacrament" which, like baptism and confirmation, is never lost.

However, he is suspended from priestly ministry.

The Vitalis admit that the dispensation came late. "It's extemporaneous", says Adrian, and although he acknowledges that he had thought about rejecting it, he says he changed his mind after listening to his wife.

"It didn't add or take away anything from me. But for her, it's a way of vindicating our love as a couple," he remarks.

The love story. Alejandra says the love story surprised them while he was a priest in the Villa El Libertador neighborhood in Cordoba, and she was an active youth collaborator in the Church in tasks he performed in villas and jails.

"In that same church that at that moment judged me, criticized me, looked at me badly, I want to claim that we still love each other and that we are a family. I want to receive the sacrament of marriage, and moreover I don't feel represented by all the men who lead the Catholic Church, who, as men, are fallible, who make mistakes," she notes.

Alejandra states that she knows of former priests who were compelled to "marry in silence and in small chapels".

In the papal dispensation they showed, which seems a bit impersonal, they are asked, for example, to celebrate the wedding "cautiously and without pomp."

Adrian wonders "what the pomp would be." And his wife notes: "I don't know whether it will be with pomp or on a shoestring. I want everybody to see me happy and to no longer feel expelled from that church."

Why talk about it? Adrian admits the reason he is making this situation public: "I'm trying to inform the people of God that these things happen, things that nobody explains and generally nobody knows about. We aren't seeking anything else. I think it's news because there hasn't been room to tell it, nobody was aware, the Church doesn't inform the faithful."

While she's hurrying to prepare the mate, Alejandra adds: "Marriage is frustrating for the priest who leaves the priesthood. It's like a dark story, all boxed up. That's why I imagine a fiesta now with lots of people and with the happiness we couldn't experience before."

In the dispensation, other impositions on Adrian are that, on being suspended from the priesthood, "he won't be able to be a lector in the Church, or distribute the Eucharist, or lead or give theological classes in Catholic institutes."

Opening the debate. A chapter is closed for this couple with the arrival of the paper from the Vatican. But Alejandra implores that a more open debate be held so that the Church will discuss issues related to celibacy, in addition to its role in social policy.

Adrian states that the Federación Latinoamericana de Sacerdotes Católicos Casados [Latin American Federation of Catholic Married Priests] has 150,000 members in this situation. “Most of them don't ask for dispensation," he adds.

As an example, he cites the married priests' group in Cordoba, of which he is a member, in which only three of the almost 60 members have solicited it. "And I got it," he adds.

"I asked for it five years after leaving the priesthood. They make you feel like you're in exile. For all of us, there's a distancing from the Church. Most don't ask for it, because there's not a pastoral policy of accompanying those who leave the priestly role, either emotionally or in work-related matters."

Open Letter to the US Catholic Bishops

2011-02-08T13:30:00.000-05:00

An Open Letter to the U.S. Catholic
Bishops on the Forthcoming Missal
ANTHONY RUFF | FEBRUARY 14, 2011 [America Magazine]
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,

With a heavy heart, I have recently made a difficult decision concerning the new English missal. I have decided to withdraw from all my upcoming speaking engagements on the Roman Missal in dioceses across the United States. After talking with my confessor and much prayer, I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity. I’m sure bishops want a speaker who can put the new missal in a positive light, and that would require me to say things I do not believe.

I love the Church, I love the sacred liturgy, I love chant in Latin and English, and I treasure being involved with all these as a monk and priest. It has been an honor to serve until recently as chairman of the music committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) that prepared all the chants for the new missal. But my involvement in that process, as well as my observation of the Holy See’s handling of scandal, has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church.

The forthcoming missal is but a part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority that does not consider itself accountable to the larger church. When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.

I see a good deal of disillusionment with the Catholic Church among my friends and acquaintances. Some leave the Catholic Church out of conviction, some gradually drift away, some join other denominations, some remain Catholic with difficulty. My response is to stay in this church for life and do my best to serve her. This I hope to do by stating the truth as I see it, with charity and respect. I would be ready to participate in future liturgical projects under more favorable conditions.

I am sorry for the difficulties I am causing others by withdrawing, but I know this is the right thing to do. I will be praying for you and all leaders in our church.

Pax in Christo,

Fr. Anthony Ruff, O.S.B.

Anthony Ruff, O.S.B., is a Benedictine monk of Saint John’s Abbey and a professor of liturgy and Gregorian chant. He was on the committee which drafted the 2007 document “Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship” for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is founder of the National Catholic Youth Choir and blogs at Pray Tell. His letter above to the U.S. bishops is printed in its entirety.

Catholic theologians call for an end to compulsory celibacy

2011-02-04T11:22:00.003-05:00

Deutsche-Welle
2/4/2011

Over one hundred Catholic theologians have called for radical reform of the Catholic Church, like the end to compulsory celibacy, in a bid to mend the damage caused by recent sex scandals.

Around a third of all Catholic theology professors at universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, on Friday called for reforms to the Catholic Church, according to a report in the German daily "Süddeutsche Zeitung".

"It looks like we struck a nerve," said Judith Könemann a professor from Münster and one of 144 signatories of the declaration.

The professors said that they no longer wanted to stay quiet in the face of child sex abuse scandals that came to light last year and plunged the Catholic Church into an unprecedented crisis.

The theologians want to start an open dialogue about the future of the Catholic Church.

"We have the responsibility, to contribute to a new start," the undersigned text said

They called for an end to compulsory celibacy, and for women to be allowed into the priesthood. The theologians also called for the Catholic laity to have more say in the selection of bishops.

There hasn't been a comparable revolt by theologians since 1989 when more than 220 academics signed the "Cologne Declaration", which protested against the authoritarian leadership style of the late Pope, John Paul II.

Author: Natalia Dannenberg (AFP, dpa, Reuters)
Editor: Rob Turner

The full text of the memorandum and signatories is available online.

As a young priest Benedict XVI ‘called for the Church to investigate priestly celibacy’

2011-01-28T11:16:00.001-05:00

By Anna Arco
Catholic HeraldFriday, 28 January 2011

As a young priest, Pope Benedict put his name to a document calling for the Church to seriously investigate the obligation to priestly celibacy.

Joseph Ratzinger was one of the signatories of a 1970 document calling for an examination of priestly celibacy which was signed by nine theologians.

The memorandum was drawn up in the face of a shortage of priests and other signatories included Karl Rahner and the future cardinals Karl Lehmann and Walter Kasper.

The German newspaper Die Sueddeutsche reported about the document today.

The memorandum, which was sent to the German bishops reads: “Our considerations regard the necessity of a serious investigation and a differentiated inspection of the law of celibacy of the Latin Church for Germany and the whole of the universal Church.”

According to the Sueddeutsche, the document said if there were no such investigation, the bishops’ conference would “awaken the impression that it did not believe in the strength of the Gospel recommendation of a celibate life for the sake of heaven, but rather only in the power of a formal authority”.

If there weren’t enough priests, the document said, then the “Church quite simply has a responsibility to take up certain modifications”.

The signatories who had drawn up the document acted as consultors to the German bishops’ conference in a commission for questions of Faith and Morals.

The document’s release coincides with a renewed debate on priestly celibacy after prominent German politicians called for the Church to change the teaching on priestly celibacy in the face of a serious lack of priests.

German Catholic politicians call for married priests

2011-01-22T12:19:00.002-05:00

Reuters
Sat Jan 22, 2011 10:46am IST

BERLIN - Several prominent Roman Catholic politicians have urged German bishops to lobby their countryman Pope Benedict for a change in Church policy to ordain married men in response to a worsening shortage of priests.

The group, including the speaker of parliament and a cabinet member, backed up its call by quoting a 1970 essay by the present pope where he predicts the Church "will know new forms of ministry and ordain upstanding (lay) Christians as priests."

The German bishops estimate that two-thirds of all Catholic parishes in the country will not have their own priest by 2020. As in other countries, bishops have been merging parishes to have the dwindling clergy minister to ever larger areas.

Pope Benedict has firmly ruled out any reform of priestly celibacy, despite calls from some bishops -- especially in German-speaking countries -- to consider a change.

The politicians, whose appeal will be printed in Saturday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, argue that upholding celibacy is not as pressing as "the need of many priest-less parishes that are no longer able to celebrate Mass each Sunday".

"A reform of the Church (parish) structure alone cannot be the response to the priest shortage," writes the group including Bundestag speaker Norbert Lammert and Education Minister Annette Schavan from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.

The politicians said the Church should ordain "proven men," pious married Catholics whose wives are beyond child-bearing age. If the Vatican continues rejecting this option, they said, the German Church should "consider a regional exception".

The appeal appeared to have little chance of success in the Vatican, which often urges Catholics to pray for more vocations to the priesthood, but it reflected a deep concern among German Catholic laymen about the priest shortage.

Among its eight signatories were also former state governors Bernhard Vogel, Erwin Teufel and Dieter Althaus.

German Catholicism was shaken by the sexual abuse scandals that swept through Europe last year. Some critics blame clerical abuse of minors on celibacy, a link the Church denies.

In the wake of the scandals, polls have found that about a quarter of German Catholics are considering leaving the Church.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Tom Heneghan/Maria Golovnina)

Culture Notes: "Femme de prêtre?"

2011-01-12T18:04:00.005-05:00

A play about priests' women is being reprised next month in Lausanne, Switzerland. "Femme de prêtre?", written and directed by Jean Chollet, who writes under the name Jean Naguel and has a degree in theology, had its debut last summer at the Avignon Festival.

The play deals with two love stories that come together. Fr. Matthieu (Christophe Gorlier) has been a priest for 20 years in the town of Limoux. Madeleine (Nathalie Pfeiffer), his assistant, helps him with charitable works while they carry on a secret romantic relationship on the side. Into this mix comes a young woman, Chloé (Caroline Guignard), who is supposed to be helping Madeleine put on a concert. Chloé provokes a spiritual crisis by confessing to Fr. Matthieu that she too is in love with a man who professes to be a priest. The play explores the theme of celibacy and secrecy.

In connection with the upcoming production, Bonne Nouvelle, the magazine of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud, ran the following article about "Sarah" [a pseudonym], a real life woman involved with a priest. We have translated it into English:

Sarah is 62. For many years, she has loved the same man. One peculiarity: she shares her life clandestinely with him, since he's a priest. She is not alone in this. The association that has been created around this issue has been in contact with 500 women for whom priestly celibacy has caused problems these last twenty years. The situations are quite diverse. The priest was able to leave his work to get married, the relationship broke up or, on the contrary, as in Sarah's case, still lasts. "Many priests have a woman, but they don't talk about it", Sarah avers.

"These love stories, you can't control them," she says. "When you discover that your lover is a priest, you're idealistic and you imagine that everything will change. But the years pass and you're still in the same place." At the cost of anonymity, the couple might spend some good times together, but the status of woman in the shadows weighs heavy. Sarah says she suffers because she isn't acknowledged by society. She has to be careful not to display more than friendship publicly. Someone might denounce them. "The hardest thing is not being able to live together," laments the woman who has been seeing a priest for a long time.

Does her priest friend feel guilty about living the life of a couple? "No, he can't preach about love without experiencing it himself," Sarah answers. "It has never hindered his work. On the contrary, my support helps him." Sarah believes most people are in favor of marriage for priests. "It's just the hierarchy that's blocking it. It's not normal that priests can't marry. Marriage doesn't take away from the quality of the work of pastors."

Sarah has never regretted her choice, in spite of the difficulties. "The more I move ahead, the more I think that maybe my mission is to further the debate about mandatory celibacy, to fight to abolish this obligation for priests. It's the women who will make things move. The priests don't dare to talk about it, for fear of losing their job."

"I believe deep down inside me that it's going to change someday, but I don't know if I'll see it. I think about the women who are younger than me, for whom I wish a less tumultuous life. It's already progress that our association can exist. That would have been unimaginable thirty years ago. It's important to feel that we're not alone."

Sarah doesn't have any children but says that she knows women in her situation who do. "If they don't create a scandal and remain discrete, they leave them alone," she says. "There's such a shortage of priests..."

The future? "I live from day to day. It's going to stay that way. Maybe it will be better when my friend retires. But he has to wait until he's 75, quite a few years yet..." Sarah doesn't hide her resentment towards her friend's hierarchy. "They know we exist but they won't acknowledge us. That's what's hardest to take. In the end, it's the priests' women who are the victims of the situation," she says.

NOTE: Organizations that support women involved with priests with which the producer of this play is collaborating include the Swiss group ZöFra and the French group Plein Jour.

Photos: Poster and a scene from the play with Fr. Matthieu and Chloe.

Padre Alberto publishes new book

2010-12-31T19:08:00.002-05:00

You can already place an advance order for Fr. Alberto Cutie's version of the scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Miami and Hispanic Catholicism throughout the Western hemisphere.

In Dilemma: A Priest's Struggle with Faith and Love (Celebra, January 2011): "Father Albert Cutié tells about the devastating struggle between upholding his sacred promises as a priest and falling in love. Already conflicted with growing ideological differences with the Church, Cutié was forced to abruptly change his life the day that he was photographed on the beach, embracing the woman he would later call his wife.

Once a poster boy of the Roman Catholic Church -- loved and admired by millions -- Cutié found that he was not happy and able to live as a celibate priest, especially having to defend the number of positions he was no longer in agreement with. For years he kept his relationship a secret, while he soul searched and prayed for answers. The love that he deemed a blessing was bringing him closer to God, but further from the Church. In Dilemma, Cutié tells about breaking that promise, reigniting the very heated debate over mandatory celibacy for Catholic priests, beginning a new way of life and discovering a new way of serving God."

Remarkably, Padre Alberto is not leaking many details about his new book on his Web site nor has it gotten much buzz online. We got the tip from a conservative Catholic newspaper, The National Catholic Register (not to be confused with National Catholic Reporter)...

Catholic > Lutheran > married Catholic priest

2010-12-12T22:26:00.002-05:00

This pastoral provision priesthood candidate in Sacramento shows how a Catholic boy can become a married Catholic priest...

By Anita Creamer
Sacramento Bee
12/12/2010

Jeff Henry's long journey of faith has brought him full circle, not only back to the church in which he was baptized as an infant but also back to serving God. When he's ordained at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on June 4, he will become the Sacramento Catholic Diocese's first converted, married priest.

"This will be new for us," said Bishop Jaime Soto. "I announced it to our priests on Monday, and they're very excited. They were curious but very welcoming of the idea. I think it will be an adventure not just for Jeff and his wife but for us."

With Peg, his wife of 26 years, at his side, Henry called their grown daughter when he learned two weeks ago that the Vatican has approved his application to become a Roman Catholic priest.

"I said, 'Guess what? I'm going to be a father again,' " said Henry, 51, a former Lutheran minister who lives in Vacaville.

Under pastoral provision, Catholic canon law since 1980 has allowed former clergy from other faiths – primarily Episcopal – to be ordained into the priesthood. About 100 currently serve in this country, including a handful of former Lutherans and one converted Baptist. Few of them, according to Mary Gautier of Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, or CARA, are assigned as parish priests.

Should their wives die before they do, the church doesn't allow these converted priests to remarry.

"Knowing Jeff, even if he could remarry, he probably wouldn't," said Peg Henry, 50, a teacher.

"I'd end up in a monastery," said her husband.

Despite its 30-year history, pastoral provision remains a source of controversy in a church whose laity increasingly sees its traditional celibacy requirement as the main cause for a rapidly dwindling number of priests.

Why, some church observers ask, should married former clergy from other denominations be allowed to enter the Catholic priesthood when an estimated 25,000 American priests have had to leave the priesthood to marry?

"I think it's a deep wound, a very deep hurt," said Christine Schenk, a nun who serves as executive director of FutureChurch, a Cleveland-based nonprofit that advocates opening the priesthood beyond celibacy.

205 priests serve 900,000

In a sense, the numbers are stacked against the church. While the nation's population of Catholics has grown by 20 million since 1965, says CARA, the number of priests has dropped by one-third, to fewer than 40,000. The personnel shortage has forced the closure of more than 3,000 parishes in the past four years.

There simply aren't enough priests to go around. In the Sacramento diocese, for example, 205 priests serve a 20-county region of 900,000 Catholics.

And a large percentage of U.S. priests are in their 60s, edging into retirement.

"I'm always happy to see another addition to our clergy," said Ed Donaghy, 74, a retired Lincoln insurance professional who left the priesthood to marry in 1970. "We need them badly, so I applaud (Jeff Henry) for doing this. It's a big step.

"But the church has locked itself in a death grip to the concept that Roman Catholic priests must live a celibate spiritual life. It's a tragedy. I think of it as a management problem, a disastrous management problem."

Celibacy has been a church tenet for 900 years, but more than 70 percent of priests think mandatory celibacy should be re-examined, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Catholic advocacy group Call to Action earlier this decade.

Occasional announcements from the Vatican, such as the 2009 decision welcoming Anglicans and married Anglican priests into the Catholic Church, bring glimmers of hope to those who would like the church to allow its former priests to return after marriage.

"Every time the church allows a person from outside our tradition to serve, it's a harsh and sad reminder to those born Catholic that they're still second-class citizens," said Nicole Sotelo, a Call to Action spokeswoman based in Chicago.

"I know many men and women feel very hurt. They feel called by their fellow Catholics and God to serve, yet the church hierarchy rejects their call."

The church itself shows little inclination to bring these priests back into the clerical fold.

"They knew the rules," said Sacramento diocese spokesman Kevin Eckery. "They went through the traditional path to the priesthood. They knew the rules going in, and they had the option to make the decision then."

Study led to Catholic faith

Jeff Henry, the soon-to-be priest, lives a quiet life with his wife in a small condominium on the south side of Vacaville. He commutes every day to Vallejo, where students of St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School plan to call him Father Dean. They know him as their dean of students, after all.

"I'll introduce him to people as 'Father Dean Dad,' " said daughter Teresa Henry, a 21-year-old biology major at CSU Monterey Bay.

For Jeff Henry, baptized Catholic but raised in a military family that didn't attend church, the spiritual path he embarked on in evangelical groups at Oregon State University in Corvallis led him to leave his early career as a science teacher to become a Lutheran pastor.

By 2002, he was minister at Fairfield's Trinity Lutheran Church, leading a study group on early church leaders. The more he and his wife studied, the more they decided they belonged in the Catholic Church.

"I had Catholic friends who called us 'Catholic lite,' " said Peg Henry.

Her husband is a modest person, hesitant to talk much about himself or his faith, more comfortable in the realm of the analytical than the emotional.

"It's not my nature to share," Henry said. "I was teaching this study group, and before I knew it, I was thinking there was a depth and richness in the Catholic Church.

"There's a resonance in the church and the expression of life, and that's something that resonates in my soul. This is what it's about."

By 2005, Henry had returned to teaching high school and, with his family, he had converted. A friend, a Catholic priest, introduced him to then-Sacramento Bishop William Weigand.

"He said I should become a priest," said Henry. "I thought, 'How? I'm married.' But I started praying about it and thinking about it."

He also began a course of study at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, and with the guidance of Weigand and, in turn, Soto, he began the long application process for pastoral provision.

"Jeff chose this response to God's grace," said Soto. "We're very honored he'd choose to join us."

Others in the Sacramento diocese have tried, said Eckery, but the Vatican has rejected previous local applicants.

In January, Henry will be ordained as a transitional deacon, the last step before his June ordination as a priest. He will continue in his role as a high school dean.

There is no specific path for the wife of a Catholic priest, however.

"This whole situation is very unusual," said Peg Henry. "I'll take it step by step. Some of the experiences I had as a Lutheran minister's wife will transfer over."

Relatives seem more rattled by their conversion to Catholicism than by Henry's acceptance into the priesthood, he said.

"Eventually we want to be in a parish," he said.

The journey has already taken him in unexpected directions, into a world of possibilities denied to many others.

"Who knows where we'll be?" said his wife.

"God knows," he replied.

Culture Notes: La Mujer del Papa

2010-12-10T10:25:00.003-05:00

What is the next Pope came from Spain? What if he came to the Vatican with a woman by his side? This is the premise of a new novel by theologian and writer Rafael Paz Fernandez, "La Mujer del Papa" (Lobo Sapiens, 2010). The book combines fiction with real issues of church reform, liberation theology, the celibacy debate, etc...

Paz wrote the novel in part to protest the current treatment of women in the Church. In a recent interview, the author said: "The institutional Church is the biggest chauvinist club in the world. Women are still considered unequal and inferior to men, and their roles and functions are third place. The recent visit of the Pope to Barcelona was a case in point: four nuns cleaning the altar, while a thousand or so men in Roman vestments presided at the liturgy..." He added that the institutional Church is fearful of the true message of Christianity and only sees women as temptation, as sin, as those through whom evil entered the world.

And "Father" makes seven...

2010-12-10T09:50:00.003-05:00

The pastoral provision strikes again in Billings, Montana.

Rev. Barton Stevens, a Catholic deacon and former Evangelical Christian turned Episcopalian priest, took the final step toward what he calls his call to ministry.

"We're home. We've found where we fit," said Stevens.

A tale of finding a compatible church for family worship is not unusual, but the circumstances surrounding how Stevens became a Catholic priest are far from normal.
Under a provision enacted by Pope John Paul II in the early 1980's, the Roman Catholic Church allows former Episcopalian priests to become Catholic priests under the Roman Rite- pending the pope's consent, of course.

Stevens, who is married with five children, his kids ranging in age from 9- years-old to 4- months-old, is one of about one hundred priests in the United States ordained under those provisions.

He says the small fraternity keeps in contact with each other.

"Once word gets out that there's another one, I've gotten a couple phone calls from guys saying, 'Hi, I'm in Santa Fe, and I'm praying for you and I've got six kids', and I can hear them in the background," said Stevens.

Having support helps when you're one of few, but Stevens says the parishioners from the churches he will serve (Our Lady of Guadalupe, Little Flower and Holy Rosary) were overwhelmingly welcoming to his family.

"The people have been very, very nice and welcoming," said Stevens. "They are rather fond of my children. They're fond of me too, but they really like the children when they come to church."

Bishop Michael Warfel says although the use of the provision is rare, the Roman rite of the Catholic Church is one of few that still require celibacy from priests.
"In the Syrian Church actually the norm is married priests," said the bishop. "It's somewhat of a misconception that celibacy is the norm for the Catholic Church as a whole."

Warfel says Stevens will function as every other parish priest in the diocese, but must try to maintain the balance between the time needed to maintain parishioners and his family.

"Catholics expect a lot of their parish priests, and so, it'll be a challenge, but the primary way to live out his baptism is as a father and a husband," said Warfel.
Stevens says he's very aware of the challenge he faces, but is looking forward to working through them with his family and the church he now belongs to-no matter the reason he is being called "father".

Married man to be ordained as priest

2010-11-06T11:58:00.002-04:00

Meanwhile, the Pastoral Provision goes merrily marching along. I particularly like the comment by the Archdiocese that these guys are the exception. Seems to me like we're getting to the point where they're more like the norm than the exception...

By Annysa Johnson
Journal Sentinel
Nov. 5, 2010

If all goes as planned, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will install its second married priest next spring with the ordination of Deacon Russell Arnett, a former Episcopal priest who converted to Catholicism in 2007.

Arnett, who was ordained a deacon by Archbishop Jerome Listecki in October, would be the first priest in the diocese to enter through the so-called pastoral provision, a 1980 Vatican provision that made it easier for Anglican clergy and laity to convert to Catholicism.

"Russ is a great candidate," said Father Donald Hying, rector of the archdiocese's St. Francis Seminary, who worked with Arnett in spiritual direction and formation.

"He's already serving in two parishes, and that will be a natural segue for him."

Arnett, 52, was first ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1999 and has been married for nine years. He would be the archdiocese's second married priest, following Father Michael Scheip, a former Lutheran minister who spent a year at St. Mary Catholic Church in Menomonee Falls beginning in 2008.

Arnett, who grew up as a Southern Baptist, said he was drawn by the theology and what he sees as the historical authenticity of the Catholic Church."There is a quote by John Henry Cardinal Newman that says, 'To go deep into the history of the Catholic Church is to cease being a Protestant.' And that's what I found," Arnett said. "I was drawn to the historic councils and teachings of the Catholic Church."

The archdiocese made it clear in a Q&A published on its website and the Catholic Herald newspaper that it is not softening the church's position on celibacy as a requirement for the priesthood.

"The ordination of a married man remains an exception and one that is granted only in very specific cases involving men who had already been called to ministry in another church," it said.

According to the Archdiocese, there are about 100 married priests in the United States who have converted from other Christian denominations, primarily Lutherans and Episcopalians.

The 1980 provision by Pope John Paul II followed requests by some Anglicans to convert to Catholicism after the Episcopal Church sanctioned the ordination of women in 1976.

Arnett graduated from Nashotah House Theological Seminary and has served Episcopal congregations in West Bend and Texas. He is currently the administrator at two Kenosha County parishes, St. Francis Xavier in Brighton and St. John the Baptist in Paris.

While studying for the Catholic priesthood, he spent three years at St. Jerome Parish in Oconomowoc, where he taught religion classes for children and adults and worked with the youth ministry program.

St. Jerome pastor Father John Yockey said his church will host Arnett's ordination on March 19.
"With the life history, personal gifts and ministerial experience he brings, Russ will be a special blessing for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee," he said.

Quote of the Day

2010-10-21T15:18:00.002-04:00

"I'm... obsessive-compulsive. I have three dogs and four cats, and the bishop... doesn't approve. And my response is, well bishop, when you let me get married, I won't have to have so many pets around."

-- Fr. Steve Porter, pastor of St. Catherine of Sienna in Rialto, CA and soon to be star of a new reality TV show "Divine Intervention" when asked by the Contra Costa Times about celibacy.

Catholic Groups Celebrate Priesthood Sunday: Ask to Restore Tradition of Married and Celibate Priesthood

2010-10-20T11:44:00.002-04:00

In late October, groups of faithful Catholics will join together to honor their parish priests and advocate for a return to the tradition of a celibate and married priesthood in the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church. Over thirty celebrations are scheduled in cities all over the U.S. as well as in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom on or around October 31, Priesthood Sunday or World Day for Priests. (see http://futurechurch.org/fpm/optcel/priesthoodsunday/celebrations.htm or contact emily@futurechurch.org for locations)

"We need to return to our early Church custom of having both a celibate and a married priesthood," said Bill Wisniewski, FutureChurch board member. "St. Peter was married. St. Paul was celibate and the early church flourished perhaps in part because it incorporated both ministerial charisms. Since celibacy is a gift from the Holy Spirit, it will not disappear, but is a distortion of the gift to demand it of priests who are not called to it."

"We are excited by the excellent response since it is the first time we have ever held this special celebration," said FutureChurch Special Projects Coordinator Emily Holtel-Hoag. "It tells me how much Catholics appreciate their parish priests, and how much they are concerned about the future of the priesthood if the Church doesn't change celibacy rules."

"Parishes in Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom are closing while thousands of Catholics in the developing world have virtually no access to Mass and the sacraments because of too few celibate priests," said Sr. Christine Schenk, FutureChurch Executive Director.

"At least 30 Bishops around the world, have openly called for discussion of celibacy rules," said Schenk who named three bishops in Belgium and the head of the German Bishops conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch who recently spoke out in the wake of revelations of widespread clergy sex abuse in Europe.

World Priest Day was started by Worldwide Marriage Encounter in 2000 as a way to honor and affirm those men who chose to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders and faithfully serve the people of God through ministry and prayer. In 2007, the day was moved to the last Sunday in October to coincide with the Serra Club's celebration of Priesthood Sunday.

FutureChurch isn't stopping with prayer, it is also taking action. In the past year over 5,000 electronic and paper postcards have been sent to Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and to

local bishops asking them to "begin discussion at the highest levels of the Church about the need to return to our earliest tradition of permitting both a married and a celibate priesthood."

The FutureChurch website has been configured to send electronic and paper postcards in German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese as well as English. Scores of people have downloaded free organizing kits from begin educational programs, prayer and advocacy initiatives in their locales. An educational web video is also available on youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6tB0lWsnhQ).

A 2004 anonymous survey of 14,000 priests in 53 US dioceses found that sixty seven percent of respondents believed the church should open discussion about mandatory celibacy. The survey was spearheaded by FutureChurch in partnership with Call To Action. Many priests spontaneously said it was time to discuss ordaining women too, beginning with women deacons.

FutureChurch believes the Church will not be whole or just until we recognize all of the priestly vocations, married and celibate, male and female that God is pouring upon the Catholic Church.

FutureChurch also advocates for the restoration of women to the diaconate in the So All Can Be at the Table campaign as an important next step for advancing women's roles in the Church. For more information on FutureChurch's programming regarding women's leadership in the Church, go to www.futurechurch.org.

To download a free copy of the Optional Celibacy: So All Can Be at the Table Priesthood Sunday prayer service, go to http://www.futurechurch.org/downloads/optcel.htm.

For locations of celebrations go to http://futurechurch.org/fpm/optcel/priesthoodsunday/celebrations.htm .

FutureChurch, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, is a U.S. coalition of 5,000 parish based Catholics striving to educate fellow Catholics about the seriousness of the priest shortage, the centrality of the Eucharist (the Mass), and the systemic inequality of women in the Catholic Church. FutureChurch makes presentations throughout the country, distributes educational and informational packets and recruits activists who call on Catholic leadership to discuss opening ordination to all baptized persons who are called to priestly ministry by God and the people of God.

Priest resigns mid-homily, protests Church celibacy rule

2010-10-15T12:26:00.004-04:00

While celebrating Mass in Rio Tercero, Cordoba, Argentina, Fr. Germán Daveiga (38, photo), announced that he was leaving the priesthood. While stating that he was not in love with anyone at the moment, Fr. Daveiga explained that he preferred to "avoid difficult issues with celibacy and thus [had] decided to step aside out of respect for the Church, the people, my family, and myself."

Later in a radio interview with Mitre 810, the priest clarified his position, saying that “celibacy lived honestly and faithfully sometimes leads us priests to a life of loneliness that is hard to bear." He mentioned that the Eastern rite churches allow for married priests and suggested it was time for the Latin rite ones to reconsider the question. “Celibacy has an added value, but that value is not achievable by everyone. Also, we are not living under the same conditions as in other eras," he added.

In a different radio interview, Fr. Daveiga, who also served for three years as a missionary priest in Camden, NJ, said that he will be leaving the rectory and will seek work outside the Church. He emphasized that he is not an activist and that he had mostly good memories of his time in seminary and his eight years of service as a priest. He said that he has received a lot of support in his decision from his family and his parishioners.

Married Men of the Cloth

2010-10-07T12:00:00.004-04:00

Incidentally, while posting this article, I discovered a great new (to me) resource: Alternative Catholic Experience lists inclusive non-canonical Catholic communities nationwide.

By Rhys Alvarado
The Santa Barbara Independent
10/7/2010

They met in jail in the early 1960s.

Keith Forster was a young Catholic priest who spoke to women inmates at a Stockton jail. Nancy Wagner was his assistant. After he lost his sight to meningitis, she found him Bible readings in Braille. When he left Stockton to preach elsewhere, Keith and Nancy would correspond by sending each other love cassette tapes. “He changed, I changed, but the church hadn’t,” Nancy said.

Under the pressure of canon law, which forbids the marriage of priests, Forster had to choose between tradition and his feelings for Nancy. He chose his feelings, even if that meant excommunication. On a September afternoon in 1971, the two married in Nancy’s parent’s backyard.

And last Sunday, September 26, Keith Forster and John Hydar — who also left the church at one point to get married — were given the leadership of St. Anthony’s Community, formerly St. Anthony’s Franciscan Church, in a ceremony called “The Laying on of Hands.” “This ceremony is about the community affirming us and we are affirming our commitment to the community,” Hydar said. Dudley Conneely is also married and serves as a priest part-time within the church when he’s not abroad.

The idea of marriage wasn’t a new one among Catholic priests back in the ’60s, and Forster was part of a growing movement of priests attempting to break away from the unflinching traditions of Catholicism. The Vatican II reforms (1962-1965) were meant to address, in addition to other things, marriage among priests, but the discussion never went anywhere. “I had high hopes for the reforms,” Forster said, “even though they never really took hold.”

Hydar first met his wife, Roberta, at the Ventura Mission in 1966. He was an assistant priest and Roberta Egerer was a nun teaching at the parish school. In 1971, the two married. “It’s a church law; that’s it,” said Hydar. “I have never for a moment regretted marrying this wonderful lady.”

For years after he left the church, those who knew Hydar as a priest would ask him to perform baptisms, marriages, and funeral ceremonies. And for years, he denied their requests. Then in 1992, he finally said yes. “I’m a priest, always have been,” he said.

Father Leo Sprietsma, who left the St. Anthony’s community for health reasons after 12 years of service, believes that the Catholic Church needs to rethink its structure but had mixed feelings about leaving the church in the hands of the married priests. “But since I left, they seem to be doing a good job,” Sprietsma said.

Under Canon Law No. 290, once a Roman Catholic priest, always a priest. According to Canon Law No. 843, priests are obligated to serve if called by a community or by anyone in need. “That wasn’t in their agenda,” said Forster. “They wanted a canonical priest.” But Forster and Hydar were all the St. Anthony’s Community had.

Although the Vatican does not recognize St. Anthony’s Community, Forster and Hydar are sticking to their commitment the same way they stuck to the gut feeling that led them to marriage. They are members of Corpus, a reform group in the Catholic Church that works for a renewed priesthood of married and single men and women. “There’s no shortage of priests,” Nancy said, quoting one of her favorite writers, Joan Chittister. “There’s just a shortage of celibate priests.” According to CITI (Celibacy Is The Issue) Ministries, more than 25,000 Roman Catholic priests have been married in the United States since the 1970s and more than 110,000 worldwide.

The transition in leadership hasn’t come easily. In the process, the 40-or-so people who make up the St. Anthony’s Community lost about a dozen members who rejected the idea of worshipping under married priests. “We’re still friends, we just have a different way of seeing things,” Forster said.

Others wouldn’t have it any other way. “What’s better than having a priest that’s married?” asked St. Anthony’s Community member Jude Blau. “This is what society now likes … We want to be in the 21st century, not the 19th.”

Photo (Paul Wellman) from left: Fathers Keith Forster, John Hydar, and Dudley Conneely.

Culture Notes: Glass Halo

2010-09-29T12:06:00.003-04:00

Another novel out this month on the subject of Catholic clerical romances. The author is Colleen Smith, founder of Friday Jones Publishing and an award-winning Catholic writer residing in Denver, where she is also a dedicated Vincentian volunteer with the poor and homeless. The title is Glass Halo (Friday Jones Publishing, September 2010, ISBN: 9780984428908). The novel is among the finalists in this year's Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. The plot, from our perspective, is well-summarized in the opening paragraph of the review in ForeWord Reviews:

When a man becomes a Catholic priest he relinquishes the chance for marriage, family, or sexual intimacy. He gains a life of spiritual devotion and many find this a fair exchange. Sometimes, however, as in the case of Father Vin DiMarco, the handsome priest in Colleen Smith’s debut novel, Glass Halo, the temptations of earthly love prove too strong to resist...

Sigh...be still my heart...For the record, Smith says that the priest in her novel, "is a composite of a number of progressive priests I've known from my years attending Catholic schools and my 20 years of working in communications for the church."

This novel even boasts its own YouTube trailer:

German Catholic bishops say church must discuss taboos, compensate abuse victims

2010-09-24T16:16:00.002-04:00

From today's Deutsche-Welle:

The Catholic Church must be prepared to confront and discuss taboo topics such as sexual morality and the celibacy of priests, the head of the church in Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said on Friday.

Speaking at the conclusion of the two-day autumn plenary assembly of the German Bishops' Conference in the central city of Fulda, Zollitsch said "the issue of the ... personal, spiritual and sacramental life of our clergy has long been pressing."

The Bishops' Conference was now "taking the initiative toward dialogue that involves itself as well as the diocese," he said.

"That includes ways to talk about awkward subjects in the area of sexuality, the vow of celibacy or the receiving of the sacrament by divorcees," he said...

Last week the Belgians, now the Germans. Hello, Your Holiness, are you listening to your own hierarchs?

Bishop of Bruges questions celibacy

2010-09-19T15:52:00.004-04:00

UPDATE 9/28/2010: Another Belgian prelate has added his voice to the call for optional celibacy. Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp joined his colleagues from Bruges and Hasselt this week and Josian Caproens, chairman of the Interdiocesan Pastoral Council, a group of lay people working in the church, joined in the chorus. “The time is now really ripe, certainly in Western Europe, for priests to be able to choose a celibate life or not,” Caproens said.

UPDATE 9/20/2010: A second Belgian bishop, Msgr. Patrick Hoogmartens of Hasselt has also gone on record as supporting optional celibacy. "I can imagine two sorts of priesthood. Those who live celibately and those who have a relationship — are married," Hoogmartens told VRT radio. A spokesman for Archbishop Andre-Mutien Leonard, the head of Belgium's Roman Catholic Church, said in reaction to the two bishops's comments that any discussion of structural issues surrounding the church should be held at a global level, and not be limited to Belgium.

Flandersnews.be
Sat 18/09/2010 - 12:34

The new Bishop of Bruges Jozef De Kesel has questioned celibacy for priests and called for an open discussion on the position of women in the Church. Monsignor De Kesel made his comments on VRT Radio’s news and current affairs programme ‘De Ochtend’.

Jozef De Kesel took over the reigns of the Bruges Diocese after the former Bishop Roger Vangheluwe resigned when it was revealed that he had sexually abused his nephew during the 1980’s.

The new Bishop of Bruges believes that the Church shouldn’t be blind for the suffering of the victims of child sex abuse by members of the clergy.

Jozef De Kesel believes that celibacy should no longer be a prerequisite to becoming a priest.

“I think that the Church should ask itself if the mandatory character of the rules governing celibacy should be upheld.”

“You could argue that those for whom celibacy is impossible at a personal level should also be given the chance to join the priesthood."

The Bishop went even further.

When asked if women should be allowed to become priests he replied that “It certainly could be discussed and I hope it will be.”

“However, it’s an even more sensitive issue than the problem of celibacy."

“I think that the issue of celibacy will be acted on much sooner than that of women priests.”

Majority in Ireland say priests should be allowed marry

2010-09-16T17:42:00.001-04:00

The vast majority (87 per cent) of Catholics believe priests should be allowed to marry, according to an Irish Times /Behaviour Attitudes social poll. It is one of a series of findings that point to a wide gap between the views of Catholics and the teachings of the church on issues ranging from celibacy to women priests and sex before marriage. Some 79 per cent of Catholics say they are in favour of women being allowed to join the priesthood, while just 10 per cent are opposed to such a move...

Half of UK Catholics think celibacy rule should be relaxed

2010-09-15T18:33:00.002-04:00

...The poll, conducted for BBC News by ComRes - a member of the British Polling Council - surveyed a random sample of 500 Roman Catholics across the UK between 6 and 9 September 2010...The poll results also suggest that a large number of Catholics think that the Pope should drop his insistence on clerical celibacy. Just under a half of those polled, 49%, said the celibacy rule should be relaxed, compared to 35%. A further 17% were uncommitted. And 62% of those questioned say women should have more authority and status in the Catholic Church...

Writing for The Guardian, John Hooper puts this figure in perspective: "For a start, you have a substantial number of British Catholics who are not progressive at all. Just look at the BBC's recent poll in which "Nearly half thought he should drop his insistence on clerical celibacy". Well, nearly half is a very low percentage when compared to other countries. Fourteen long years ago, an American poll found that in every developed country it surveyed (it left out Britain), a majority of the Catholic population favoured having married priests. The only country with a percentage lower than the 49 per cent of today's British Catholics was in the Philippines."

John Deery, director of "The Conspiracy of Silence", also scheduled a screening of his film and a public debate on optional celibacy earlier this week in anticipation of the Pope's visit to the UK.

Former Riverview priest pens book about life journey

2010-08-30T16:26:00.003-04:00

by Aloma Jardine
Times & Transcript
8/28/2010

A cruise ship seems an unlikely place for a spiritual epiphany, but as Jeff Doucette set sail from England for Europe and Russia he experienced a moment of truth.

"(The ship) pushed away from the white cliffs of Dover and that in itself was spectacular, but it was also the turning point for me. When we pushed away from shore, it was a moment I realized there was no going back," he says.

It was the beginning of the end of his life as a priest.

Jeff, whose last congregation was Immaculate Heart of Mary in Riverview, has just finished the first draft of a book about his experience called Ring Around the Collar: My Journey from Priesthood to Married Life.

"It's not a book about revenge or a tell-all tale," he says. "It is what makes someone choose this lifestyle and what happens along the way that makes them want to leave that."

Jeff decided to become a priest when he was about 25.

"People are always asking for this major call story, 'Did you hear voices in the night? Was there some kind of major revelation?'... But it was part of who I was, it was the next progression for me," he says.

"I went to church when I was young and I was probably one of the few that enjoyed it. I was a church rat. I was an altar server, I was in the youth group, I directed our church choir. I was always involved."

When he asked himself what he really wanted to do, the priesthood seemed a logical choice.

Entering the priesthood is not something one does lightly.

Besides the vows, it is a major commitment of time. It takes five or six years of study including a year-long internship before you become ordained.

Jeff was ordained in 1994 and began his career in the Diocese of Edmundston. He moved on to the Moncton Archdiocese in 1998, serving a number of parishes.

He loved the work, but he struggled with it too.

"I think the biggest thing was I hated at the end of the day coming home to a dark, empty rectory," he says.

"I know my buddy (Father) Phil (Mulligan) used to say there is nothing as lonely as eating in a restaurant by yourself. I would say, 'For me, it is coming home at night to an empty rectory, coming from a meeting that has not gone too well and you have nobody to talk to about it.' That feeling of loneliness is a killer.

"There are always ups and downs in ministry, in any type of work that you do, but ministry should be different. It is a people ministry... You could go and visit with families, but at the end of it you kind of left and ended up going back to that rectory and it was dark and quiet. It was something I struggled with and wrote articles about and tried to get people in the diocese in dialogue about. There is something not right about this ...

"At the very end of it I found myself saying, 'There has got to be more than this.'"

It was 2006 when Jeff found himself on the deck of the cruise ship, staring at the cliffs of Dover as the ship slipped from shore.

"I could see my entire priesthood. I was moving away from the shore and was seeing the cliffs and the mountains and it was such a metaphor for what I was living. There was beauty there but also great struggle," he recalls. "I just knew I was at a crossroads and I was almost sure at that point that I didn't want to continue."'

When Jeff returned to Canada he had a heart-to-heart with Moncton Archbishop André Richard and told him he needed a sabbatical.

"André was shell-shocked, he didn't see this coming," he says. "He said, 'Maybe we can get you counselling.' I said, 'What do you mean, counselling? I don't need counselling, I need a year away.

"I need to go somewhere where I can sit down, listen to my heart and know if I am willing to continue.'"

The archbishop agreed to his request and Jeff headed to Ontario to the L'Arche Daybreak community in Richmond Hill.

L'Arche was founded in 1964 by Canadian humanitarian Jean Vanier as a place where people with developmental disabilities could live together in a family-like setting with the help of assistants who live with them in the home.

"I think that was such a pivotal and incredible time for me," Jeff says. "It was scary though because you are leaving everything behind.

"You are leaving security. I had no expenses. My house was paid for, my food, my lights, my cable, everything.

"I wasn't in any type of relationship with anybody. I was faithful to my vows of celibacy even though I thought it was stupid, I couldn't live with myself if I had broken them, but I just knew that I couldn't live alone."

At L'Arche Jeff found a group of people who accepted and loved him unconditionally for who he was.

"It was a place where I was able to say, 'I don't want to be a priest anymore,' and when I was able to say that and work through that, it was the most incredible feeling of liberation," he says.

"I was able to become more Jeff, more true to who I was called to be."

But while Jeff was ready to let go of the church, the church wasn't quite ready to let go of him.

"It was one of the most horrible experiences. It's not like you go to your boss and give your two weeks' notice," he says. "In the Catholic Church there is a process and only the Pope can sign off at the very end."

Jeff had to speak with a psychologist and have them submit a report.

He had to get people to write on his behalf explaining why they felt he should be allowed to leave.

He had to answer a huge list of questions explaining why he wanted to go.

"Some of the questions I laughed at. Some were just insulting," he says.

One by one the letters of support were returned as inadequate.

"There has to be something wrong with the priest in order for Rome to let you go," he says. "Rome finally wrote back and said, 'We don't see why you want to leave so we are going to wait five years and check back in with you.'

"The church could not find any grave fault to let me go. Nothing had happened."

Except by the time the lengthy process finally got to this point something had happened - Jeff had fallen in love.

Jeff and Sandy Lovisck met at L'Arche.

"At the time when Rome said no, she said, 'Why would that matter to you, Jeff? I love you, what does it matter what the church says, if they decide to let you go or not let you go? What is most important is that I love you.'" Jeff says.

The couple decided to go ahead and get married, dispensation or no dispensation, and were wed in a July 2008 ceremony surrounded by members of the L'Arche community.

"That wedding day was a piece of heaven," Jeff says. "The music was done by people from L'Arche, four of the guys with disabilities were my groomsmen.

"It was not a grand style wedding, but people went away saying, 'I've never been to a wedding like that.' It was so full of joy and so full of life."

Jeff forwarded his marriage licence to Rome, again seeking a dispensation.

"Right away, there you go, Rome had its reason. All of a sudden I was a horrible person," he says.

The dispensation came, but with it came conditions.

Jeff could no longer preach, he couldn't teach in any capacity, he couldn't serve communion or work as a parish administrator or even read in church.

Essentially, he was reduced to a lower status than any ordinary parishioner.

"It's like that Dixie Chicks (documentary) Shut Up and Sing. All I could do was sing, but that is just not me," Jeff says.

If he was going to attend church, he needed to be able to contribute to it in some way.

Jeff's hunt for a new congregation brought him to Westminster United in Whitby, Ont., which has welcomed him with open arms. The church is thrilled to have someone with his experience and Jeff has been able to preach when the minister is away and lead Sunday worship.

He officially became a member of the church in October.

As much as the Roman Catholic Church doesn't want to deal with it, Jeff says it is going to have to take a look at the requirement that priests remain celibate.

"When I left (Moncton), I had four parishes and was helping out in two other parishes because Father Peter (McKee) was dying of cancer," he says. "I thought there is this small community in Riverside-Albert that will have to close because they don't have enough priests.

"Why is that? Let's seriously ask that question. The white elephant is killing us all, running us down in the living room."

Jeff says the Canadian bishops brought up the matter with Pope John Paul II and some of the Latin American bishops spoke openly about the issue at a recent summit of bishops, but such discussion has usually been quickly shut down.

Jeff says living out the life described in the gospel - forgiving your enemies, giving away your possessions to those in need - is already so difficult in a world focused on riches, success, and fame, that "to expect people to go in without all of the resources available, I don't think is fair," he says. "And I think one of those resources is the option to be able to marry.

"I'm not saying that everybody should be able to get married, but people need to have that option.

"Some will choose not to get married, some will choose, yes, that is something very vital to who I am as a person, I think that would help me in ministry."

Sandy and Jeff recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary. Jeff says his marriage has given him the companionship he missed coming home to that dark rectory night after night.

"You have that support, that other person to bounce things off," he says.

It was a friend back in Moncton who suggested he turn his story into a book.

"I'm 46 years old; you don't usually write biographies that early, and I was a priest, I'm not Tiger Woods," he says. "But when I sat down, it just poured out of me."

The first draft done, Jeff is in the process of looking for a publisher.

"I'm excited about it," he says. "It is a story to be heard - not because it is me - I think in today's society we need books like this to help us dialogue.

"It is something the church doesn't do well. It is scared of dialogue. They are so used to saying, 'This is what you believe, now go believe it,' that when someone says, 'Why?', they panic...

"It is kind of my hope that this book will be a journey of all of us being open to where God is calling all of us."

Jeff has no illusions that the book will change anything in the church.

"It would be naive of me to think I am on a crusade to change Rome's mind," he says. "This is my story and Rome is part of it. I am not angry at Rome, I don't have a vendetta against them, but they are part of my story and I think people should know what it takes for priests to leave."

Jeff now works at a youth homeless shelter for 16-to-24-year-olds in Ajax, Ont.

In a way, it is a continuation of his work.

"We say, 'Are you hungry? Come on in, we'll give you something to eat. If you need a bed, don't worry, we have one for you,'" he says. "It is a continuation of the training I did, it is gospel stuff.

"That will always, always be a part of me. I work also still a bit with the developmentally disabled and there is that sense that I am just ministering in a different way...

"It is part of the fibre of who you are, you don't just turn it off. I know some (priests) who, when they left, left church, but it is part of who I am. I need that connectedness, I need to stay rooted to this God I can't see."

Jeff doesn't rule out one day entering the ministry again in a different denomination.

"Never say never to anything," he says. "I'm not God. I try to live my life open to the Spirit. I think when you do that, anything can happen.

"When I get up there and preach, I love that with a passion. Sandy says I just love the attention," he adds, laughing.

"Who knows what's going to happen? But I am open to all the potential possibilities... I'm not a priest anymore, but I still continue to function as I did before. I'm still Jeff, I just live differently now. I don't live with a collar around my neck."

MORE INFORMATION

A leper on the edge of the Catholic Church, by Jeff Doucette, 2008, on leavingthepriesthood.com
Time for change in Catholic priesthood, by Jeff Doucette, Catholic New Times, 11/30/2003
Priestly laryngitis: moving beyond fear, by Jeff Doucette, Catholic New Times, 3/21/2004

Colombian priest with two girlfriends resigns

2010-08-27T15:58:00.002-04:00

Remember how we said that if you're a priest who is involved with a woman and you don't want to get caught, don't neglect to pay child support? We can add: Don't two-time her! And now, the latest clerical soap opera from Cali...

El Pais
8/27/2010

Father Rodrigo Carvajal Vargas, 73, chaplain of La Merced, resigned yesterday, after being accused of cohabiting for 20 years with a separated woman.

The public complaint was made by professor Nohelia Quintero, who stated that she had also had a romantic relationship with the priest for the last three years.

"I am making this situation public because I thought that a man who is consecrated to God would be faithful to me. He promised me that he would separate from his first woman, with whom he has lived for 20 years," Nohelia declared.

The teacher added that she met the priest three years ago in the chapel of La Merced.

"We started to flirt until I got it going and asked him to go out with me; that's where we gave each other our first kiss. Just as some women are attracted to uniforms, I'm attracted to cassocks," the woman added, stating that the apartment where she lives in the El Cabey neighborhood was bought with the cleric.

For his part, the coadjutor archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cali, Darío de Jesús Monsalve, said that Rodrigo Carvajal Vargas, the priest in question, resigned on Wednesday morning in a message he sent to his office.

Carvajal was pastor of the Church of La Merced, located near the Archdiocesan Curia, both in the historic district of Cali, which is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department.

"His resignation was accepted," Monsalve said, calling the case of Carvajal, who had allegedly been cohabiting for twenty years with a separated woman without anyone noticing it, sad.

Moreover, it appears that he had been carrying on a parallel relationship for the last three years with another woman, also separated, who publicized the priest's marital life [sic] through Mario Fernando Prado's 'Sirirí' column in El País last Tuesday.

[Translator's Note: If you read Spanish, you'll also want to read this column, which adds considerable background to this telenovela...]

The coadjutor archbishop said that a disciplinary process would be opened against Carvajal to hear him and the people who want to make complaints or clarify this case, to identify what type of fault is involved, and make a determination."

"It's the normal procedure that is followed when complaints such as these become known," Monsalve noted, indicating that the rights of both the priest and those who have been affected by his behavior will be respected.

Monsalve also stated that Fr. Carvajal has been suspended and will face diciplinary action, in accordance with canon law.

The trial would be conducted by the church tribunal of Cali, the coadjutor archbishop continued, adding that "if the accusation of cohabiting or living in a common-law relationship holds up, there is a law in Canon Code that is very clear, and a canonical punishment."

It is, he added, "suspension of his power of governance, i.e. his priestly faculties are suspended."

The Catholic hierarch also observed that Carvajal could possibly ask Church authorities for forgiveness.

"It's a possibility, but I can't anticipate it," the coadjutor archbishop of Cali said.

Catholic priest reveals active sex life

2010-08-26T12:22:00.003-04:00

The current issue of DNA Magazine, a gay men's magazine out of Australia, features an interview with a homosexual Catholic priest who spills the beans about himself and his colleagues. While the article is restricted to authorized users, a summary "teaser" has been posted on Seeking Media:

A gay Catholic priest has revealed that up to half of priests, both gay and straight, are sexually active.

"I have not been able to keep my vow of celibacy," the priest says, speaking exclusively to DNA Magazine's Nick Cook in the current issue.

"Sometimes I need to be held and cared for - and I enjoy the sex.

"I know that for a large part of the world it means I'm not a good priest, but without it I'd be a worse one."

To protect the priest's identity he is known in the story as ‘James'.

James says he strongly opposes the Church's stance towards homosexuality.

"I'm speaking out because far too many people have suffered under the Church's teaching on homosexuality. I just can't accept it and I haven't for years," he says.

When asked if he thinks he's the only sexually active priest James says, "I know I'm not.

"I suspect that anywhere up to, if not more than, 50 percent of Catholic priests are not, or have not always been, celibate.

"I know of priests who have had long-term relationships with women.

"Celibacy is for some people but it's not everybody. That's why I think celibacy imposed is wrong whether you're gay or heterosexual."

James is out to a number of other priests and his bishop knows that he is both gay and sexually active.

"My bishop is a good man. He himself would have issues with the Church teaching on this."

As part of the story DNA went to a Mass for gays at St Joseph's Church in the Sydney suburb of Newtown and spoke to Father Peter Maher, who happily hands out communion to gay men despite the Church ruling that those who are sexually active are living in mortal sin and should not receive it.

When told about James' circumstance Father Peter simply shrugs. "Whether a priest is gay or not makes no difference to me," he says, stating that he knows a number of gay priests.

He adds: "There are plenty of priests who have failed to live celibate... That would not change my opinion of the priest at all."

Should the Catholic church scrap its celibacy rule?

2010-08-17T11:26:00.002-04:00

Owen Bowcott
The Guardian
8/17/2010

Stephen was eight years old when he first heard his father disown him. The two were out for the day together when Stephen fell into a game of cricket with some local children, and another parent asked whose child he was. Stephen's father swiftly denied he was his. The child was "the son of one of my parishioners", said the dog-collared priest – a description that was truthful as far as it went, but omitted a vital detail. To Stephen, it felt like an outright dismissal. More than 30 years later, being the half-acknowledged son of a Roman Catholic priest has cast an enduring shadow over his life.

Stephen (not his real name) is now in his 40s and has never approached his paternal family, has never reached out to cousins and other relatives, for fear of shaming his parents. "I didn't have a [close friendship] with my father," he says, "and I have not found personal relationships that easy since then. None of his family in Ireland knew I existed, so you could argue I have been denied another family."

His experience is far from unique. It's been estimated that there are at least 1,000 people in Britain and Ireland whose fathers were priests at the time of their conception. And in May this year, dozens of Italian women who have had relationships with Roman Catholic priests or lay monks sent an open letter to the Pope calling for the abolition of the celibacy rule. The letter argued that a priest "needs to live with his fellow human beings, experience feelings, love and be loved". It also pleaded for sympathy for those who "live out in secrecy those few moments the priest manages to grant [us], and experience on a daily basis the doubts, fears and insecurities of our men".

This group of women aren't the only ones questioning enforced priestly celibacy. The issue has been central to recent debate in the Catholic church, after a wave of clerical abuse scandals that have sometimes seen critics link sexual frustration to paedophilia. There has also been debate about the origins of celibacy in the early Christian church. In the face of these questions, Pope Benedict XVI, who is due to tour the UK in September, has defended the status quo. Celibacy "is made possible by the grace of God . . . who asks us to transcend ourselves," he has said; he has also argued that forgoing matrimony helps demonstrate a commitment to the priesthood.

For the reclusive partners and offspring of Catholic priests, lack of financial support and recognition is a longstanding complaint. The few support groups that have sprung up have made little headway in their efforts to alter church attitudes. And although Stephen has never felt inspired to confront church authorities or seek financial recompense, he says that his past has left him with an "undertow of regret and sadness" at his parents' renounced love.

"I don't know of any picture of my mother and father together," he says, showing me a black-and white photograph of the man he knew as "Dad". A handsome young priest stares out of the frame. The photo was taken in the 1950s, when his father was about to depart from his home in Ireland to minister to a large parish in Yorkshire. He brings out a letter on presbytery notepaper, addressed to him and signed "Love, Dad", and another addressed to his mother, which begins "My Darling". This accompanied a bottle of perfume sent to celebrate her 25th birthday. These candid letters suggest that, even if only subconsciously, his father might have been somewhat relieved to have been discovered and defrocked.

Stephen's parents met through the parish, where his mother's family were regular churchgoers. "He would have been a junior priest," says Stephen. "It was very risky. My mother was very guarded about it." Their long relationship culminated in Stephen being born in 1967. "By then, she was already 28," he says, "so she wasn't a gymslip mum. It looks like they had had a relationship for some time, and I suspect from the intensity of the [affair] that I was a wanted child rather than a mistake. But it appears that once my mother became pregnant she backed away from my father.

"I have it on reliable sources that he indicated his willingness to leave the priesthood, but she asked him not to. In some of his letters he talks about [the fact that] if she's pregnant it would be a good thing. Then afterwards he was very bitter that she kept him from his child. So it seems she ensured he stayed in the church."

Stephen's grandmother and maternal aunt knew the truth about his paternity, but the men in the family were never told. From the age of three or four, Stephen would be taken over to see his father most Saturdays, and initially, he says, "I didn't realise he was a priest, but one day, when I was eight or nine years old, I picked up his post in the hallway and it said 'Reverend . . .' My mother saw I was looking at the address and she broke down as she told me."

Pat Buckley, an excommunicated gay priest, has run what he calls an "independent ministry to disaffected and alienated Catholics and Christians" in Larne, Northern Ireland, since the mid-1980s. He runs a support group, Bethany, for women who are in relationships with priests.

"These problems have been hidden for centuries," he says, "but there's been so much in the news that people are getting a bit more courage to come forward." In 1992, for instance, there was uproar at the case of Eamon Casey, the then-Bishop of Galway, when it emerged that he had used diocesan funds to pay maintenance to the American mother of his love child; in the years since then, the church has been racked with controversy. "There are three common Irish names," Buckley continues, "McEntaggart, McAnespie and McNab, that translate as 'son of the priest', 'son of the Bishop' and 'son of the Abbot', so it's been around for some time."

Buckley believes that the Vatican wants to "hang on to celibacy for reasons of power and control. St Paul said in one of his letters that a bishop should be the husband of one woman. If a man does not have the experience of running a human family how can he run a church? Celibacy was unusual during the first 12 centuries of the Catholic Church. It was introduced [in the Middle Ages]. It's often very sad for the women and children in these relationships. A lot of them want some form of resolution, to sort out the baggage. Anybody who is abandoned by a parent suffers a very large injustice."

There are, of course, many who defend celibacy, including Father Stephen Wang, dean of studies at Allen Hall seminary in London. In a blog post earlier this year, he wrote that "there are practical aspects to celibacy. You've got more time for other people, and more time for prayer. You can get up at three in the morning to visit someone in hospital without worrying about how this will affect your marriage . . . But celibacy is something much deeper as well. There is a place in your heart, in your very being, that you have given to Christ and to the people you meet as a priest."

For Stephen, his relationship with his father never really blossomed. He was provided with occasional financial support, small gifts of money, while his father carried on being a priest. He died in his 60s. "I saw him shortly before his death," says Stephen, "and spoke to him. He was in a pretty bad way . . . My mother went to visit him in hospital regularly and insisted she should be the one looking after him. I don't think she ever stopped loving him. When he died she was devastated.

"I was denied a father, my mother was denied a partner and my father was denied a son . . . My father and mother loved each other intensely, and she never recovered from it. My mother dedicated her life to me and her work. She never fell in love with anyone else. She started to drink and . . . that was another measure of the burden." She died four years ago.

Stephen is not a practising Catholic, but says there is no residual bitterness towards his father. "Some people might say he deceived the church, but I don't think he was a bad man." He can still recall an afternoon playing in the presbytery's garden, around the same time that his father denied his paternity.

"It was large and overgrown, and I would go down this path that led to the church and there was a statue of an angel. That day I bumped into a nun who was coming in at the gate. 'What are you up to?' she asked. 'What are you doing in a priest's garden?' I said I was visiting my father. She assumed I was going to visit the church and had meant to say 'Holy Father'. It's amazing what you can get away with."

New Campaign for Married Priests in Switzerland

2010-08-13T17:58:00.002-04:00

I encourage all readers of this blog to support these young men's petition by clicking on the link in the first paragraph of the article. Then scroll to the bottom of that page and click on "Exprimer mon soutien" to get to the electronic petition. For those who don't speak French, here is a glossary for the required fields on the form:
Civilité = Title (a dropdown menu in order "Mr., Mrs., Miss")
Prénom = First Name
Nom = Last Name
Code postal / localité = Zip or postal code / Location (city)
Pays = Country (Americans should pick "Etats-Unis", British should pick "Royaume-Uni"; the rest of you are on your own)
Catholique-romain = Roman Catholic (check "oui" if you are, "non" if you aren't)
Then it asks for your e-mail address and comments which are not required fields. There is a verification code which you must type into the box underneath it ("Veuillez recopier le code").
This is an "opt-in" form so you must check "Je confirme soutenir la déclaration de Mgr Brunner" to say that you agree with Msgr. Brunner's statement that it should be possible to ordain married men ('viri probati').
Click on "envoyer mon soutien" to add your name to the petition and married Catholic men all over the world who would like to be ordained (but can't) will thank you. To my sisters: I know a lot of people are disappointed that this petition doesn't include women but let's not be stingy. We have to start somewhere and if we move this along, at least we are moving the Church forward.

by Laure-Anne Pessina (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Le Matin
8/11/2010

Campaigning via an Internet petition for married men to be allowed to become priests (www.ordination-hommes-maries.ch), that is the goal of Jura citizens Jean-Paul Miserez and Jean-Pierre Bendit who worry about the lack of priests in their region. Both practising Catholics who are active in their parish, they believe that a married man can have a family life and be available to the faithful. "It's worrisome for our Catholic communities to see that there are fewer and fewer priests to celebrate Mass. Moreover we have a large number of pastoral assistants and deacons who are proven and who have received the same training as priests," [Translator's Note: We disagree slightly with this assertion since there are some differences in training, obviously] Jean-Paul Miserez, an engineer surveyor who lives in Delémont, explains. The only problem is that the latter are not celibate and, in fact, cannot be ordained priests. "Ten years ago there were eight Masses a month in Courgenay. Today there are only two," Jean-Pierre Bendit, a microtechnology engineer, says ruefully.

Therefore the two petitioners are demanding a change, but -- careful -- they don't want to cause trouble. The petition doesn't address the marriage of priests or women's ordination, it's just about allowing married men to become priests. "An evolution without revolution is required," Jean-Pierre Bendit says. Their petition indicates clearly that it's not about fighting against celibacy for priests, "which has undeniable and uncontested merits", but to launch a debate, following the statements of Msgr. Norbert Brunner, president of the Swiss Bishops Conference. He has stated in an interview that it should be possible to ordain married men.

According to Jean-Paul Miserez, being married would also allow the priest to better understand the vagaries of marriage. And Jean-Pierre Bendit adds: «One could even envision father and son priests. It would create vocations among the young." A concept that Nicolas Betticher, Vicar General of the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, doesn't share. "You don't necessarily have to be married to understand marriage, just as you don't necessarily have to be celibate to understand celibacy. That argument is simplistic. There are childless people who are very good child psychologists, for example."

It's a petition that leaves Nicolas Betticher all the more skeptical given that a demand was already made in 2000 through the Swiss Bishops Conference, without any response from the Vatican. "What bothers me a bit about this approach, is that we're spending a lot of energy when we know that the Holy See doesn't seem to want to deal with this issue at the moment. Moreover it's a question that can divide the communities," he explains. Meanwhile, the petition, which recalls that up until 1139 priests could be married within the Catholic Church, has not stopped gathering supporters. "If we get to 1,000, that would be good," Jean-Pierre Bendit comments, "then, in October, we'll send everything to Msgr. Brunner and the Swiss Bishops Conference." It should be noted that in the Eastern rite churches, like in Lebanon, one finds married priests and so there are exceptions within the same institution.

Claude Ducarroz, Provost of the Fribourg Cathedral
Since 1975, Catholics in Switzerland have called for this issue to be studied. I share this concern and this demand. It stems from a reflex of faith and love for the Church. It would lead to a complementary way of being a priest.

Nicolas Betticher, Vicar General of the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg
The Church is a worldwide family, we should follow the beat of the universal Church. It can be dangerous to think that in Switzerland we have the monopoly on faith, wanting to solve problems in light of our local situation.

Philippe Charmillot, head of the Noirmont and Bois Pastoral Unit
I welcome this initiative because it comes from the "grassroots". I experience the daily search for harmony between family life and service to the community. And I can reconcile the two, even being married and the father of four daughters.

Priest calls for end to mandatory celibacy

2010-08-12T11:47:00.001-04:00

In a new self-published book titled I Want to be a Husband and Father For Life and a Catholic Priest Forever (XLibris, 2010), Fr. Eugene Weitzel, CSV argues that "the law of celibacy is a serious violation a priest’s basic rights. Most men and women, not only need to love God, but also to love a person of the opposite sex at the conjugal level. It is natural, it is healthy, it is most rewarding, and it is right. The Church did not enact and require the vow of celibacy to help priests grow spiritually, but for all of the wrong reasons. Elliminate it NOW."

Fr. Weitzel, a semi-retired Viatoran priest who is based in Illinois, has an S.T.D. in Moral Theology from Catholic University, has taught school and worked as both a hospital chaplain and a regular parish pastor since being ordained in 1959 says that he has never been unhappy as a priest but, he argues, “most priests...will be at their best when they encounter all of the joys and sadness, hurts and disappointments of married life. Marriage for them will be an enriching challenge. It is the best way for them to grow as a person, to achieve, to self-actualize, to become, to deepen their faith, and to draw closer to God.”

Fr. Weitzel is also the author of Pastoral Ministry in a Time of Change (Bruce Publishing Co., 1966), Contemporary Pastoral Counseling (Bruce Publishing Co., 1969). According to his author biography on XLibris, he has published two sacramentaries for visually handicapped priests and edited and contributed to three books on liturgy and moral theology.

Culture Notes: "Léon Morin, prêtre"

2010-07-21T12:56:00.005-04:00

I often think of the Internet as a sort of landfill that periodically coughs up interesting items long buried and forgotten. This week it came in the form of a Seattle Post Globe piece about the screening of a new 35 mm print of a 1961 French movie "Léon Morin, prêtre" ("Leon Morin, Priest", alternate English title "The Forgiven Sinner") starring the sexy Jean-Paul Belmondo as the priest and Emmanuelle Riva as his verbal sparring partner/love interest, Barny. Here is the plot summary from Films de France:

In this film, which won the Grand Prix de Venice in 1961, Jean-Pierre Melville paints a fascinating study of a woman who is disturbed, both sexually and morally. As the film progresses we see her subjected to a spiritual awakening that arises from her physical and intellectual attraction for a Catholic priest. Emmanuelle Riva manages to convey the turmoil and guilt of the young woman’s situation in a very creditable performance.

Barny is a young widow living with her daughter in a small French town during the Nazi Occupation. She is a communist militant with an atheistic view of religion. One day, she enters a church with the intention of criticising religion with a priest. However, the priest she chooses is young, handsome, and intelligent. Far from rebuffing her, he listens carefully to Barny’s arguments and offers a persuasive counter-argument, in the first of what proves to be many sessions together. Impressed by his moral strength or by a physical attraction, Barny begins to grow closer to her new friend, and she begins to fantasise about having a relationship with him.

The themes that the film broaches are complex and not without controversy. That the great moral goodness in a Catholic priest should inspire sexual desire in his interlocutor is a daring move for a film of this era. But more intriguing is the deliberate merging of sexual and spiritual awakening. The young woman Barny is so captivated by Morin’s goodness that she cannot tell whether she is in love with him or the religion he has brought to her.

Melville’s focus is on the interplay between the two central characters, Morin and Barny. The sets are Spartan and often dimly lit, so as not to distract from the fascinating dialogue. The photography is likewise simplistic and moody, albeit with some very memorable sequences, such as the haunting dream scene.

In Memoriam: Patrick Rice, married priest and human rights advocate

2010-07-13T17:36:00.002-04:00

Back in April, we wrote a post about Patrick Rice, a former priest from Ireland who became a human rights advocate in Argentina and married one of his catechists with whom he was imprisoned. Patrick Rice passed away last week of a heart attack he suffered in Miami as he was traveling back from a workshop he gave for the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition.

According to his family, Rice was working for the ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. In a beautiful tribute in Página 12, his wife and children say: "Patrick was our father and our comrade. Former worker priest, former disappeared detainee. A fighter and actvist for life and human rights. He had the most beautiful smile, the most transparent gaze, the kindest heart. He lived all his days joyfully, convinced that a just world, one with solidarity and without discrimination, was possible. He taught that to change it [the world] we had to start with our own hands. He knew how to join all the struggles and acts of resistance in the world..."

The family's statement also includes a list of the commemorative activities that will take place around Buenos Aires for Rice. He will be buried in the British Cemetery in that city.

Kenya: Custody bid priest kicked out of parish

2010-07-09T11:59:00.002-04:00

Back in May, we ran a piece about Fr. Anastasio Kaburi's bid to gain custody of the boy he fathered following the death of the child's mother. Now, in a stunning example of our Church's "commitment to family values", Fr. Anastasio finds himself suspended after trying to do the responsible thing....

Daily Nation (Kenya)
7/8/2010

A Catholic priest, who took the unusual step of claiming the custody of an eight-year-old boy he said was his son, has been relieved of his pastoral duties.

Father Anastasio Kaburi has been sent on indefinite forced leave to allow him time for introspection. The forced leave is, according to the church, supposed to give Bishop James Maria Wainaina of the Catholic diocese of Murang’a time to think about the issue.

Investigations will also be carried out by the church, and Fr Kaburi is expected to re-examine himself and come to terms with what is happening in his life.

Priests take an oath of celibacy. They are neither allowed to have sex nor father children. According to the church’s rules, priests should emulate the life of Jesus Christ and not have families.

Recent cases show that the rule is increasingly disobeyed. Fr Kaburi is unusual in that he went public with an issue none in the church, or the communities it serves, acknowledges.

Spiritual duties

In an interview with the Nation, the diocesan vicar-general, Father Alex Njigua, said: “It is true that the priest is not with us, and can’t perform spiritual duties until he is fully investigated to ascertain his claims.”

According to Father Njigua, priests are sent on forced leave only in extraordinary situations. While on leave, Fr Kaburi is required to keep in touch with his bishop to inform him of his whereabouts and what he is doing.

Asked whether, Fr Kaburi would be excommunicated if is established that he has broken the vow of celibacy, the vicar-general said: “This kind of disciplinary action comes as the last resort.”

The church tries to get priests to correct their ways and are defrocked only if they defy efforts to reform them. Recently, Nairobi Archbishop John Cardinal Njue announced new rules amid complaints of misconduct among priests. He warned that priests found to be involved in sex will be punished in line with church law.

Fr Kaburi was the parish priest at Gatura in Murang’a, where he was well-liked and respected by the faithful. He had earlier served at Gaichanjiru, Saba Saba and Kerugoya parishes, where worshippers described him as a compassionate man.

“We did not believe what we heard about our priest,” said a worshipper, Mr John Macharia Kamau, 40. Fr Kaburi stunned the community in May when he went to the authorities to claim the custody of a boy he said was his son. He said the boy was born eight years ago but his mother later died, leaving him with his grandfather.

The Pastoral Provision hits Regensburg

2010-07-08T16:19:00.003-04:00

The Local
7/8/2010

A married man was ordained as a Catholic priest in the southern German city of Regensburg this week in a rare exception to the church’s rules of celibacy for men of the cloth, the diocese reported.

Peter Kemmether, a 62-year-old father of four children, took part in the ceremony led by Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller on Tuesday evening in the Bavarian city.

He had been a protestant pastor, but converted to Catholicism.

In similar cases the Vatican has been known to make exceptions to its insistence on clerical celibacy, and the Congregation for the Clergy there approved the decision after Kemmether completed various courses in Catholic theology, the diocese said.

According to the German Conference of Bishops, Protestant pastors have become Catholic priests on several occasions in the past, but a spokesperson said the organisation could not provide specific numbers.

The Church in Bavaria in particular has ordained several former Protestants into the priesthood in the last decade.

These men have papal permission to carry on with their family lives as usual, and are not required become celibate.

Judge finds Colombian Bishops Conference liable for priest's actions

2010-07-07T17:52:00.003-04:00

A judge in Belén de Umbria in the department of Risaralda, Colombia, has found the Colombian Catholic Bishops Conference, the diocese of Pereira, and the parish of Mistrató liable for paying damages to the family of Fr. José Francey Díaz Toro's woman companion of eleven years and their 5-year old daughter whom the priest killed back in 2007. Judge Otto Garnert Galvis set damages at 100 million pesos for the mother of the woman and the grandmother of the girl, and 500 million pesos for the woman's father and her ten brothers and uncles. Díaz Toro (photo) was found guilty in a separate criminal trial and sentenced to 23 years in prison for the double murder.

This is the first time that a Colombian court has found the Catholic Church liable at an institutional level for the activities of its priests. Judge Garnert justified his ruling, saying that the church was guilty of failing to adequately supervise Díaz Toro and that it should be as strict in its internal discipline as what it requires of its parishioners and that, in spite of being a private entity, it is governed by Colombian law, any other agreement with the Holy See notwithstanding. "The Church has rights and obligations. This crime took place because of carelessness and lack of management," the judge emphasized.

Nicolás Martínez, attorney for the victims, said the Church was liable because the institution's celibacy requirement was a factor in the murder. Police have hypothesized that Díaz Toro killed the woman and her child because she threatened to expose their relationship.

Mons. Juan Vicente Córdoba, secretary general of the Bishops Conference, repudiated the sentence, calling it "unjust". "The priest should pay for the problems he caused, not the diocese or the Bishops Conference," he said. He said the ruling would be appealed.

Priest/musician quits church to get married

2010-07-05T20:11:00.004-04:00

Echo (UK)
7/2/2010

A Catholic priest has chosen romance over religion and renounced a 36 years in the church to marry the love of his life, an Essex police detective.

Father John Glynn, 61, formerly of Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church, has left the priesthood to be with Christine Thomas, of Billericay CID.

Mr Glynn announced he was leaving in front of a stunned congregation by reading a letter from the Bishop of Brentwood, the Rt Rev Thomas McMahon, who accepted his resignation.

Mr Glynn’s decision came soon after he spent ten weeks at Hawkstone Hall, Shropshire, a retreat where Catholics “can find refreshment for their tired spirit”, according to its website.

During Mr Glynn’s announcement, before a Sunday sermon, he made no mention of why he was going, but later revealed the reason on his website.

Mr Glynn, who was ordained as a priest aged 26 in 1974, wrote: “Part of the reason for going there (Hawkstone Hall) was to take a break after a particularly stressful year, but also I wanted to reflect on my own calling and discern the next stage of the journey.

“The course confirmed my initial feelings that my life should take a new direction.

“After a great deal of prayer I have decided to resign from active ministry as a priest, not because I did not want to remain a priest, but because the constraints parish life put on my ministry prevented me from developing the gifts God has given me.

“And further, I wanted to marry the woman I love, and that is not possible for a Catholic priest at this moment in history.”

Mrs Thomas sings and plays guitar in Mr Flynn’s band John Flynn and Aquilla.

In May, the Echo reported St Luke’s Hospice had helped her come to terms with the death of her husband of 28 years, Clive, 59, who died there of terminal cancer last August.

Mr Glynn, on his website, further reflected: “It is possible, and quite usual in some parts of the church, for a married man to be ordained a priest.

“But an unmarried man, once ordained, is not permitted to marry.

“Some will say it’s unfair.

“Others will point out that a vow of celibacy is for life just as marriage is. I understand both arguments, but accept the reality of the situation.”

Diocese of Brentwood spokeswoman Mary Huntingdon said the decision to leave the priesthood was a very personal one.

She added: “If a priest decides he can no longer carry out his vocation, for whatever reason, he will talk to the bishop and ask for time away to consider his future.

“Since there is no time limit on this, it is usual for a priest to resign his parish at this point.”

Bishop McMahon added: “We are deeply grateful to him for all the wonderful pastoral care he has given during his seven years at Wickford.”

Mr Glynn and Mrs Thomas were unavailable for comment.

Father Dan Mason has taken over at Our Lady of Good Counsel.

It is the second resignation of a Catholic priest in the Basildon district due to the celibacy vow in recent months.

Last March, Father Julian Weiner, formerly of St Basil the Great Catholic Church, in Luncies Road, Basildon, also left the priesthood to be with a woman.

Eight in 10 priests in Austria want celibacy to end

2010-06-29T17:28:00.001-04:00

Austrian Independent
6/29/2010

A vast majority of Austrian Roman Catholic priests want an end to mandatory celibacy, a new survey has shown.

Pollsters GfK Austria said today (Tues) 80 per cent of the 500 interviewed parish priests supported calls for an abandonment of the ruling.

Fifty-one per cent said women should be allowed to become Roman Catholic priests.

More than six in ten (64 per cent) of priests the agency spoke to said the Austrian Church should get up to date with the modern world.

GfK Austria revealed the new study showed that younger priests had more conservative mindsets than their elder colleagues.

A vast majority of 92 per cent complained of inadequate education in becoming a priest, while 48 per cent accused the institution’s leaders of "acting helpless and lacking vision".

The number of Austrian men deciding to become Catholic priests is meanwhile in decline.

Church officials said earlier this month that 24 men will be consecrated priests in 2010 by the end of June. They said 33 consecrations took place in the first six months of last year.

The reputation of the Roman Catholic Church in Austria suffered dramatically as hundreds of people came forward to report violent and sexual abuse at its institutions over the past few months.

The Church reacted by setting up a special commission to deal with the cases and provide victims with financial compensation and therapy.

The question of the amount of compensation is currently an issue of heated public discussion. Viennese Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn refused to comment on reports claiming that the Church tried to keep the overall sum lower than 100,000 Euros.

More than 30,000 Austrians left the Church in the first three months of this year, up by 42 per cent compared to the same time span of 2009 when more people than ever cancelled their membership.

Fears are increasing that up to 80,000 Austrians will leave throughout this year. Last year’s 53,216 people quitting their membership meant an all-time record high.

Austrian Catholics ramp up quest for church reform

2010-06-24T13:06:00.002-04:00

By Veronika Oleksyn
Associated Press
June 23, 2010

VIENNA — Historically a potent symbol of Catholicism in Europe, Austria has in recent years been known more as the center of a taboo-busting movement to liberalize the church.

Now, reformers here are ramping up their campaign for change amid worldwide outrage over the priest sex abuse scandal.

And while much of the push comes from the grassroots, the country's powerful cardinal recently caused a stir with strong gestures in support of reform, raising the stakes in the confrontation between the Vatican and dissidents pushing to allow priests to marry and women to be ordained.

What is particularly troubling for Rome is that Austria — which in past centuries was famous for being a bulwark against the Protestant Reformation — is losing worshippers in record numbers as calls for reform grow stronger.

Tens of thousands of Austrian Catholics — many of whom still consider themselves devout believers — are leaving the church each year, disgusted by the priestly sex abuse scandal and frustrated by what they see as the Catholic hierarchy's outdated ways.

For 76-year-old Erwin Bundschuh, who left the church about six weeks ago, the main problem today is an ivory tower mentality that rejects dialogue and cuts itself off from the realities of the modern day.

"You can't redesign a religious community every day but you also can't pretend as if nothing has happened in 2,000 years," said Bundschuh as he strolled past Vienna's famous St. Stephen's Cathedral. "There should be an open dialogue about certain things but it's always choked off."

Earlier this week, the head of the Vienna archdiocese's church tax office estimated that up to 80,000 of Austria's roughly 5.5 million Catholics could leave the church this year — a new record. Last year alone, 53,216 people formally had their names removed from church registries, a 31 percent increase compared to 40,654 in 2008.

Many have dropped out to also avoid paying a highly unpopular government-imposed church tax, questioning whether they should help finance an organization with which they have increasingly divergent views.

As the sex abuse scandal has heated up, critical Austrian Catholics have stepped up their reform campaign — holding news conferences and pressuring church officials.

In May, the Priest Initiative — a group of critical clerics — adopted a strongly worded resolution that criticized the "absolutist" church structure and urged both bishops and ordinary believers to take a stand. The Vatican has had no comment on the turmoil in the Austrian Church.

Amid increasing calls for change, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn — the country's top churchman and a papal confidant seen as a possible successor to Benedict XVI — has stepped into the fray more forcefully in the past few months.

"The wall of silence has to be broken," he told reporters on Wednesday as he presented measures to prevent clerical abuse and help victims. "This is not allowed to happen and cannot be allowed to repeat itself."

Set to take effect July 1 and approved by all of the country's bishops, the measures foresee a unified approach by church abuse complaint centers to probe and deal with allegations against priests, employees and volunteers of church-run institutions. It also mandates the creation of a foundation for abuse victims to cover their therapy costs and possible compensation demands.

At a March service for sex abuse victims in St. Stephen's Cathedral organized with a reform group, he was among the first high-ranking Catholics to openly acknowledge church guilt in the scandal.

More recently, he accused Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the retired Vatican secretary of state, of blocking an investigation into sex abuse allegations against his disgraced predecessor, Hans Hermann Groer, 15 years ago.

He also spoke of the positive aspects of gay relationships and suggested the church needed a new perspective on the remarriage of divorcees.

In addition, Schoenborn recently declined to publicly criticize Eisenstadt Bishop Paul Iby, who made headlines when he said it should be up to priests to decide whether they want to live a celibate life and that he would welcome it if married men could be ordained. The 75-year-old bishop also said the ordination of women should also eventually be considered.

When asked by The Associated Press what he thought of Iby's comments, Schoenborn replied: "I think that the worries Bishop Paul, Bishop Iby, has expressed here are the worries of all of us — there's no question about that."

To reformers like Richard Picker of the group Priests without Office, Schoenborn understands the plight of clerics who choose not to live in celibacy. "The cardinal has understanding for us," Picker said.

But others cautioned against overrating the softspoken Schoenborn, saying he has shown understanding for those who don't fall in line in the past but has failed to come up with concrete actions to support them.

Described as someone who tries to please everyone and dislikes confrontation, Schoenborn initially stayed quiet when he replaced Groer in 1995 amid abuse allegations. Only three years later did he personally apologize "for everything that my predecessors and other holders of church office committed against people in their trust."

"Rome gets on his nerves and he sends signals but he'll never contradict the pope," said Herbert Kohlmaier, a former politician and national ombudsman who heads a reform group called the Lay Initiative. "He won't cross that line."

Kohlmaier was also among the first to welcome the new measures to prevent abuse, saying Schoenborn's efforts reflected courage and openness and set an example for the entire church.

Experts say Austria's unusually rebellious streak these days stems from a series of conservative Vatican appointments — including Groer's — following the retirement of the liberal and outspoken Cardinal Franz Koenig, a much beloved figure, in 1985.

"The church took a new turn after Koenig and that, coupled with the Groer pedophilia story, sparked dissatisfaction," said theologian Paul Zulehner. "Austria is a special case caused by Rome."

The Groer scandal erupted in 1995 when a former student of his alleged that he abused him in the 1970s. Other accusations followed. Groer stepped down shortly after the first allegations surfaced and was later forced by Pope John Paul II to relinquish all church functions. He died in 2003 but never directly admitted any guilt.

The disgust surrounding Groer resurfaced recently when the Alpine country — like several others — was hit by a new wave of abuse claims against clergy and employees of church-affiliated institutions such as schools.

"The abuse scandal has shown that apparently the church's leadership is no longer primarily focused on Jesus' message but rather on its own interests," said Hans Peter Hurka, who heads We are Church, an influential Vienna-based lay organization active across Europe.

The priest - and his Mrs.

2010-06-22T14:57:00.002-04:00

By David O'Reilly
Inquirer
6/6/2010

After 19 years as a Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Philip Johnson had grown disenchanted with Protestantism.

"There comes a time, if you're Catholic, to be Catholic," the newest priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden said Wednesday at his home in Sewell.

Dressed in his 11-day-old Roman collar and black clerical garb, Johnson, 59, was explaining the appeal of Catholicism's traditionalist ways when a middle-aged woman emerged from the kitchen.

"Here you go, Hon," said Johnson's wife, Janet, handing him a glass of Coke.

"Thanks," said the priest, smiling as she eased down next to him on their living room sofa.

It was a familiar scene for the Johnsons. Married 38 years, with four grown children and four grandchildren, they spent nearly two decades in a Lutheran parsonage in Jersey City, N.J., before converting to Catholicism four years ago.

Men sporting both Roman collars and wedding rings are a rarity in the Catholic Church; it banned married clergy eight centuries ago. In 1951 it made an exception for married clergy who convert, but on a case-by-case basis.

The church has ordained only a few hundred since. "Mr. Johnson's ordination does not indicate a change of celibacy norms for Latin Rite priests," the Camden Diocese noted when it announced his May 22 ordination.

In fact, the Johnsons had no clue he would be accepted for ordination when they converted. But priesthood was their fervent hope. "He was just horrible sitting in the pews," Janet Johnson, 60, said Wednesday, and laughed. Her husband, a serious man, shrugged. "I just couldn't imagine not preaching," he said.

It was not until four months after converting, as Johnson was studying at the Catholic University of America in Washington, that Camden Bishop Joseph Galante learned of his situation and invited him to be a candidate for priesthood.

Galante has named Johnson parochial vicar at St. Bridget's parish in Glassboro, where he will also serve the Catholic community of Rowan University. Both Johnsons will conduct marriage-preparation classes around the six-county diocese.

Although Johnson is the second married priest in its history (the Rev. George McCormick, a former Episcopal priest, served from 1984 until his death in 2000), the Camden Diocese is still learning how to fit the couple in. "The insurance forms for priests don't have a line for 'wife,' " Janet Johnson said. "I told them I'm his 'preexisting condition.' "

Johnson's appointment at St. Bridget's - he said his first Mass there Wednesday - appears to be welcome news to parishioners.

"I think it's wonderful," said Anne Young, an elementary school teacher and Realtor who stopped by the parish office Friday to shake his hand.

Young is "not sure" she likes the idea of married priests, but told Johnson that she and her 92-year-old father "do welcome you."

Jim Dougherty, 72, said he was delighted with Johnson's appointment. "I have no problem at all," with married clergy, Dougherty said as he emerged from the church with his granddaughter. "In fact, I think it would help with a lot of problems."

Johnson sees no long-term obstacle to married priests in the Catholic Church, since the ban is "not a matter of dogma." But he also regards "consecrated virginity and priestly celibacy an ancient tradition and a great gift" to the church. "I don't want to be the poster boy," he said, "for married clergy.

Both Johnsons' faith journey began in the fundamentalist Church of Christ: a Bible-based sect that preached hell for outsiders but was "very nurturing, very loving" for those inside, Janet Johnson recalled.

They met at Harding College in Little Rock, and married after graduation. By then, both had qualms about their faith's exclusionary ways. "The church in those days had a very narrow view of who was Christian," Philip Johnson said.

But after he earned a divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1979, the couple accepted an invitation to live and work for the church in London.

There, they and their young children shared a stately home, Disciple House, with two other couples and their children, whom they all raised together.

London also exposed them to Anglican, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic modes of worship. These included a liturgical calendar, sacraments, formal liturgies, and instrumental music - all of them unknown in the Church of Christ.

Philip Johnson's prayer life, meanwhile, was becoming less self-scrutinizing and more communal - what he calls more "Catholic." When it came time to return to the United States "we knew we couldn't come back to the Church of Christ," Janet Johnson said.

"But we couldn't cross the bridge all the way to Roman Catholicism," said her husband.

In 1986 they converted to Lutheranism, whose music, sacraments, preaching tradition, and liturgies fit their notion of "Catholic" but without the "Roman." After two years at Grace Lutheran Church in Jersey City, he became pastor of 500-member St. Paul Lutheran Church, also in that city, where he served until 2006. She taught kindergarten.

At the time of their conversion, mainstream Lutheranism seemed headed toward rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church. But when the main Lutheran sects grew liberal and allowed female clergy, the faiths drifted apart.

In October, however, the Vatican announced a new policy by which traditionalist Anglicans, including whole congregations and breakaway synods, may seek "full, corporate and sacramental union" with Rome while retaining much of their liturgy and traditions. The arrangement would allow married Anglican clergy to petition for priestly ordination.

Lutheran pastors, Philip Johnson said, also seemed increasingly free to impart their own views on abortion and homosexuality to their flocks.

"It was a question of who decides," he said. "The question of church unity and teaching authority became very big for me.

"It was Janet who pushed me" toward Rome, he recalled. "She said, 'It becomes clear we don't have a choice.' "

Their conversion was not without pain. Son Nathan, 27, and daughter Alison, 35, did not convert with them, and as non-Catholics were barred from receiving Holy Communion from their father at his ordination Mass. "They understood," their mother said, shaking her head. "But there was a lot of grief. It will never be easy for me." Son Thomas, 25, and daughter Meghan Onochie, 32, are now baptized Catholic.

His ordination "is a culmination of everything Dad's prepared for," Onochie, a new mother, said Friday from her home in Reston, Va. "I think it's really beautiful they made an exception for someone in his situation."

Despite their unique status, the Johnsons said the diocese was trying hard to fit them in.

As they prepared to pose for photos after the ordination, Janet Johnson recalled, she stepped to Galante's left side, leaving her husband on his right.

"No, no," said the bishop, switching positions with her.

"I never," he said, "want to stand between you and your husband."

Photo: Fr. and Mrs. Philip Johnson

Father of eight becomes Catholic priest

2010-06-15T17:56:00.002-04:00

Pro-life activist and married father of eight Paul Schenck changed faiths yet again and became a Catholic priest, receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders in a ceremony at St. Joseph Church in Springettsbury Township, Pa on June 12, 2010.

Schenck grew up in a Jewish home. At 16, he was baptized in the Niagara River by a Salvation Army officer and later became a Protestant pastor, eventually founding his own New Covenant Tabernacle church in a Buffalo suburb. He later joined the Reformed Episcopal Church, serving several years as rector at an Anglican church in Catonsville, Md. Schenck converted to Catholicism in 2004. He has a BA from the Elim Bible Institute and a masters from Catholic University.

Fr. Schenck is best known as the head of the National Pro-Life Action Center and in 1992 was featured on the cover of Life magazine confronting a pro-choice demonstrator. He is married and the couple have eight children: Leah Crowne, Ari, Abraham, Jordan, Miriam, Marta, Isaac, and Eva.

Schenck had been ordained for only a few minutes when he administered communion for the first time as a Catholic priest. The first person to step forward and receive: Rebecca Schenck, his wife of 33 years.

Fr. Schenck will continue to work as the Diocese of Harrisburg's director of the Office of Respect Life Activities, and he will be an associate pastor at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament in Harrisburg.

Isn't it amazing what the pastoral provision can do? And yet a birth Catholic with a similar pro-life record can't become a priest if he is married. Am I the only one who sees the injustice in this?

Cutie is a priest again -- and a father-to-be

2010-06-02T14:30:00.003-04:00

By Jaweed Kaleem
Miami Herald
5/29/2010

As he stood in front of dozens of reporters a year ago to say he was leaving the Roman Catholic Church and marrying, celebrity priest Alberto Cutié took a plunge, putting his life on a path that would look little like what he imagined when he slipped on that first clerical collar and vowed a life of celibacy in his 20s.

These days, he's a suburban 41-year-old husband, sharing a three-bedroom house in Miami Shores with his wife and her son, often cooking Cuban meals before a game of Chinese checkers.

On Saturday, after dusting off the same white stole he wore when he knelt before Miami's Roman Catholic Archbishop 15 years ago to be ordained, he put it back over his shoulders. Padre Alberto is a priest again, this time in the Episcopal church.

It's not the only change in his life. In six months, the padre will be a dad. Ruhama Buni Cutié is pregnant.

"God's not all that interested in you falling down. God is interested in you getting up again,'' Cutié told Episcopal bishops and hundreds of parishioners gathered Saturday at Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park for the ceremony marking his return to the priesthood. He spent the past year at Resurrection, studying Episcopal traditions as lay minister.

It's a denomination, he proclaims, "that is welcoming of all,'' including himself, a once invincible priest who has seen many Catholics "act as if I dropped dead, as if I don't exist.''

SECRET STRUGGLES

As a Catholic, he secretly struggled with his church's stance toward homosexuality, contraceptives and his own celibacy. As an Episcopalian, he's speaking freely about his support of openly gay clergy, of birth control, and, when a woman's life is in danger, even abortion.

Life today is a far cry from what it was on Miami Beach, where Padre Alberto became a household name for his good looks and the one-man media powerhouse he built from scratch. That was before a Mexican tabloid printed racy photos of him getting cozy on the beach with a woman -- now his wife -- an undeniable turn against his vows.

His popular newspaper advice column, cable television show, book on love and relationships, and jobs heading South Florida's Catholic radio station and South Beach's only Catholic parish, are now little more than lines on a resumé.

Cutié's departure from top posts in the 800,000-strong Archdiocese of Miami -- Miami's biggest and most influential church -- to the 38,000-member Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida thrust him into the national spotlight for months.

'THE SAME FATHER'

He went on Univision and CBS' The Early Show, and he and 'Buni,' as he affectionately calls his wife, graced the cover of People en Español and discussed their wedding at the picturesque Spanish Monastery in North Miami Beach. By September, "Father Oprah'' had made it to his namesake talk show.

Still part of an influential inner Miami circle that includes celebrities, TV news personalities and power brokers, Cutié, is known to navigate the worlds of the sacred and the profane with ease. But in recent months, life has regained a normalcy unseen for years.

Today, his media outreach doesn't go far beyond an occasional Saturday morning appearance on WWFE 670 AM La Poderosa, where Episcopal priests host a show. But Cutié, who says he has "shied away from having a central role in media,'' rarely goes on live, preferring to tape comments.

"People love when he was on TV and people loved when he was on the radio, but with the controversy, he had to take a different step,'' said Emilio Estefan, to whom Cutié has turned for advice over the past year. "To me, he's the same father, in a different way.''

GROWING HIS CHURCH

The priest best known for his life outside church has instead turned inward toward family, faith and his parish -- one that was handed to him this time last year in disarray, broke and without a permanent priest for two years.

It's there that Cutié has shined: Sunday attendance has gone from 28 at a single service to 250 between two services in English and Spanish. A mixture of Haitian, Hispanic and Anglo Episcopalians and a few former Catholics now attend, and Cutié is leading Bible study and kids' classes.

The priest who was tapped by the Archdiocese of Miami several times to revitalize struggling Catholic parishes is now doing the same in Biscayne Park. A $36,000 project to renovate pews and landscape the grounds, including installing a life-size outdoor statue of Jesus to welcome parishioners, is under way.

"We used to not have AC. Now we have AC. There's new paint on the walls, new lighting,'' says parishioner Jose Areiza. "He inherited a debt. They owed on the telephone and electricity. Now many more people are coming, people from the beach as well.''

Part of Cutié's attractions are his down-to-earth sermons and comedic charm. Last week, preaching on the Feast of Pentecost, he invoked the classic 1980s Hershey's chocolate syrup commercial starring "Messy Marvin,'' saying that the "holy spirit is everywhere'' -- even in chocolate milk.

FAITH OVER CELEBRITY

And even though he has preached at Resurrection as a lay minister -- not a priest -- for a year, "there are already a few churches that are saying, 'Why can't Alberto become the rector here?' '' says Bishop Leo Frade of the Episcopal diocese.

At St. Francis de Sales, the South Beach Catholic church Cutié left last year, the pews are still largely full on Sundays, partially a legacy of Cutié's smart management. It's also a testament to faith over celebrity.

"Father Cutié doesn't even come up in conversations,'' says Anne Burgess, 29, who joined St. Francis two years ago. For weeks after Cutié packed his bags, the archdiocese shuffled priests in and out of the parish, but a permanent pastor, the Rev. Gabriel Vigues, came in late last summer. A handful of St. Francis members followed Cutié, but most have stayed put.

"I never wanted to be the anti-anything poster child,'' says Cutié. "I love the Roman Catholic Church and I love the Roman Catholic community. I understand the good the bad and the ugly of the church.''

But privately, he has voiced some criticism of the church. Last fall, when the Vatican said it would let Episcopal/Anglican churches that were unhappy with their increasingly liberal denomination join the Roman Catholic church while keeping their distinctive traditions -- notably the policy that their priests could be married -- Cutié fired off an email to friends.

"Why does the church accept married priests from other churches, but does not allow its own priests to be married? I would ask the Vatican: Are we [Episcopalians/Anglicans] heretics and schismatic or are we good guys? Please make up your mind.''

CATHOLIC-EPISCOPAL RIFT

Cutié's move has also soured ecumenical relations between the Archdiocese of Miami and Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, insiders from both churches say. But while his supporters staged protests last year against the Roman Catholic policy on clerical celibacy, Cutié has had little impact on the issue.

"Did his leaving change local Catholics' thoughts on celibacy? Probably. But overall, the Cutie 'switch' will not change anything in the Catholic church,'' says Christine Gudorf, a professor at Florida International University who studies Christianity.

The Episcopal Church, which has worship services similar to those of the Roman Catholic Church, considers itself the "middle way'' between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. It is the U.S.-wing of the worldwide Anglican communion, which broke from Rome in the 1500s.

The church approves the use of contraception within marriage and ordains women, unlike the Catholic church. Nationally, the church also has two openly gay, non-celibate bishops. Episcopalians do not see the pope as their leader.

Cutié dove into such issues over the past year, studying the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and Anglican history.

"We talked about differences between the Episcopalians and the Catholics. Some theological, some liturgical,'' said the Rev. Howard Stowe, a retired Episcopal priest who taught Cutié and stood by his side on Sundays to celebrate the Eucharist, which Cutié could not do as a layman.

"He wanted to know what we believe about some of doctrines of church, our understanding of what the sacraments are, the role of marriage in the church,'' Stowe said.

DOLING OUT ADVICE

While Padre Alberto further separated himself Saturday from his past as he became a priest, he retains elements of his Roman Catholic upbringing. "In his Bible, he still keeps a photo a Pope Benedict XVI. He says 'I still pray for him, he's going through so much,' '' said Stowe.

And while his media empire is all but gone, Cutié continues to dole out advice to couples, one by one instead of en masse, in his church office.

Recently, Cutié called friends, including Estefan, to break some news and request advice for himself. A baby -- Cutié doesn't know if a boy or a girl -- was on the way.

"In order to preach and to talk to married people and couples, it's good to live and understand how people live,'' says Estefan. When he heard about the child, "I told him, sleep, because you will never sleep again.''

More: 'Padre Alberto' becomes Episcopal Church priest, Episcopal Life Online, 6/1/2010

My father, my lover: Priests struggle with celibacy

2010-05-27T18:00:00.005-04:00

Our translation of the open letter by a group of Italian women in love with priests to the Pope has now been picked up by other media...

By Alessandro Speciale
Special to GlobalPost
Published: May 26, 2010 13:44 ET

ROME, Italy — They are used to secrecy, to hiding their feelings, to waiting in the shadows for their men. But now a group of women who have had intimate relationships with Catholic priests has decided to speak up against celibacy.

As sex abuse scandals once again rock the Catholic Church, the 39 Italian women who are, or have been, in longtime sentimental and sexual relationships with Catholic priests have penned an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI, denouncing compulsory celibacy as a “torn up shroud.” In the letter, the women describe the closeted lives they lead as companions to priests and ask the pope to consider that, perhaps, their men can only fulfill their priestly duties with their lives fulfilled by marriage.

“In order to become effective witnesses to the need for love, they need to embody it and experience it fully, in the way their nature demands it,” the letter said. “Is it a sick nature? A transgressing one?”

A Vatican spokesperson, as is usual in these cases, declined to comment on the letter or on the women's stories. But several women who signed and supported the letter agreed to speak with GlobalPost about their relationships with priests.

Antonella Carisio, 41, had always been engaged in parish life, so she didn’t think there was anything wrong with spending a lot of time with Edecir Calegari, the Brazilian priest with whom she ran the parish youth center. Then one evening in June 2006, when she was driving him back to the parish house, she says Calegari kissed her.

“I wrote him a letter that night, telling him I was sure it had been a mistake, that we should forget about it,” said Carisio. When they met again the next night, to “clarify” things, he kissed her again, “and that’s how our relationship started.”

It lasted for two and a half years. Calegari often slept at Carisio’s house. She says he even insisted on being introduced to Carisio’s son as his mother’s partner, not just as the local priest. “Everyone in my family knew, even my grandmother. They were all very nice to him,” she said.

Eventually, the couple was discovered: A fellow priest found one of Carisio’s letters in the parish house and reported Calegari to their superiors. He was moved to Rome and the two vowed to stay together: “When he left, he even gave me an engagement ring.”

But close to the Vatican and under constant scrutiny from superiors, Calegari quickly recovered confidence in his priestly identity, and agreed to do something he had promised Carisio he would never do: go back to Brazil as a missionary.

Calegari now says that he regrets “deeply” what happened, “also because I hurt her. It was a mistake.” He said he is happy in Brazil and thinks that putting an end to the relationship was the right choice: “I never thought of leaving the priesthood. Antonella and I were very close, she was a friend and a confidant, but I was never in love with her.”

“This is something that happens quite often,” said Stefania Salomone, a 42-year-old office manager from Rome. “Most of them are not ready to give up their life as priests for a woman. They want to have it both ways.”

Some of the relationships are not even sexual ones. Salomone's priest never went beyond hugging her, she said, and when he finally admitted that there was something “real” between the two of them, he said it was over.

After this and another similar experience, she started a website for women who are in relationships with priests and is now in contact with about 50 other women. “There is never a happy ending,” she said. Priests cannot stand to give up being “sacred ministers,” “God's intermediaries,” for the sake of the daily routine of married life.

Celibacy is compulsory for Catholic priests in the Western church, but its critics always point out that this rule is not spelled out by Jesus in the Gospel. Most of the Apostles, Salomone pointed out, were married, and so were the presbyteroi, the elders who exercised priestly authority in the first Christian communities, as described in the Act of the Apostles and St. Paul’s letters.

Though it was a common rule in the first centuries of the Christian era, celibacy in the Catholic Church started to be more strongly enforced only in the 11th century, and then after the Council of Trent, in the aftermath of the Reformation. Priests continued to have clandestine relationships, of course, but it was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that many of them came into the open and left their offices. According to the semi-official Vatican magazine La Civilta Cattolica, nearly 60,000 priests left the church to get married after the Second Vatican Council.

However many men still feel both callings — to the priesthood and to marriage — and struggle with the rules. “One of the most recurring statements of priests to their 'companions,'” wrote the women in their open letter, “sums it up in a few words: 'I need you in order to be who I am,' that is, a priest.”

The church’s reassignment of Calegari represents a typical response, according to the letter, which says that the church often rewards priests who give up their relationships with a promotion.

B., a 40-year-old lawyer from Tuscany who asked not to be named, said the priest she was involved with “was also critical of the church's backwardness and of compulsory celibacy.” But this changed after the first months, when a new bishop gave the priest new career opportunities, which he quickly seized. That didn't push him to end his relationship with B.: “I was closing his gaps, filling up his emotional holes,” she said. “He never had real doubts, no interior drama. Once he was sure that I was there for him, he was OK.”

Carisio said that like B. she never asked Calegari to renounce his vocation. He had entered seminary when he was just 12 and, she said, “he couldn’t deal with the idea of leaving the priesthood.” This would have meant giving up his whole life: “He couldn't forsake the status and the privilege of being a priest, he couldn't admit to being just a man.”

Leaving the priesthood would have meant “dealing with real life” for the first time, coping with issues such as finding a job or paying rent.

But it was not just practical concerns. Carisio said Calegari received idolizing letters from friends back home and was admired by his family. “He had always been told that he was dedicating his life to something superior, that trumps everything else.” Abandoning celibacy would have meant “stepping down from the pedestal he had been set upon.”

Along with Calegari's “egoism and cowardice,” Carisio also blames his superiors for their “hypocrisy.” Their only concern was to protect him from her: “We should take them as models of love and brotherhood, but they do the contrary. They were shocked that a priest could fall in love, and then betrayed him.”

Calegari disagreed, saying his dedication to celibacy is strong. “Changing the church's rule wouldn't be a solution,” he added. “I studied in Rome with priests from Eastern Catholic Churches, who are allowed to marry, and they have worse problems. I made a mistake and it just happened, but I didn't have strong feelings.”

Compulsory celibacy, write the women in their letter, is a “human law” that contrasts sharply with the everyday experience of priests' lives, even though the church presents it as “God's will.” The result is that most relationships eventually end in shame. “Why,” they ask the Pope, “all this destruction in the name of love?”

MORE COVERAGE:

Italian priests' secret mistresses ask pope to scrap celibacy rule, The Guardian, 5/27/2010

Pope urged to change vow on celibacy by Italian women who have had affairs with priests, Daily Mail, 5/28/2010

'Wives' of Catholic priests speak out against celibacy, AFP, 6/1/2010

Photo: Stefania Salomone

What happens when priests fall in love and abandon celibacy?

2010-05-25T12:52:00.003-04:00

by Monika Dittrich
Deutsche-Welle
5/25/2010

Sitting in his house in the Bergisches Land region of western Germany, Johannes Wendeler looks at photos of his ordination at Cologne Cathedral in 1989.

"I was sure that I would live the rest of my life as a priest," said Wendeler.

The idea of falling in love never occurred to Wendeler. When he was ordained as a priest at the age of 30, he had never had a relationship with a woman. Wendeler says, because of this, celibacy seemed to him to be an acceptable lifestyle.

But that changed when, after working as a priest for seven years, he met physiotherapist Lydia Piechotta, following a car accident which left him with a broken hand. The two enjoyed the conversations they had during therapy sessions and became close friends. Soon after, they fell in love.

"We weren't searching, but still we still found each other," says Piechotta.

Life of celibacy

Of course, this was a big problem for Wendeler and Piechotta. How should they deal with this love, which is forbidden in the eyes of the Catholic Church?

"There were always whispers whenever we went out for a walk together," recalls Piechotta. "And we couldn't tell anyone that we were in love!"

The two did not want to live like this forever, and so after about a year, Wendeler told the Archbishop of Cologne. That same day, he was suspended from the priesthood.

Since the vow of celibacy for clergy is an iron law in the Roman Catholic Church, it is an absolute requirement for young men wishing to become ordained as priests. However, a life of celibacy cannot be regarded as a commandment from God, since it is not specifically called for in the Bible.

It was probably economic considerations which lay behind the decision to make celibacy obligatory in the 12th century; priests were thus unable to pass on church property to their descendants.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, celibacy is seen as a gift and a symbol of God's closeness and faithfulness. A celibate priest can give himself completely to God and concentrate on pastoral care without disruptions from married life.

A group made up of Catholic priests and their wives has been fighting against celibacy in Germany for over 25 years. Members estimate that not even 50 percent of priests in the country stay celibate.

Willing to remain

Abandoning the ministry does not come into question for many priests, and there is also a fear of social fallout. Priests are not insured against unemployment and only have minimal pension rights. They also lack experience with the working world outside the church.

"As a result, many priests have kept their relationships and children hidden," says Wendeler.

He and his wife did not have to be so secretive. Wendeler has now been married for twelve years and today works for an employment agency. However, if the church were ever to drop its celibacy requirement, he says he would gladly don the robes once again.

"I always loved preaching and I enjoyed the preparations for Mass."

Photo: Lydia Piechotta and Johannes Wendeler