Don't ask, don't tell: Spanish court upholds firing of married priest

This article is a summary (with commentary) in English of a Spanish article in El Pais, June 20, 2007, with additional materials from other news sources. Photo of Fr. Fernandez and his family courtesy of MOCEOP.

A constitutional tribunal in Spain has upheld the 1996 dismissal of a married priest from his position as religion and morals teacher in a Catholic institute in Murcia. The tribunal, which earlier this year also sided with the Church on the dismissal of another teacher for living with a man to whom she was not married, reiterated that it would not intervene in "intra-church" disputes.

This case has some curious aspects, however. First, it highlights the ridiculously long time it takes for the Church to rule on requests for dispensation. Fr. José Antonio Fernández, who was ordained in 1961, requested dispensation from his celibacy vows in 1984. The dispensation was not granted until 1997 -- 13 years later! In the meantime, Fr. Fernández married his wife in a civil ceremony and the couple went on to have five children.

The second REALLY interesting aspect of this case is that although Fr. Fernández had been married since 1985 and without having received a formal dispensation from Rome, his teaching contract was first granted in 1991-92 and renewed until 1996-97 even though his request for dispensation and his marital status were known to the diocese. It was only after a photo of Fr. Fernández and his family appeared in the local newspaper, La Verdad , on 11 November, 1996 in conjunction with an article about MOCEOP -- the optional celibacy movement in which Fr. Fernández is an activist, that the Cartagena Diocese fired Fr. Fernández for his participation in the optional celibacy movement, for making his situation "public and notorious" and "out of respect for the sensibilities of many parents who would be upset." The diocese added that "laicized priests are not permitted to teach classes in Catholic religion and morals except in very rare cases."

Oh, puhleeze... This case is not about whether a married priest is fit to teach Catholic high school students about morals. It's very much about the freedom of speech and association of people who work for Catholic institutions and the Church's desire not to be embarrassed by its employees publicly giving witness to its dysfunctional policies. And it has "HYPOCRISY" written all over it because Fr. Fernández would probably still be teaching today, had he not chosen to stand up for his family and his beliefs.

At Sisters' Reunion in Bowie, Memories of Lipstick and Love

By Avis Thomas-Lester
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 18, 2007; Page B01

They spread their picnic in the cemetery behind the old church in Bowie, six devoted sisters gathered to celebrate the life of the mother who had raised them on her own.

There was Laurie, who as a dance instructor taught boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard to waltz. There was Theresa, known to her sisters as "Tess the Mess" as a child, who had been working in the Brentwood post office when anthrax mailed by a madman spilled out of an envelope there nearly six years ago. There was Jean, the former nun who fell in love with a priest and married him and who beat cancer twice; Carol, the former model and mother of six who took 25 years to graduate magna cum laude from the University of Alabama; Christy, the retired technical writer for an aircraft manufacturer; and Marti, who looks most like the woman they gathered to honor.

When she died of heart failure three years ago at 86, Margaret Voith Thomas's girls pledged that they would have a reunion in her honor each year. The focal event of that reunion is a picnic, and for the second annual celebration Friday, they gathered at her grave behind the old Sacred Heart Church in Bowie.

Sitting on quilts made by the grandmother of Marti Wallen's husband, Barry, they giggled as they told story after story about their mother and their upbringing.

With white wine in crystal glasses, they toasted their mother, once a commercial artist for the old Hecht's department store in downtown Washington, who brought them up alone after their father walked out before Laurie was old enough to eat table food.

Over tuna sandwiches -- Margaret's favorite -- deviled eggs and Marti's peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies, they reminisced about their childhood and how, despite growing up "dirt poor," they always felt special and loved.
"I have fixed in my visual memory when we lived in a little, two-bedroom apartment. There were six of us then, and I remember Mom washing diapers and putting them through the wringer, then hanging them up with clothespins," said Jean Scanlan of Aurora, Ill. "She never complained."

Theresa Woodruff of Bowie said, "I remember her advice to us: 'Don't forget your lipstick!' " That drew laughs from her sisters. "As a matter of fact, now we are still really particular about our lipstick because of what she taught us. I never remember Mom not looking beautiful, and she taught us that, too."

Scanlan's husband, Bob, calls them "The Bevy of Beauties" -- six women who, as little girls, usually got new dresses only once a year but always went out clean and well-coiffed because of their mother's loving care. Now ages 56 to 69, they have produced 17 children and 15 grandchildren, with three on the way, taking care to lavish their offspring with the same attention that their mother showered on them.

According to the sisters, there were signs all around last week that their mother was with them. As they prepared to begin a ceremony that included reminiscences, prayers and each presenting their mother a rose, the church bells chimed. As they sat together, a blue jay perched on a nearby gravestone and appeared to watch the sisters.
"Mom always loved birds," said Carol Comlish, who lives in Kensington and Chesapeake Beach. "She always wanted to be a bird."

As they recalled their mother, stories of their modest childhood streamed forth. They remembered dinners where the seven family members shared two cans of Campbell's vegetable beef soup, with extra potatoes added to stretch the meal, and fried bologna sandwiches.

"We were dirt poor," said Comlish, shaking her head at the memory. "There were times when we would come home from school and the only thing that would be in the refrigerator would be mustard."
"We had cardboard in our shoes," Burdette added.

"The springs were coming up from the mattress," Comlish chimed in.

"But, every Easter, somehow she would buy us all beautiful dresses and march us into church," Laurie Thomas recalled.

"We made a statement, even back then," Wallen said. "Though we were the poorest of the poor, we had our heads held high because our mother always made us feel so special."

The women recalled their mother's love for a good book and a cup of hot tea, the scarves that adorned her neck and how she would use her employee discount to buy a few pieces in the bargain-basement section of Hecht's, bring them home and design beautiful ensembles.

"She always looked beautiful," said Thomas, who, as the only sister who didn't marry, continues the family name with pride.

Their mother supported the family as an artist, drawing models in clothes in fashion ads until photography ended her career, the women said.

"She took the civil service exam in her 60s and got a 92," Wallen recalled. "She went to work for the Federal Communications Commission as a secretary. She didn't even get her driver's license until she was in her 50s, because in the city, we went everywhere on streetcars and then on the bus."

Thomas remembered being 6 and her sister Christy Burdette accidentally cracking her head with a glass piggy bank. Their mother took Thomas to the hospital on the bus. "Here I am with this bloody bandage on my head, and we're on the bus," she said.

"She treated everything . . . " Thomas said.

"With alcohol!" the sisters added together.

"And she took out all stitches because we didn't have medical insurance to pay to go the doctor for things like that," Comlish said.

Now, with comfortable lives, they recall the closeness that those difficult days engendered. At 13, Tess became pregnant and was sent to live with her father in St. Louis. Forty-one years later, the son she gave up for adoption found her and has become part of her life.

The sisters talk frequently and visit each other often. They refer to themselves as "the upper three" -- the older sisters -- and "the lower three."

"Everything is three and three with us," Wallen said. "Blood type, those who use ice and those who don't, those who choose paper bags over plastic in the grocery store and those who don't, who has a college education and who drinks with a straw and who doesn't."

The sisters planned today, the last day of their reunion, to revisit their old home near Georgia Avenue and Kennedy Street NW and one in the 5400 block of Illinois Avenue NW. They also want to visit a Northwest Safeway store that they used to walk to with their mother before the family moved to Bowie in 1965.

Sitting on the deck of Wallen's home overlooking the Chesapeake Bay on Friday afternoon, the sisters discussed plans to give each other facials, play bocce ball, take dance lessons from Thomas and watch movies.

"When we all get together and talk about our mother, share our childhood again and our lives . . . there is a sort of wholeness that we get that takes us out of our separateness," Burdette said. "We feel that there is an entity that originated from where we came from, and our mother, and it takes on a life of its own."

They're talking about writing a book about it.

The tentative title, in honor of their mother: "Don't Forget Your Lipstick."

Reverend Father

By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise
Saturday, June 16, 2007

Photo: Fr. Jerry Ochetti and his daughter Diane.

Some parishioners do a double take when they glance at the wall above the Rev. Gregory Elder's desk at St. Adelaide Catholic Church in Highland.

Next to his diplomas is a photograph of a smiling Elder with a middle-age woman and two young adults.

The woman is Elder's wife. And the young people are the couple's children.

The Rev. Gregory Elder, of St. Adelaide Catholic Church in Highland, is a priest of the Diocese of San Bernardino. He has three children, among them his son William, 18. Elder, who is married, was an Episcopalian who converted to Catholicism.

"They have a 'what's going on here' look," Elder, 49, said of perplexed parishioners. "I normally ask them, 'Do you know my background?' If they say no, I say, 'I need to explain this picture.' "

Of 263 priests in the San Bernardino diocese, Elder is among the four who have children.

He is a former Episcopal priest who converted to Catholicism. The Rev. Jerry Ochetti is a divorcé who received an annulment. The Rev. Howard Lincoln, diocese spokesman, identified the third priest as the Rev. John Benjamin, who is no longer assigned to an individual parish but who fills in regularly for other priests. Benjamin's marriage also was annulled. Lincoln declined to provide details about the fourth.

According to its official teaching, the Catholic Church has mandated celibacy for priests since 1139, to ensure they have a single-minded devotion to serving God. Elder received a rare dispensation that allows Episcopal priests who are married to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it is probably more common today for priests to have kids than in the past, even though their numbers remain small.

Recently ordained priests tend to be older than their predecessors, so they are more likely to have married and become fathers, Walsh said.

The Parenting Experience

Ochetti spent 25 years managing ice-cream parlors and doughnut shops, and working as a computer consultant before he felt a calling to the priesthood. Ochetti, 54, is now associate vocation director at Blessed Junipero Serra House in Grand Terrace, where he provides spiritual guidance to men on the path toward priesthood.

Ochetti's 1986 divorce and subsequent annulment spurred him to reflect on his life. About 10 years ago, Ochetti told his daughter that was planning to become a priest.

Diane Ochetti, now 29 and living in Redlands, was stunned -- and worried.

"I was afraid I wouldn't see him anymore," Diane Ochetti said as she sat with her father on a sofa at Serra House on a recent afternoon. "I didn't know if it would be a taboo issue to be seen with him, which turned out to be completely contrary to the way it is."

Far from tearing Jerry and Diane Ochetti apart, his immersion into religious life brought them closer together.

Before Jerry Ochetti became a priest, Diane Ochetti avoided asking him for advice on personal matters. She saw him as a disciplinarian, not a counselor.

"I can come to him for any problem I have," she said. "Before, I had a deep appreciation and respect for him. But I saw him as the authoritative figure."

Ochetti said he learned in the seminary to listen more carefully to people's problems and to allow them to work out their own solutions to difficulties, rather than just issuing top-down directives, as he did as a manager of businesses -- and as a father.

Ochetti counsels many people, including members of a Redlands parish where he used to serve. He said he advises non-family members the same way he counsels his daughter.
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Diane Ochetti said she doesn't mind sharing her father with so many others. She realizes that her relationship with him is special.

"He's not Father Jerry to me," she said. "He's my dad. I have experiences with him that no one else has, and no one else ever will have. And I will continue to have those experiences with him that others will never have, as my father, not as a priest."

Ochetti said having a daughter makes it easier for some parents to relate to him. He can use his own parenting experiences when counseling people.

Even so, both he and Elder said they support the church's rule requiring celibacy for the vast majority of priests.

Every priest gleans more insights about human nature and becomes a better counselor to all types of people as he gains greater experience helping others, Elder said.

Episcopal Exemption

Elder is one of only about 80 married former Episcopal priests in the United States who have received papal permission to serve as Catholic priests, said the Rev. William Stetson, director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.

The special exemption exists for Episcopal priests -- and not most other denominations -- because of the similarities between rites in the Episcopal and Catholic churches, said Stetson, who helps review applications from Episcopal clergy who want to become Catholic priests.

Elder said that, although he felt a calling to become a Catholic priest, it would have been a more difficult decision if his children had been younger when he was ordained. Today, daughter Mary is 20 and son William is 18.

The primary reason for the celibacy rule is so priests can devote their lives to serving God and the church, he said. A good father, though, is actively involved in his young children's lives, Elder said.

"Having a father who's a priest and an absentee dad isn't going to do anyone any good," he said.

As an Episcopal priest, Elder had to balance the responsibilities of being a religious father and a biological one. Yet the time demands of an Episcopal priest typically are not as great as those on a Catholic priest, he said.

Catholic parishes are usually much bigger than Episcopal ones, said Elder, who went from overseeing an Episcopal parish of about 250 families to serving his Catholic parish of 2,400 families in Highland.

William Elder said there are advantages to having a priest as a father. In a high-school lesson on European history, William's teacher mentioned John Calvin's theory of double predestination, that some souls are destined to end up in heaven and others in hell.

That night, William asked his father about the Catholic perspective on the matter, which he discovered is that God wants everyone to be saved and that one's faith and actions determine salvation.

"It's convenient to have a theologian whose brain I can pick at the dinner table," he said.

In some matters, it is better to separate the duties of a father and a priest, Gregory Elder said. For example, if he found out one of his children was using drugs, he would react differently as a father than as a priest. That's why, even though he regularly offers his children advice, he sends them to another priest for confession.

"Confession is not the place for punishment," Elder said. "Confession is the place for forgiveness. A priest is there to forgive and say God loves you unconditionally. A father is there to do that as well, but also to be a disciplinarian."

McKinney’s Dean Pratt chronicles his journey

By Emily Spitz,
McKinney Courier-Gazette (TX)
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

At first glance, the Rev. Dean Pratt may appear non-conventional. As a married priest, he has sparked some debate among Catholics, but he says the majority of people are very accepting of him and his wife.

He describes his experiences and thoughts in his new book, “Gleanings from the Journey of a Married Priest and his Artist Wife.” Pratt began actively working on the book two years ago, but said it has been in the making for 40 years. The book goes back through his life as a religious and community leader, and is illustrated with his wife’s paintings.

“I thought I’d learned some things I wanted to share,” he said. “I tried to include things that were real learning experiences for me.”

Pratt attended seminary at age 35, after studying to become a lawyer.

“I found that I was more concerned with what’s fair and what’s right and wrong,” he said, explaining his decision to leave law school.

Originally a pastor at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, he converted to Catholicism in 1980. Pratt married his wife, Barbara, before converting to the Catholic Church.

Pratt said the switch was hard, but that he believed the Catholic Church needed him more because there was a shortage of priests.

His goal was not to become a pastor, but to go where the church needed him. Pratt helps as a priest at St. Michael’s Catholic Church, and is an on-call chaplain for Medical Center of McKinney. He worked as a police and hospital chaplain for 14 years.

Pratt described his experiences with life and death as a chaplain as a “sacred role,” adding, “You’re with people during the dearest times in life.”

Many stories in the book focus on lessons he learned as a hospital chaplain. One focuses on a young woman dying of cancer who blinks to communicate that she wants to be taken off a ventilator and allowed to die. Pratt tells about his moving experience with the woman and her family who didn’t want to let go.

“It is one of those stories a priest never forgets,” he says in Gleanings.

“You learn a lot about evil and the nature of human beings, but you also learn about love,” Pratt said. “I can’t put a price on these experiences.”

Gleanings is available at http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=34136. After some disagreements with the publisher, Pratt and his wife paid to publish about 50 advance copies of the book themselves.

“It’s been quite an experience,” he said. “I’ve worked my tail off.”

One hundred new priests a year in France

PARIS (AFP) - 13/06/2007 09h16

Translation from French by Rebel Girl, with statistical updates from the CEF Web site.

The priesthood no longer tempts many people in France: only about a hundred young men a year choose "serving God and the Church" while at the same time about 500 priests leave their parishes due to old age or death.

Twelve new priests will be ordained at Notre Dame in Paris on June 23rd. Last year there were 8, and 94 in France as a whole. Since 1995, the number of ordinations has wavered between 142 (in 2000) and 90 (in 2004), and in 2006 there were none in 46 of the 99 French diocese.

If this phenomenon were transitory, we would speak of a "crisis in vocations" but we are more at the chronic illness stage. The situation can be exaplined by the physical difficulty of the role (a larger and larger mission territory and too many duties), fatigue and spiritual isolation, the priests themselves answered in a survey by the Association protection sociale et caisse des cultes (APSECC).

This survey suggested that priests should have vacations, live elsewhere than at their place of work, prepare for their retirement, work in teams, and be able to frankly discuss their emotional and sexual lives.

They did not go so far as to demand the right to marry -- priestly celibacy remaining an untouchable rule. In any case the current pope is not opening any doors to discussion -- on March 13th in his first apostolic exhortation he reaffirmed the mandatory nature of celibacy.


However the hypothetical notion of married priests no longer causes scandal in France where 81% of Catholics are either "very" or "somewhat" in favor of it. Last April, parishioners in Asson (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) staged a "Mass strike" in solidarity with their priest, who was dismissed for living with a woman. And Abbé Pierre, who confessed to some deviations from celibacy, wrote to Pope Benedict XVI to recommend opening the priesthood to "fervent and capable married men."

Therefore the twelve new priests will take the celibacy vow. They range from 28 to 39 years in age, says the Archdiocese. They come from very different families, have pursued studies, and some had even started professional careers before entering the seminary.


The CEF [French Bishops' Conference] made a detailed study of the first year seminary class in 2005. They were 28 years old on average, had been baptized before the age of two (90%), came from Catholic families (over 80%) and half of them had received the call to vocation at between 11 and 20 years of age. Their primary motivation is to "serve the Church, God and others" (21%), before "giving themselves over completely to God" (15%) and "evangelizing, making Christ known" (13%).

In 2005 (the latest statistics from the CEF), there were 15,957 diocesan priests (working in parishes), most of them over 60 years old, as opposed to 37,555 in 1970, thus a decrease of over 20,000 in 35 years. Consequently there are only 9,000 parishes for 36,000 communities and many missions have been forever entrusted to deacons who perform some religious functions such as baptism and preaching, whose numbers increased from 11 in 1970 to 1,958 in 2005.

As for the replacement of French priests by foreigners (Vietnamese, African, Polish) this has only been marginal, says CEF without giving exact numbers.

Jo'burg parish calls for married Catholic priests

Mail & Guardian
June 8, 2007

Parishioners of a Johannesburg Roman Catholic church, concerned at a growing shortage of priests, have challenged church authorities to allow priests to marry.

The proposal is made in a "discussion document" compiled by a working group of the pastoral council of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Rosebank.

The document has been presented to the Catholic Bishop of Johannesburg, Buti Tlhagale, and was published across two pages of the latest edition of the SA Catholic newspaper, the Southern Cross.

The parishioners said in it that they were extremely concerned about the growing shortage of priests in their diocese and worldwide.

The document said that while celibate priesthood should be encouraged, the "current discipline" of celibacy was restrictive, and inconsistent within the church.

There were already many priests in the church who married before becoming Catholics, and were still married, while there were also many married priests in the Eastern, as opposed to Roman, rites of the church.

The document pointed out that since 1962, about 110 000 priests had abandoned their vocation, and many people probably wanted to become priests but did not possess "the gift of celibacy".

It said that of the 110 parishes in the Johannesburg diocese, 15 were now forced to share priests.

Of the 135 religious priests, as opposed to those attached to the diocese, just over half were over 75, or engaged in other ministries and not available for parish work.

"By 2015, which is less than ten years away, 71 of the 180 current priests in the diocese will be over 75," the document said.

"We, the members of the church, are concerned about this and want to know what those in charge intend doing about the situation."

The issue of celibacy in the Roman Catholic church has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, particularly following the controversy over the former archbishop of Zambia, Emmanuel Milingo, who married a much younger Korean bride.

In November last year, the Vatican issued a statement referring "the value of the choice of priestly celibacy".

It said it would examine requests by priests wishing to marry and requests for re-admission by clergy who had married in recent years.

However, it emphasised there was no change in "the current discipline" on celibacy.

Priests of the Roman rite promise to remain unmarried and chaste for life. -- Sapa

CELAM and celibacy: The hierarchy still doesn't get it

Nowhere has the connection between mandatory celibacy, the lack of vocations, the priest shortage, and the loss of the faithful and their ministers to the evangelical churches been more obvious than in the Americas. Yet, as far as can be discerned from the document emerging from the 5th CELAM Conference in Aparecida, Brazil, -- a copy of which has been leaked and posted on the Estado da Sao Paulo newspaper Web site -- Pope Benedict XVI was successful in getting these bishops to ignore the evidence in their own backyard and continue to embrace an archaic, Euro-centered model of the priesthood which ultimately does not and cannot serve the Catholic Church of the future on our continent.

Among the conclusions pertaining to celibacy:


212. En particular el presbítero es invitado a valorar, como un don de Dios, el celibato que le posibilita una especial configuración con el estilo de vida del propio Cristo y lo hace signo de su caridad pastoral en la entrega a Dios y a los hombres con corazón pleno e indiviso. "En efecto, esta opción del sacerdote es una expresión peculiar de la entrega que lo configura con Cristo y de la entrega de sí mismo por el Reino de Dios"(87). El celibato pide asumir con madurez la propia afectividad y sexualidad, viviéndolas con serenidad y alegría en un camino comunitario(88).

212. In particular, the priest is invited to value, as a gift from God, celibacy which enables him to shape himself to the lifestyle of Christ himself and is a sign of pastoral caring in surrendering himself to God and to men with a full and undivided heart. "In effect, this choice by the priest is a special expression of the surrender that conforms him to Christ and the giving of himself for the Kingdom of God" (87). Celibacy demands taking responsibility maturely for one's own emotions and sexuality, living them with serenity and joy on a communal journey (88).

Further down in the document, the bishops raise the topic again in the context of priestly formation:


335. Se deberá prestar especial atención al proceso de formación humana hacia la madurez, de tal manera que la vocación al sacerdocio ministerial de los candidatos llegue a ser en cada uno un proyecto de vida estable y definitivo, en medio de una cultura que exalta lo desechable y lo provisorio. Dígase lo mismo de la educación hacia la madurez de la afectividad y la sexualidad. Esta debe llevar a comprender mejor el significado evangélico del celibato consagrado, a acogerlo con firme decisión y a vivirlo con serenidad y con la debida ascesis en un camino personal y comunitario, como entrega a Dios y a los demás con corazón pleno e indiviso.

335. Special attention should be paid to the process of human formation towards maturity, such that the vocation to priestly ministry of the candidates becomes a stable and definite life goal in each one of them, amid a culture that upholds the disposable and the provisional. The same can be said for aducation towards sexual and emotional maturity. This should lead to a better understanding of the evangelical significance of consecrated celibacy, to welcoming it with a firm decision and living it with serenity and due asceticism in both the personal and the communal journey, as a surrender to God and to others with a full and undivided heart.

Readers should note that these are my personal unofficial translations of this document, which will presumably be released in English at some point after the Pope approves the official original Spanish version. However, there is no reason to believe that the Pope would change either of these sections since they accurately reflect his own opinions on the subject.

It's lovely and poetic and some people really do have the gift of celibacy and sacrificing a family life for service to God and others. God bless them. However most men don't and the results are:

1. A shortage of priests and vocations, closed and/or merged parishes, faithful who cannot find a priest and receive the sacraments and therefore leave the Catholic Church for other faiths;

2. Priests who are overworked and lonely; and that loneliness leads to unhealthy lifestyles and chronic health problems;

3. Priests who routinely violate their celibacy vows, father children, and force the women they love into leading clandestine lives.

Why can we not simply wake up, look at the data, and admit that mandatory celibacy doesn't work, has never worked, and is contributing to the decline of the Catholic Church? Y por que nuestros obispos no pueden mirar la evidencia y tener el valor de decir la verdad al Vaticano? Why can they still not stand up to the Vatican and tell the truth?

To marry or not: For Catholic priests, that is not the question

by GREGORY ELDER
Redlands Daily Facts
Article Launched: 06/07/2007

Note: This article was interesting to me because the writer is a professor of history and religion at Riverside Community College and a married priest -- a former Episcopalian priest who was received into the Roman Catholic priesthood in the Inland diocese (Riverside and San Bernardino, CA) in 2005 under the Pastoral Provision. He is married to Sarah O'Brien and the couple have two children. Interestingly, one of Fr. Elder's reasons for converting to Catholicism was that his wife was Catholic.

In an earlier article in The Press-Enterprise describing his own experience, Fr. Elder notes that there have been historical precedents to the Pastoral Provision. He said that "after the French Revolution, Catholic priests who had been forced to marry were allowed to rejoin the priesthood without leaving their families. And, after World War I, married German Lutheran priests were also allowed to convert and become Catholic priests without abandoning their spouses."


Q: I read somewhere that the early church fathers were all married men. Was that true? If so, what prompted the change to celibacy and when did it take place - and why? As one of the few married priests in the world, and with the paucity of men entering the priesthood, do you think you represent the future?

A: Today's question came to me by e-mail from a local radio station, and so let me give a quick reply before a more thoughtful discussion: no and no. But I am asked this set of questions rather a lot. It is a very controversial issue and there are whole Web sites, some better informed than others, which discuss the issue.

Celibacy in the clergy was common in the early church but it was not mandatory for a long while. It is an axiom among Protestants and evangelicals today that marriage must have been the rule for clergy and celibacy the exception, and it is equally axiomatic among Catholic writers that celibacy was the norm and marriage was the exception.

Certainly both existed but we do not have records to prove what was the more common. Paul the apostle tells us that he was single, but he also adds that Peter was married. (I Corinthians 9:5) But we certainly cannot say that they "all" were married or single. For the cultural reasons listed below, as a historian, I believe married priests were present, but not common in the early church.

It is certainly a fact that there were once married clergy, whatever their numbers, but they faded away. When we look at the age of the church fathers in the fourth century and beyond, men such as Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Augustine and Jerome were almost all single. There were exceptions, however. St Gregory of Nyssa, as late as the fourth century, was married at one time, but he is the exception.

The earliest known rule of mandatory celibacy of the clergy was issued at the Council of Elvira in A.D. 306, when clergy in what is now Spain were ordered to be single under pain of deposition. A similar proposal was made at the universal ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325, but this was rejected and not put into canon law. In 386 Pope Siricus ordered the Roman clergy to be celibate, but the fact that the decree had to be reissued by Pope Innocent I after A.D. 402 suggests that the earlier decree might not have been completely obeyed.

Leo the Great, after his election in A.D. 440, had to repeat the command yet again but went on to add the priests' wives were not to be put away, but thoughtfully added that they live as brother and sister. Soon after this, bishops in Gaul began to require married men and their wives to take vows of celibacy if the men were to be ordained, and many of the women were sent to convents. After this there were repeated attempts to stamp out clerical marriage in the West, and the Second Lateran Council in 1139 ended the debate by decreeing that any marriage of a priest was invalid.

It is worth noting that this rule of celibacy was imposed in Western Christianity and not the east. In the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and in the Orthodox Church even today, married men may become priests, although never bishops, and if a priest's wife dies, he must remain single. In the West, every couple of centuries or so, a few married men are given papal approval to be ordained, but they are very few in number, and the same rule of the Eastern Church applies to them about never being able to remarry. I make a point of seeing that my wife takes her daily vitamins.

Why was this rule of celibacy common in antiquity and mandatory in medieval times? There are many reasons, of which the imitation of Christ is not the least. Another factor in antiquity was the profound influence of Platonic philosophy on early Christianity, which taught that the material and physical world were always inferior to the spiritual world. With the rise of Christianity in Roman times, this Platonic view was translated by the church into the dimension of human sexuality. In later centuries, the Protestant reformers would regard the influence of Greek philosophy as a danger which could corrupt the biblical faith and they rejected celibacy wholesale. Luther had some particularly crisp things to say about monasticism.

A significant and often unmentioned fact is that the medical knowledge of the Graeco-Roman world was rather eccentric by modern standards. It was a widespread belief among secular and pagan Roman doctors that regular sexual activity made men gradually more weak and stupid as time went on. Their colorful reasons for this medical opinion are not appropriate for a family newspaper, but in point of fact, Roman doctors advised gentlemen to sleep with their wives not more than once a month.

Even active-duty soldiers in the Roman army were forbidden to marry until the third century A.D., and this permission was granted by Septimus Severus only because he was short on legionaries and he wanted the troops to breed more. In most of the period of the late Republic and the Empire, Caesar wanted a lean, mean fighting machine on the Rhine frontier. This caution about sexuality was probably absorbed by the early church.

This historical background should not obscure the fact that celibacy has benefited the Catholic Church over the centuries, whatever its short-term challenges. A monastic clergy kept learning and literature alive for a thousand years in medieval times, and the Bible itself would have been lost were it not for the celibates of the church. Single missionaries have been dispatched to the far reaches of the globe in the past four centuries, which made Catholicism the largest church in the world and took the word of faith to many who might not have heard it.

Generations of poor Americans, often immigrants at the bottom of the social spectrum, were educated by armies of selfless religious sisters. Even today the role of celibate religious sisters should not be disrespected or underestimated. When one of my very secular friends complained to me that Catholicism had no role for women, I could make only one reply, which any priest would see the point of. I said, "Who do you think is running the machine today?"

I could never say that a single clergy was the only model of ministry. But, I would have to add, it has much good over time.

It is the task of theologians to advise us on how the church ought to be run in the future. It is the task of bishops to tell us how it will be run now.

And it is the vocation of historians to say how it has run in the past. I am the latter. So I called upon my friend, the Rev. Dr. Paul Granillo, pastor of the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Redlands and a doctor of canon law. I put the question to him, that, given the Pastoral Provision, will there be a change in the policies of the church in the future, i.e. married priests? He replied, "The Pastoral Provision is an exception to the rule of celibacy, and represents no change to mandatory celibacy for priests in the Roman Catholic Church."

Then why does Rome allow a tiny number of exceptions to the rule? Father Paul replied, "The Pastoral Provision exists because of the close historical and sacramental ties between the Latin Church and the Anglican Communion and the desire of the Latin Church to acknowledge those ties and provide a place for those Anglican men who feel called to the Roman Catholic Priesthood."

So to answer the original question with a negative, I do not think a change is coming. If a change were in the works, Father Paul would know of it.

As for me, I work for a kind Irish religious sister, and I have a wife, a daughter and two little cats. These five females manage to keep this priest well in line with the policies of the church.


Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor of history and humanities at Riverside Community College. You can write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375, or send e-mail to Gnyssa@verizon.net

'Pope's pastor' is father of three-year-old child

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
National Catholic Reporter
New York
Posted on Jun 1, 2007

In the wake of revelations that he is the father of a three-year-old girl, the popular pastor of a parish in Valle d’Aosta in Northern Italy, where both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have spent their summer vacations, will take a year-long sabbatical to reflect on his future as a Catholic priest.

Fr. Paolo Curtaz is a well-known figure in Italian Catholicism, the author of several books and a popular spiritual guide who maintains a web site with homilies and materials for retreats (http://www.tiraccontolaparola.it/). The Italian bishops’ conference recently used Curtaz in an advertising campaign designed to encourage Italians to designate a portion of their tax payments for the church.

When Benedict XVI arrived in Valle d’Aosta for his summer vacation in 2005, Curtaz jokingly welcomed him by saying, “Your Holiness, be careful, because while you’re here I’m your pastor.” Benedict responded by pledging to be “an obedient parishioner.” Curtaz exchanged similar words with John Paul II in 2004.

This week, however, news broke that Curtaz had stepped down as pastor of his parish, and will take a year-long sabbatical to reflect on his future. During this period, according to the agreement between Curtaz and his bishop, Giuseppe Anfossi of Aosta, the priest is not to exercise any public ministry.

The move follows disclosures that Curtaz, 41, is the father of a three-year-old female child. The identity of the mother has not been revealed, but Italian news reports suggest it’s a local woman in her 40s.

A statement released by the Aosta diocese on May 31 said that Curtaz has not been suspended and that he remains bound by all the obligations of the priestly office. Further, the statement indicated, his status as a father is not incompatible with his identity as a priest; living together with the woman involved, on the other hand, or further violations of his obligations of celibacy, would not be acceptable.

“We will help Fr. Paulo in his journey of thinking and deciding about his priestly ministry,” the statement said.

The Code of Canon Law does not contain any penalties for priests with children, but it does provide for sanctions against priests who marry contrary to their vows of celibacy.

In an e-mail sent on Thursday to around 45,000 subscribers to his web site, Curtaz wrote, “I am a priest, I remain a priest, and I want to be a priest.”

“For me, what’s under discussion is not celibacy, but how I can live, if possible, my profound call without abdicating my responsibilities [as a father] which, believe me, I’ve always undertaken with conviction and effort,” he wrote.

“I want to confirm that I’m serene in my convictions and in my choices, and that the difficulty, in any case, is being created by this pernicious and insistent violation of privacy, my own and that of those I love. I’m unhappy that these events may have caused anyone to suffer, and for that I ask forgiveness.”

“As you’ve seen, I ended up on the front pages of national newspapers on a wave of gossip, this time clerical gossip,” Curtaz wrote. “The news of my resignation as pastor, which was confirmed by the statement of the curia, was something everyone already knew. What’s less known is the fact that, in harmony with the bishop and following a long and sincere discernment, I have arranged a sabbatical year of reflection.”

Curtaz added that the choice “belongs exclusively to my private sphere as a man and a priest, and all the attempts to dredge up details surrounding what happened should be named for what they are: gossip.”

Curtaz added that he wanted to “reassure the many persons who have been upset by the frenzy of news that has come out, and to thank people for their many expressions of esteem.”

“What’s under discussion for me,” Curtaz wrote, “is what I want to reflect on during this year – how I can exercise my ministry in this church that I have served, and that I love loyally, and if this church needs what I’m in a position to give.”

“Everything else,” Curtaz added, “belongs to the most intimate sphere of conscience that every human being should respect, and to the interior journey of every believer.”

“I’m going through a difficult moment,” Curtaz wrote. “Prayer for one another, which is born in the heart and leads to the truth, is a beautiful gift that believers give to one another.”

Fr. Ted Hesburg Speaks Out on a Married Priesthood

Approaching his 90th Birthday, Father Ted Hesburg, former president of Notre Dame University, spoke out on the state of the Church. Things are changing, Fr. Hesburg suggests - the Spirit is at work, and it's time for a married priesthood to again become normative in the church, as it was during the first thousand years of its existence. Fr. Hesburg says he shudders to think of millions of Catholics going without the Eucharist because there aren't enough priests...
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=10354109
And to this, Fr. H, we should add that it's time to welcome the ministry of women too! If fact, that time is long past due!

Fr. Hesburg's interview is attached as a link, it's well worth a viewing.

Click on the title of this article to watch!

Priests without borders

By Rochelle Hentges
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Michael Clarke, 32, and his fiance, Lynn Dixon, 34, were raised Roman Catholic. They want to raise their children the same way.

But they can't be married in the Roman Catholic Church. Dixon had been in a previous marriage, and the church forbids divorced couples to remarry in an official church ceremony. So the Allison Park couple began looking for priests who would conduct a traditional Catholic wedding ceremony outside the church.

"It wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be," Clarke said. But then Dixon stumbled upon www.rentapriest.com, an online directory of more than 300 married priests across the country willing to perform services traditional priests can't or won't.

While the concept sounds kind of like a sacrilegious Rent-A-Center, it's actually a spiritual quest to aid couples or individuals in finding a priest to help them in their time of need, said Louise Haggett, who founded the nonprofit organization.

"They're like priests without borders," Haggett said.
Church canon law stipulates once a priest, always a priest, Haggett said, and they can perform valid sacraments in times of emergency. Haggett contends the priest shortage has left the Catholic Church in a constant state of emergency.

"That is a stretch and somewhat naive," said Fr. James Wehner, director of the St. Paul Seminary. An emergency would be if a car accident happened in front of a married priest and the priest was there to offer the "last rites" to a dying person, Wehner said.

Although Rent A Priest weddings are legal and binding, they are not recognized as being valid by the Catholic Church, he said.

Since 1996, Rent A Priest members have performed more than a quarter of a million baptisms, weddings, funerals and anointing of the sick, Haggett said.

On Friday, Clarke and Dixon were married in North Park by the only Western Pennsylvania member of Rent A Priest, William Podobinski, who was ordained in 1973 but then married a nun, Donna, in 1984.

"After we got married, half my family would have nothing to do with me," Podobinski said. "A lot of people that I was associated with in the church wouldn't have anything to do with us."

After marriage, the couple settled on the South Side and tried to resume their religious activities. "We were very open and honest about who we were," he said. "Every Catholic Church there on the South Side Flats told us we would be a scandal coming to church."

The Podobinskis, of Baldwin, now attend Christ Hope Ecumenical Catholic Church, which was founded by Catholics who felt some of the traditional Roman Catholic rules were arbitrary and man-made.

Haggett, who formed Rent A Priest in 1992, after her ill mother had trouble finding priests who could deliver communion and blessings to her in the senior care center.

"Had I known there were married priests around, I would have engaged one to come and visit my mom," she said. "But it never happened. She didn't see a priest until she was comatose in the hospital."

Clarke said the marital status of Podobinski wasn't a concern to him and Dixon.

"We want to raise our kids Catholic, but some of the things we just don't agree with. One of the things is I believe priest should be able to get married," Clarke said. "If they don't allow priests to marry, they're not going to have priests."


Facts and figures

• The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has 214 parishes and 282 active priests. Officials project that within five years it will have fewer active priests than parishes.
  
  
• In 1985, there were 57,317 priests and 1,051 parishes without a resident priest. By 2005, there were 42,839 priests and 3,251 parishes without a priest in residence.
  
  
• 71 percent of priests polled by the Los Angeles Times said they would "definitely" choose to become a priest if they had to choose again. Seven percent said they would choose a different vocation.
  
  
• Nine out of 10 priests who leave clerical priesthood do so to get married.
  
  
• Married priests are the norm among Eastern Rite Catholics in their homelands in eastern Europe and the Middle East.
  
  
• Because of the priest shortage, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has begun appointing "parish life collaborators" to oversee day-to-day pastoral care and administration of the building.

Sources: Tribune-Review research, Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Associated Press

"Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes" wins 2007 IPPY

The 11th Annual IPPY Awards (The Independent Publishers Book Awards) have awarded the prestigious Gold Medal prize to the critically acclaimed "Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse" (Volt Press, 2006). Written by well-known authors/experts Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, A.W. Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall, the authoritative book captured the top prize in the Religion category.

For more information view the IPPY Awards press kit or visit the blog connected with this book.

Philippines: Pampanga’s Best or Church’s Disgrace?

Update: Fr. Panlilio won the gubernatorial election in spite of the predictions in the article below. What is most astonishing about this article is the bishop's willingness to admit that one third of the priests in his area have broken their celibacy vows (highlighted) -- this in one of the most conservative Catholic countries in the world.

By Aries Rufo in San Simon, Pampanga
Newsbreak
Monday, 07 May 2007

It is easy to get carried away by the gubernatorial candidacy of Pampanga Catholic priest Eddie Panlilio. The exceptional support generated by the province’s poster boy for alternative politics has been widely reported in the media. Rich and poor, the influential and the ordinary, contribute their share to his campaign.

Some have described Panlilio’s candidacy as Pampanga’s version of people power, which is not entirely without basis.

Panlilio is up against two powerful interests: the incumbent Governor Mark Lapid and board member Lilia “Baby” Pineda. Both represent traditional politics, powered by money and patronage.

But his candidacy is double edged, as it has shown the influence of the Church as well as its divisions and weaknesses.

Panlilio has unwittingly divided the Church, one bishop told Newsbreak. His critics, including from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, say Panlilio is an “embarrassment” to the Church.

“He is showing a bad example to his fellow priests that it is okay to abandon your priestly vocation in favor of ambition,” the bishop said. “And we are not trained for politics.”

Open Target

Under Church laws, priests and bishops may not assume public positions that exercise civil power, a tenet in the separation of Church and State. In the Philippines, this Church prohibition has been challenged by other priests, running for elections anyway but, so far, none has won.

In this election, two other men of the cloth, one in Zamboanga and in Marinduque, are also seeking election. But Panlilio’s case dwarfs the other two, given the fact that pundits are giving him a good chance of winning. He could be the first Catholic priest to win an election.

One risk of entering a political campaign is that the candidate opens himself to personal attacks. Panlilio is an open target and this poses a problem, the bishop interviewed by Newsbreak said. Any mudslinging could affect his colleagues and the Church by extension—and reopen old wounds.

For instance, shortly after he joined the race, text messages circulated that Panlilio allegedly had romantic flings and sired children.

Panlilio has denied the allegation, but the bishop maintains it is not without basis. The prelate pointed out that violations of the vow of celibacy have been a recurring problem among Pampanga priests, with 43 (out of 120 or so), involved in relationships or having children. (emphasis ours) The allegation against Panlilio has again highlighted this problem among the clergy in the province.

Panlilio admitted his romantic liaisons before a group of Protestant pastors who grilled him in one meeting where Newsbreak was present. The pastors, members of the Jesus is Lord Movement, were considering supporting Panlilio. One pastor asked Panlilio if the rumor that the priest has a family is true. Without confirming or denying the affairs, Panlilio replied: “I have had my mistakes. Who does not?”

He was categorical however in denying he had sired children.

Because of his past liaisons, the bishop doubts that Panlilio would be able to run the provincial government with a moral high ground. “His past and present relationships would be among those who will take part in dividing the spoils.”

Panlilio acknowledged that other fellow priests “think differently, but many are supportive of me.” His superior, Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, “respects my decision” although he suspended Panlilio’s priestly functions, like saying mass and hearing confessions.

If he loses, Panlilio said he can go back to being a priest...

More...

Pittsburgh's first priestless parish

Pete Browne sends this article about how the Pittsburgh diocese is dealing with the priest shortage.

This is great news from a number of perspectives - first it forces the Church to acknowledge and expand the role of women as leaders in the communty. It also points out that poverty of thought and paucety of courage in institutional Catholicism. With married priests willing to serve, and with women and married men ready to follow the call to priesthood, the church continues to cling to mandatory ceilbacy and to exclude women from the sacrament of orders. All the while parish communities go unserved or poorly served by the over worked and dwindling celibate male clergy. RH

Here's the article -

Speaking of Pittsburgh -- faced with an intensifying shortage of clergy, the diocese has named its first "parish life collaborator":

Sister Dorothy Pawlus, 49, will assume many of the administrative duties at St. Bartholomew Parish after the Rev. David J. Bonnar concludes his six-year term as pastor next month. Sacramental duties -- such as saying Mass, hearing confessions, and performing baptisms and weddings -- will be performed by the Rev. James A. McDonough of St. Regis Parish in Oakland.

The steady decline in the number of priests serving the diocese's 214 parishes prompted then-Bishop Donald Wuerl last spring to approve a plan to appoint parish life collaborators in parishes with no resident priest. Two dozen priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh serve as pastors for two or more parishes.

The parish life collaborator will have 40 responsibilities, including worship, education, pastoral service and administration.

"This is sort of a trial," said the Rev. Ronald P. Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese. "It's the first time in our diocese, the first time in the state of Pennsylvania, and we need to look at it and see if it is as effective as it can be."

In the year since the new position was announced, seven applicants -- two deacons, two lay women, a lay man and two nuns -- have been approved. Others will be announced in the months ahead.

"If there ever were enough priests in the future where we could staff parishes with priests, then it's possible that the role of the parish life collaborator would not be necessary any longer," Father Lengwin said. "But that's not the way the trend is going. We're expecting that there will be more parishes in the future that will also have parish life collaborators."

Father Lengwin said the diocese has high hopes for the program, which has been modeled after programs that have worked in other parts of the country for decades. And while Sister Dorothy is the first parish life collaborator, he said it would be wrong to place the burden of the local program's success on her.

"She's quite capable," he said, "but different parishes are unique in their own way. There's a lot of cooperation that needs to take place here."

'Many call me Father, but my kids call me Dad'

By Tom Groening
Bangor Daily News
Saturday, May 19, 2007

The title of Jim Lovejoy’s memoir says it all: "Many Call Me Father, But My Kids Call Me Dad — The Life Story of a Married Catholic Priest."

Lovejoy left the Catholic clergy in 1971 to marry Jackie, a former nun.

But Lovejoy still considers himself a priest, and as part of a network for married priests, he performs marriage ceremonies and baptisms.

The Lovejoys and their three children — standout students and athletes while in high school — were prominent in the Belfast area in the 1980s and early 1990s. Jim and Jackie operated the Hiram Alden Inn, a bed-and-breakfast, and Jim was executive director of the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce.

Few knew they were former priest and nun, until a newspaper story revealed their past. It wasn’t something they were hiding, the couple said in a telephone interview last week, and the disclosure — part of a series of stories relating to Valentine’s Day — gave their children leave to begin acknowledging and talking about mom and dad’s earlier lives.

"They thought they weren’t supposed to talk about it," Jim Lovejoy said, before the story was published.

The Lovejoys moved to Unity after their children left the midcoast, and in September, they relocated to Charleston, N.C., to be closer to them and the grandchildren.

Daughter Jennifer encouraged Jim to write his memoir. The Lovejoys return to Belfast on June 9 for a book-signing event at the Fertile Mind Bookshop. The couple said their children are proud of the spiritual commitment their parents made and the sacrifices and choices that accompanied them.

"Jennifer kept prodding me to do it," Lovejoy said of the book. Initially, he wrote a few pages for his children, but Jennifer persuaded him to write more and that there would be interest in his story.

"It’s personal," he said of the memoir, but it covers some interesting times, including the Vietnam War and the role of celibacy in the priesthood in Roman Catholicism.

"I was a little bit critical in some places of the institution, but I am not bashing the church," he said.

Jim, 78, was ordained a priest in 1956, not long after high school in Saugus, Mass. He felt it was his life’s calling, and he willingly accepted the church’s rules, including a life of celibacy.

But after meeting Jackie and feeling attracted to her, he questioned the celibacy requirement.

As he said in a 2002 interview: "I have a vocation to the priesthood. I don’t believe I have a vocation to celibacy."

Lovejoy was working with the Newman Society, a Catholic collegiate group, at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire and Stevens Point in the early 1970s when he met Jackie. On a Sunday morning in 1971, he gave a sermon announcing to the Catholic students and faculty who worshipped at the Mass he led that he would leave the priesthood.

The sermon text is in the book.

"It was the most difficult sermon I ever gave," he said. Rather than anger at the church’s strict celibacy rule, the sermon is imbued "with a kind of sadness," Lovejoy said, as he read and reflected on it now.

"I said, ‘I found a person who I love very much, and who loves me, and I believe I have the right to marry,’" he remembers.

The sermon contains "a frankness in what I saw the church was drifting towards," he said. That sermon still represents his feelings about the church and his belief that celibacy should not be required of priests. The policy was not adopted until some 1,100 years after Christ’s birth, he said.

Several students wanted to pressure the local bishop to allow Lovejoy to stay, but he dissuaded them from doing so. Chuckling, he recounted how he waited until after delivering the sermon to send the telegram to the bishop, announcing he was leaving to get married.

The book also touches on the intersection of politics and faith. While Lovejoy was still a priest on the college campus, members of the Students for a Democratic Society approached him about a demonstration.

"They came to me and asked if I would just say a prayer" on the steps of a building. He struggled with an answer, then finally agreed. Doing so ended a period in which he said he straddled positions on the Vietnam War and put himself squarely in the opposition.

"It had a dramatic impact," Lovejoy said, and in some ways empowered him to take other stands.

In recent years, the Lovejoys have gotten involved with a group called Celibacy Is The Issue — or CITI — which is a network of about 200 former priests who are now married. They maintain a "rent a priest" Web site through which they are sought to perform marriages and baptisms.

Lovejoy estimates he has performed 40 marriages and seven baptisms.

"The profile, I guess, would be a couple in their late 20s or early 30s, with both or one of them Catholic, but who have difficulties with the institutional church," he said of the people he marries. Some have been divorced and so are not eligible by church doctrine to be married in the church, but about half simply want an outdoor ceremony, something the Catholic church does not allow.

Lovejoy is not optimistic about the church changing to allow priests to marry, or even to take a smaller step, to allow former priests like him a role.

"It will take, probably, a pope who’s liberal to begin with, and who has a wider view of the world," he said. A recent trend he has noticed is younger priests who are very conservative and very much tied to tradition.

The book also alludes to the pedophile scandal within the church, which Lovejoy believes church leaders shamefully mishandled.

But rather than fight for change, Lovejoy will continue to do what he signed on for more than 50 years ago: ministering to fellow Catholics.

"We just provide a service when it’s needed," he said.

The book "Many Call Me Father, But My Kids Call Me Dad: The Life Story of a Married Catholic Priest" is being published by AuthorHouse books (authorhouse.com, $19.99 ISBN: 9781425984496). The book signing is 2-4 p.m. June 9, at the Fertile Mind Bookshop on Main Street in Belfast.

Photo of Fr. and Mrs. Lovejoy from Bangor Daily News

French villagers back priest with partner

A Catholic priest in south-west France has been forced out of the clergy after admitting to the Church authorities that he was having a sexual relationship with one of his parishioners. The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby says this has set off a fresh debate about celibacy in the Church.

There is a wonderful sense of stillness in the mountains overlooking the little village of Asson - a few swallows surf gently on the upwind currents and a shepherd sits quietly watching his flock of fat, thickly pelted sheep graze on the velvet grass.

It is a bit like one of those bucolic woodcut scenes you find in ancient bibles. But, in this religious landscape, those who break the rules are quickly cast asunder.

To a passer by, Fr Leon and his partner Marga probably look like any other middle-aged couple taking an evening stroll together.

He is twinkly eyed and looks a little like Dustin Hoffman. She seems warm and open and is still a very attractive woman. But in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, Leon and Marga are sinners.

'Closer to God'

For the past 22 years, the couple have been in a sexual relationship, which is forbidden to a Catholic priest who has vowed to remain celibate. Fr Leon admits he has broken his promise but claims that being in love has brought him closer to God and his congregation.


"I haven't been strictly faithful to all my vows," he says.

"And I worried that by breaking some of those vows I had hurt Our Lord. But I think God can see that my relationship with Marga has brought real fruits to the church - far from being a handicap to my mission as a priest, she's been a great support. I just wish the Church could see that."

There is no doubt that Fr Leon has been an excellent parish priest.

It is difficult to keep him focused on the interview I am trying to conduct with him because every five minutes a parishioner appears at the presbytery door with a hamper of food, a good luck card or a small child for him to bless or kiss goodbye.

Everyone is in tears, particularly when they hug Marga, who is herself overcome with emotion and sobbing.

Far from being seen as the wicked temptress, or the wanton Eve who lured a pure man of the cloth into tasting the forbidden fruit, Marga is seen among the villagers as a great friend. A devout Catholic herself, she is hurt by the Church's attitude to the man she loves.

'On strike'

"They have just thrown him away like a dirty thing," she tells me, her bottom lip trembling.

"When the Church told him they were sanctioning him and that he would no longer be able to say Mass, he was broken. The Church doesn't see that it's hurting so many people forcing him to leave his parish.


"I work with a lot of elderly folk who say their only comfort is knowing that Fr Leon will be with them when they die. Now they don't have anyone they trust to hold their hands at the end."

The parishioners have spent three weeks "on strike" - boycotting Mass and refusing to go to Church with the new priest.

I watched them make huge protest banners from bed sheets and hang them from the belfry and roof, turning Asson's 13th Century place of worship into a giant billboard.

For some it was the beginnings of a revolution, a backlash against hierarchical traditions they feel have long been outdated. For others, peeping timidly over their garden gates at the church walls, the banners were a step too far - a defacement (albeit a temporary one) of God's sacred house.

Praying at home

The parishioners are being torn between their love for Fr Leon and their sense of duty to God and slowly, they have begun returning to mass.

Fr Benat Segur, from a neighbouring parish, told me he hopes things will quieten down now.

While he was a friend of Father Leon's, a vow is a vow and you can no longer call yourself a Catholic priest if you take a girlfriend, he said. You have to become a Protestant.

Fr Leon and Marga do not go to Mass anymore.

Instead, they pray at home, reciting the Lord's Prayer together in a corner of their living room before a wooden statue of the Pyrenean saint St Jacques.

"St Jacques made a long pilgrimage across the mountains," Fr Leon reminds Marga, gently stroking away her tears.

"And if there are stones in our path, we'll be able to step over them together, won't we?"

When I had said goodbye, I went back up into the mountains, sat among the sheep and felt the stillness of the evening. Far away in the valley below, I could just pick out the banners on the church roof, silently flapping their protest to the heavens on high.

Photos from BBC News: Top: Fr. Leon and Marga; Bottom: Sign on parish church says "Parishioners: Obey, Pay, Shut Up"

The cruelty of celibacy can turn good men bad

by Ruaridh Nicoll
The Observer
Sunday May 13, 2007

There is a photograph of Father Gerry Nugent leaving the high court in Edinburgh that appears to show the epitome of the corrupted priest. It was taken after he had given evidence in the Angelika Kluk murder trial. Last week, he returned to court to be sentenced for contempt, having prevaricated while giving evidence during the original trial.

Now the former shepherd of St Patrick's in Glasgow's Anderston has only God to comfort him. On the instructions of Archbishop Mario Conti, he resigned as parish priest. When he claimed in court that he was employed by the archdiocese of Glasgow, he was corrected by the defence QC who told him that its chancellor, Monsignor Peter Smith, had said that priests are self-employed. The church put out a statement after the verdict: 'He has been retired.'

This turning away by the church is simple to understand. Nugent admitted having sex with Kluk, the Polish student who was killed in September and whose body was found in an annexe under the confessional. In court, he said this had happened three or four times and that he 'felt shame': 'I was disgusted at myself.' Since then, he has admitted to sleeping with prostitutes. The trial ended in the conviction of Peter Tobin, a 60-year-old handyman. Usually, such events reflect the banal awfulness of society, but this one reached for the other end of life in all its weird horror.

Anderston is home to Glasgow's red light district. It is also Glasgow's financial district. There is, one imagines, plenty of legitimate work here for a parish priest. St Patrick's is one of the few 18th-century buildings in the area. The M8 passes through the neighbourhood like a poison. Banned by his vows from marrying, Fr Nugent lived alone in apparent penury. He received £1,800 a year from the archdiocese. To survive on that, he relied on his parishioners' support, in their paying for services, in one-off gifts or in any other manner he could raise funds.

That comment by Smith is worth recalling. Nugent was self-employed. His job was to care for people in a tough area, to advise them on the misery of their own lives. Thanks to his vow of celibacy, he was meant to rely on the ecstasy of Christ for his support. He was employed in a lonely role, working an area full of prostitutes and businessmen. In this, he is hardly unique. It's difficult not to stand in awe at the commitment of those who are prepared to become parish priests in the Catholic church, the ones who can stay true to Jesus's teaching for such a pittance.

It is different if you become a power in the church. Then you can end up in Rome, working in exquisite surroundings. Not only that, but if you are a member of the Jesuits, you'll be surrounded by intellectuals with whom you can while away your days bathed in divine light. In Glasgow, Fr Nugent drank and called on prostitutes. Who can comprehend the sensation of falling that he must have experienced, the scale of his crisis?

Immediately after he stepped down from the witness box, I asked a spokesman for the archdiocese where Nugent was and he said he didn't know. In the statement Archbishop Conti finally released, he said: 'The church continues to have a duty of pastoral care for Father Nugent', before adding: 'However, it is for him to decide how he wishes to spend his retirement.'

Pastoral care? Smith might have been classifying a tax situation when he said the priest was 'self-employed', but his words rang horribly in my ear. It sounded as if the church was denying Fr Nugent. Conti's order that Nugent resign is understandable, but it makes me imagine the acerbic archbishop washing his hands.

The church might fairly ask what else it could do. Well, it could have looked after him better in the first place. How can a church that preaches communion allow a man to struggle in such a way? Nugent is an alcoholic who was sleeping with his parishioners (yes, that too) and with prostitutes, while drunk, in a big church at the heart of Scotland's biggest city.

Why didn't it know? Perhaps it was because he was self-employed on £1,800 a year. Now that manner of life is revealed, it's astonishing there are not more stories like this. In these secular times, the church is stretched. So it is not poverty that is to blame for this story, but the flaw in the Catholic priesthood, the demands of celibacy.

Clerics help the poor, tend to the emotionally, physically and mentally injured, look after the sick and the lonely. It is work others eschew. It is insane that the Catholic church refuses to allow its carers the comfort of someone who loves them, someone who will answer back with strength, someone human, after this work.

I know of a priest who lives with his housekeeper. He is a good man. Everybody in his parish knows about his situation. Nobody says anything. It's fine. It's a strange partnership, but the community understands that it is preferable to the cold, cruel, irresponsible relationship parish priests seem to have with a church that all but forces them into hypocrisy.

Camarillo priest first married man to be ordained in L.A. Archdiocese

I wanted to blog this one last article because of the photo of Fr. and Mrs. Lowe (by Lloyd Nakatani of the Camarillo Acorn) after the ordination with Cardinal Mahony behind them. We have to be able to visualize how life will be for all of us when the Church finally does away with mandatory celibacy (Yes. That's "when", not "if"!) — RG

By Ellie Hidalgo
The Camarillo Acorn
May 11, 2007


In a historic, joyful and solemn ceremony, Cardinal Roger Mahony ordained to the priesthood Father William Lowe, the first married and former Episcopalian priest to be so ordained in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, at Blessed Junipero Serra Church in Camarillo May 6.

"My friends, it is a great joy to be with you today on this very special and historic day here for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and to welcome into the presbyterate Bill Lowe," said the cardinal at the beginning of the liturgy. "We're happy to have his wife, Linda, family members and friends who have come. They are most welcome here. We're very pleased to have members of other faith traditions who are here as well."

The Sunday afternoon liturgy included scores of parishioners, Santa Barbara Region Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, 14 priests and a dozen deacons and their wives.

Lowe was accompanied by his wife, Linda, their three grown children, a soninlaw, a daughterinlaw and five grandchildren.

Also present were local Christian clergy, representatives of the Ventura County Interfaith Community and Lowe's former seminary dean from his days in the Episcopalian seminary more than 40 years ago.

Noting this unique moment of Christian celebration, Cardinal Mahony said the church welcomed Lowe's ordination "with great gratitude to almighty God, but also with great hopes and expectations, because you not only bring new things to us in your own person, family, but you also bring your own heritage of years past."

With a touch of SoCal humor, the cardinal compared the various Christian traditions as being on parallel freeway onramps.

"I know it is the fond prayer and hope of all of us in Christian communities that pretty soon all of these onramps might some day merge into one highway. We have a lot of parallel onramps at the moment that have not merged. . . . But today at least your onramp has merged with our onramp," said the cardinal.

"But we all look forward to the day when all of those onramps merge in the one uniting Christian Church throughout the world and continue to give forth testimony to the person and presence of Jesus in our lives and in our hearts. So I think your ordination today to the Catholic priesthood is a wonderful sign of that hope for the future."

Lowe, 68, served as an Episcopal priest for 27 years in Newton, Mass., before retiring and moving to Southern California with Linda, his wife of 44 years. The two were received into the Catholic Church while still living in Massachusetts.

Lowe's ordination is made possible by a pastoral provision issued by the late Pope John Paul II, which allows former Episcopalian priests to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood. Completion of the pastoral provision process took about five and a half years, during which he was ordained as a deacon last February.

Throughout the ordination ceremony a 60-person choir led the congregation in song and praise. Parishioners gave Lowe a standing ovation when he was first presented to the cardinal as a candidate for the priesthood.

Lowe then solemnly prostrated himself in front of the altar as the Litany of the Saints was sung. He received the laying on of hands by the cardinal and his fellow priests. Tears streamed down his face as he knelt in front of the cardinal.

After Linda helped Lowe put on his chasuble and stole she gave him a spontaneous kiss which was caught on microphone and reverberated throughout the church.

Parishioners, taking in the newness of the moment, chuckled and then broke into a spirited applause.

Parishioner Helen Burger called the ordination "wonderful."

"He's a family man, and he can take care of families," said Burger, 79. "I'm of an older generation, but I still like this. [Bill and Linda] are a very lovable couple."

Lowe's daughters Hilary Long and Jennifer Lowe both said their highlight was receiving Communion from their father. "It was so special knowing what this means to him," said Long, who lives in Santa Barbara.

Son Chris Lowe, who lives in Whittier, said he never dreamed in a thousand years that his father would one day become a married Catholic priest. On the other hand, he noted, "with my parents nothing is done on a small scale. Everything is done with great gusto."

Grandson Sebastian, 11, said he enjoys eating ice cream and talking with his grandfather and getting to buy prank toys with his grandmother.

As a priest, his grandfather "helps a lot of people," said Sebastian.

In the growing and vibrant community of Camarillo, Lowe was quickly pressed into service. In his first week as a Catholic priest he presided at a funeral and celebrated two weekday Masses at the parish as well as Mass at La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks.

He was planning to hear confessions on Saturday, and Sunday he is set to offer the Mass of Thanksgiving at Padre Serra at 11 a.m. Recognizing that it's Mother's Day, Lowe said he was naturally talking about his homily ideas with Linda.

Following the ordination, Linda said they've been deeply moved by the support they've received from the community. "That just thrills us that other people are just so happy that this has happened."

"We're just terribly grateful all the way around," said Lowe. When asked about the emotion he showed during his ordination, Lowe said they were "tears of joy and sheer happiness after five and a half years of this process of coming home and coming back to the priesthood."

Married Catholic priest -- exception or indication of a change?

By TOM KISKEN
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The kiss came moments after the Rev. Bill Lowe was ordained as the first married priest in the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese last week.

It was delivered by his wife of 44 years, Linda, just outside the sanctuary at Padre Serra Parish in Camarillo, where about 700 people had gathered to watch a father become a father. It came a heartbeat before one of Lowe's first acts as a Catholic priest.

"He blessed me," Linda Lowe said.

The 68-year-old Lowe was ordained by Cardinal Roger Mahony by way of a little-known pastoral provision that allows married clergy who have left the Episcopal Church to enter Catholic priesthood. The requirement of celibacy is waived.

More than 70 men have used the 27-year-old provision to become Catholic priests in the U.S. Lowe, who is 68 and retired in 2002 after 32 years as an Episcopal priest in Newton, Mass., is the first in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Mahony said people should view the ordination as an exception and not an indication the church may change its requirements and bring in more married priests.

Many of the parishioners weren't listening. Worried about the shortage of priests, they viewed the ordination as a symbol.

"I think it's opening a door for married priests in the future," said Michelle Paschen of Camarillo. "And yes, I think priests should be married."

John Blankenship, 68, of Camarillo went further.

"I think it's great that we're moving forward," he said. "Hopefully that will eventually lead to women being priests."

Lowe was ordained in a ceremony of ancient rituals punctuated by burning incense and the singing of the refrain "pray for us." He lay face-first on the floor of the church, near an altar made of black granite, to show his humility. Anointing oils were poured in a pool in the palms of his hands.

He became a priest for the second time in his life when Mahony placed his palms on the top of Lowe's head as a laying on of hands. Linda Lowe helped her husband change from a plain white robe to priestly vestments of beige and muted grays and yellows.

The couple views the ordination as a partnership, just like the rest of a life that has brought them three adult children and five grandchildren.

"We don't know what God has in store for us," Bill Lowe said earlier, "but we're up for the adventure."

They've been in Camarillo for about four years. He's always laughing and, according to parishioners, always has time to listen and help. She's into tennis and gardening and understands that as the wife of a Catholic priest, she may be under as much scrutiny as her husband.

"Early on, I found it a little frightening," she said. "Being the wife of a priest is not new to me but it's new to everyone in the (archdiocese)."

Others predict that attention focused on the marriage and the spouse will fade as Lowe goes about the day-to-day work of being an associate pastor at Padre Serra and ministering to people's needs.

"I think it's a 10-day wonder we're looking at as far as the focus being on Linda," said the Rev. Jarlath Dolan, senior pastor at Padre Serra Parish. "And if the focus is on Linda, I can't think of a better person to handle it."

The Lowes view the priesthood as a calling from God. That's why it's hard to answer questions about "why" other than that Bill Lowe didn't like being retired.

"The real reason can't be put into words because this is what God is calling us to do in this time and in this place," Linda Lowe said.

Lowe is not only the first married priest ordained in the archdiocese but also the first Episcopal priest. Mahony, in his homily, spoke of how the paths of different Christian communities run parallel.

"Today your onramp has merged with our onramp," he said.

The ordination was filled with unusual sights: a television reporter wearing high heels but walking on tiptoe so as not to interrupt the service. An usher holding up a camera to try to capture a moment or two of the ceremony. Afterward, parishioners ate cake with chocolate cream filling and stood in a long line to be blessed by the new priest. And if some didn't like the idea of a married priest, they weren't the ones talking.

"I have no problem with it. We need priests," said Adele Marietta, who was in charge of the meatballs at the post-ordination reception. "Marriage is a sacrament, so I see nothing wrong with married priests."

Married Catholic priest ordained due to loophole

Becomes first in Los Angeles diocese, taking advantage of an exception to rule.

The Associated Press
OC Register (CA)
May 8, 2007

CAMARILLO -- The Rev. Bill Lowe was ordained as the first married priest in the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

Lowe, who retired after 32 years as an Episcopal priest in Newton, Mass., was ordained Sunday by Cardinal Roger Mahony by way of a little-known pastoral provision allowing married clergy who have left the Episcopal Church to enter Catholic priesthood. The celibacy requirement is waived.

More than 70 men have used the 27-year-old provision to become Catholic priests in the United States. Church officials said Lowe was the first member of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese to be so ordained, and Mahony said the action should be viewed as an exception, not an indication the church is looking to bring in more married priests.

Lowe, 68, has been married 44 years to his wife, Linda. The couple, who have lived in Camarillo for four years, have three adult children and five grandchildren.

More than 700 people were on hand to witness the father become a father at Padre Serra Parish in Camarillo.

"We don't know what God has in store for us, but we're up for the adventure," Lowe said of his calling to the priesthood.

Attention on the priest and his marriage was expected to fade as Lowe goes about the day-to-day work of being an associate pastor at Padre Serra and ministering to people's needs.

"I think it's a 10-day wonder we're looking at as far as the focus being on Linda," said the Rev. Jarlath Dolan, senior pastor at Padre Serra Parish. "And if the focus is on Linda, I can't think of a better person to handle it."

Dolan cautioned that the ordination was not an opened gate but an exception made possible because of the pastoral provision. But neither he nor Mahony excluded the possibility that the church may someday change its requirement and allow more married priests.

"The jury is certainly out on that one," Dolan said. "I think one day the church will see it. It may well be after our lifetime."

More on Father Léon Laclau

For the beginning of this story, see Touchez pas a notre prêtre! blog entry. For those who speak French, France 3 has posted a couple of videos on this marvelous story of solidarity of a parish with their priest, including an interview with Fr. Laclau. Go to http://aquitaine.france3.fr/info/30394270-fr.php.

Also, here are some photos from the protest. In the larger one below, the sign behind Fr. Laclau and the visiting priest says: "What has he done wrong except to bring us back to God?". The cardboard sign the woman is holding in the picture at the right says "Give us back our priest. Everyone with Father Leon!"

Married Priests: Abbé Pierre's Last Words

On November 1st, 2005, the well-known French priest and homeless activist Abbé Pierre wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI and all French bishops in which he called for married men to be admitted to the priesthood as a solution to the shortage of priests. He gave the letter to Frédéric Lenoir, the editor-in-chief of Le Monde des Religions with instructions that it only be published after his death. The letter has been published in the May-June 2007 edition of the magazine and a PDF of the original French text is available here. I have provided an English translation below. Abbé Pierre passed away on January 22nd of this year.

My brothers:

I had a dream one night. Along the road, from cities to villages, I saw innumerable tabernacle lamps miraculously relit. A voice said: "Once again Jesus, given to you in all His Body, is there."

It hurts to wake up from such a dream. Who is counting all the extinguished lamps?

So I decided to ask all those who for several dozen years no longer understand.

I asked them what we should do. Groups of faithful, priests, bishops, two cardinals from Rome...all had the same thought: Ordain married, fervent, and capable men to the priesthood. Also, those who are not in the Church but wish it well have repeated to me: "What association of such importance would act unreasonably to this point -- or would not act -- when it has at its disposal a manpower reserve of such size and faith? Think of the number of retired people renewed each day.

All during my questioning, everyone concluded not "What is to be done?" but "When will it be done?"

Brother bishops, recently gathered together in the synod in Rome, you have still not been willing to open this door and present to the impatient faithful the answer that most of them know is there. Why wait longer, when the needs are so great? None of you has to wait because you are also the agents of this word: "Tend my lambs. Tend my sheep."

I know, of course, that problems will come up. I can think of three; none of which is insoluble.

1. Teaching this flood of new arrivals the science of the faith and initiation by some elders (should we not call them this -- those who have come before?) What elder would conceal himself?

2. Be sure to guarantee the families of the priests what they need to survive. Do we doubt that groups of the faithful would attend to this?

3. To take away the temptation to rob the tabernacles which would be lit in every church and before which everyone could come to pray night and day, would it not be more gospel-like to place the consecrated bread in simple cloth, allowing the golden vessels to be locked in the sacristies?

Brothers, let us not be afraid! Let us open the doors to our churches! Open the door to the priesthood to these millions of men of fervent faith who are ready to enter into this vocation. I know that the vocation of celibacy, which I lived for 75 years, is difficult but I know that when it is lived with fervor it is a gift from God, and everyone knows that the vocation of spouse can, itself, only be well-lived with the same fervor and it receives similar gifts -- even more so when combined with a priestly role. I am also convinced that the ordination of married men will in no way silence vocations to consecrated celibacy.

Brothers, what else can I say to you? Doesn't our world, now more than ever, thirst for Jesus and the gift of His Presence in the Eucharist? I am no longer young but I still have the enthusiasm of being your brother and friend in Jesus.

With great affection,

Abbé Pierre

Shrouded In Shame

Recently, I responded to an article on your blog. I was concerned about the lack of voice given to women who are married to priest, and how they are never mentioned by the church. It seems that the only concerns of the church have been priests and their celibacy.

Since I am married to a priest, I have been wanting to hear from other wives. I don't know where all the women are, and why they don't speak out more often or more loudly, but I think it may have something to do with the shame imposed on them by the church and even by many priest?

I have a blog dedicated to art and healing, and while writing about a collage I made of Sarah, the wife of Abraham, I made an interesting discovery. I found Hagar to be more of a heroin and Sarah less so as I wrote. My blog is http://myvvart.blogspot.com/ and the post is It Is About Hagar And Her Child. I have come to see Hagar as a symbol of women married to priest. If you would like to see how I came to that conclusion take a look.

Marcella Paliekara