Silencing the messenger...

Toowoomba bishop William Morris under scrutiny from Catholic Church
Alison Sandy and Margaret Wenham
The Courier-Mail (Australia)
February 12, 2009 11:00pm

A Catholic bishop in southern Queensland may get the sack for insubordination after being reported by the church's "temple police".

In the wake of rebel South Brisbane priest Father Peter Kennedy's dismissal, Toowoomba Bishop William Morris has admitted he's also under investigation after discussing the prospect of women or married priests in a pastoral letter.

He said the diocese was challenged by the ageing of its priests, most of whom would be eligible for retirement by 2014, leaving only six priests out of the full complement of 40.

The 65-year-old said the investigation had been going for two years, but a decision had not yet been made.

"The ultimate outcome is I'd be sacked and have to stand down," he said.

"Or they would ask me to resign or operate in another diocese ... at this stage, I don't know."

Bishop Morris, who has held the Toowoomba post for 16 years, said the church couldn't stifle debate and that's what the letter was promoting. "I will continue to fight for what I believe is the truth," he said.

"And I will continue to fight to be able to ask questions."

Bishop Morris said there was a group of very conservative Catholics dubbed the "temple police" who travelled around parishes dobbing in priests who didn't toe the line.

"There are plenty of temple police around at the moment," he said.

"They're not a large majority - they believe in their conservative views and if they don't agree with something, they'll write to Rome."

Bishop Morris said he hoped the investigation would be concluded this year, but even if he was sacked, he would still retain his title.

He said the same applied to Fr Kennedy even if he was excommunicated.

Brisbane Catholic Archbishop John Bathersby would not comment on the investigation of Bishop Morris except to say that Rome was constantly looking at such situations.

"There are rules and regulations in everything," he said.

However, Archbishop Bathersby said he would welcome change in the church.

"It's a church that's constantly reforming itself," he said.

"There's a lot of people agitating for a third Vatican Council and that could happen too - I'd love to see that happen."

Police yesterday paid a visit to Father Kennedy ahead of his impending eviction from St Mary's South Brisbane.

The visit, by two officers from the West End police station, came after police read in The Courier-Mail that Archbishop Bathersby intended enlisting their aid to forcibly eject Father Kennedy from his spiritual home of 28 years if he refused to give up his post.

"They said they wouldn't be taking sides. So long as we don't break any civil laws, they won't be taking any action," Father Kennedy said.

"I have assured them that I won't be doing anything to break the law."Fr Kennedy said the officers were well known to many in the St Mary's community who worked with disadvantaged people in the area and had conveyed to him their concern about being "the meat in the sandwich".

"Basically they said their role in the community is to keep the peace," he said.

"They said they wouldn't be taking sides. It's a policing matter for them and so long as we don't break any civil laws, they won't be taking any action.

"I have assured them that I won't be doing anything to break the law."

Father Kennedy's administration of St Mary's was terminated, effective February 21, by Archbishop Bathersby last Friday, following a series of exchanges between the two men.

In his February 6 letter, Archbishop Bathersby said he had requested changes if St Mary's was to be "in communion with the Archdiocese of Brisbane and the Roman Catholic Church" but the parish had "time and time again chosen to go its own way".

Fr Kennedy reiterated his intent to continue to attend services at St Mary's after his termination date, but said he did not intend to lead the masses.

He said Dean Ken Howell - appointed interim administrator by Archbishop Bathersby - was "welcome" to lead the mass.

"I don't intend to lead the Eucharist, I would simply be there," Fr Kennedy said.

The 71-year-old said he was shocked to read of the Archbishop's threat of forcible expulsion.

His eyes filled with tears as he considered the events of the past week.

"I feel no hostility to the Archbishop," he said.

"I've thanked him often for letting us be.

"To me its the betrayal thing. You give your life to this church and you've been a part of it. I've enjoyed being a priest all my life.

"You create a new way of being church - a Vatican II type of church - and you're told by John Bathersby that it's 'Filthy pride'."

St Mary's he said was being penalised for being alive, vital and filled with love.

---

NOTE: The controversial 2006 Advent Pastoral Letter has been removed from the diocesan Web site and replaced by the following terse statement from Bishop Morris:

"In my Advent Pastoral Letter of 2006 I outlined some of the challenges facing the diocese into the future. In that letter I made reference to various options about ordination that were and are being talked about in various places, as part of an exercise in the further investigation of truth in these matters. Unfortunately some people seem to have interpreted that reference as suggesting that I was personally initiating options that are contrary to the doctrine and discipline of the Church. As a bishop I cannot and would not do that and I indicated this in the local media at the time. I and all the bishops of the Catholic Church form a college with the Holy Father and cannot act contrary to the teaching and practice of the Universal Church. Encouraging vocations to the priesthood must remain a priority for our local Church and we pray this Christmas and as we begin the New Year that more young men will consider deeply their response to God’s call."

NOTE: From AD 2000 a summary of the contents of Bishop Morris' 2006 pastoral letter:

Priest shortage in Toowoomba Diocese

In an Advent Pastoral Letter for 2006, Bishop William Morris set out for the Toowoomba Diocese the severe shortage of priests to be expected over the years leading up to 2014.

"We do face an uncertain future with regard to the number of active priests in our diocese", said Bishop Morris. The estimated numbers of priests in "parish-based ministry in 2014" would be six aged 65 and younger (three in the 61-65 year group) and eight aged 66-70, with a further five in "diocesan ministry" including the Bishop himself.

This numbers crisis is due to the almost total lack of vocations for the diocese.

Bishop Morris offered some possible solutions in his Letter.

"Given our deeply held belief in the primacy of the Eucharist for the identity, continuity and life of each parish community, we may well need to be much more open towards other options for ensuring that Eucharist may be celebrated. Several responses have been discussed internationally, nationally and locally:

* ordaining married, single or widowed men who are chosen and endorsed by their local parish community;

* welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry;

* ordaining women, married or single;

* recognising Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church Orders.

"While we continue to reflect carefully on these options, we remain committed to actively promoting vocations to the current celibate male priesthood and open to inviting priests from overseas ...

"As a pilgrim people who journey in hope we need to remain open to the Spirit so that we can be agents of change and respond wisely to the needs of all members of the local Church of Toowoomba".



NOTE: There is also substantial discussion of this matter in Paul Collins' online book Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?

For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened

By PAUL VITELLO
New York Times
February 10, 2009

The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for the church. Its revival has been viewed as part of a conservative resurgence that has brought some quiet changes and some highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to lift the excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council’s reforms.

The indulgence is among the less noticed and less disputed traditions to be restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain.

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

It has no currency in the bad place.

“It’s what?” asked Marta de Alvarado, 34, when told that indulgences were available this year at several churches in New York City. “I just don’t know anything about it,” she said, leaving St. Patrick’s Cathedral at lunchtime. “I’m going to look into it, though.”

The return of indulgences began with Pope John Paul II, who authorized bishops to offer them in 2000 as part of the celebration of the church’s third millennium. But the offers have increased markedly under his successor, Pope Benedict, who has made plenary indulgences part of church anniversary celebrations nine times in the last three years. The current offer is tied to the yearlong celebration of St. Paul, which continues through June.

Dioceses in the United States have responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. This year’s offer has been energetically promoted in places like Washington, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., and Tulsa, Okla. It appeared prominently on the Web site of the Diocese of Brooklyn, which announced that any Catholic could receive an indulgence at any of six churches on any day, or at dozens more on specific days, by fulfilling the basic requirements: going to confession, receiving holy communion, saying a prayer for the pope and achieving “complete detachment from any inclination to sin.”

But in the adjacent Archdiocese of New York, indulgences are available at only one church, and the archdiocesan Web site makes no mention of them. (Cardinal Edward M. Egan “encourages all people to receive the blessings of indulgences,” said his spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, who said he was unaware that the offer was not on the Web site, but would soon have it posted.)

The indulgences, experts said, tend to be advertised more openly in dioceses where the bishop is more traditionalist, or in places with fewer tensions between liberal and conservative Catholics.

“In our diocese, folks are just glad for any opportunity to do something Catholic,” said Mary Woodward, director of evangelization for the Diocese of Jackson, Miss., where only 3 percent of the population is Catholic.

Even some priests admit that the rules are hard to grasp.

“It’s not that easy to explain to people who have never heard of it,” said the Rev. Gilbert Martinez, pastor of St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan, the designated site in the New York Archdiocese for obtaining indulgences. “But it was interesting: I had a number of people come in and say, ‘Father, I haven’t been to confession in 20 years, but this’ ” — the availability of an indulgence — “ ‘made me think maybe it wasn’t too late.’ ”

Getting Catholics back into confession, in fact, was one of the motivations for reintroducing the indulgence. In a 2001 speech, Pope John Paul described the newly reborn tradition as “a happy incentive” for confession.

“Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit and former editor of the Catholic magazine America. In a secularized culture of pop psychology and self-help, he said, “the church wants the idea of personal sin back in the equation. Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance.”

“The good news is we’re not selling them anymore,” he added.

To remain in good standing, Catholics are required to confess their sins at least once a year. But in a survey last year by a research group at Georgetown University, three-quarters of Catholics said they went to confession less often or not at all.

Under the rules in the “Manual of Indulgences,” published by the Vatican, confession is a prerequisite for getting an indulgence.

Among liberal Catholic theologians, the return of the indulgence seems to be more of a curiosity than a cause for alarm. “Personally, I think we’re beyond the time when indulgences mean very much,” said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame who supports the ordination of women and the right of priests to marry. “It’s like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube of original thought. Most Catholics in this country, if you tell them they can get a plenary indulgence, will shrug their shoulders.”

One recent afternoon outside Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Forest Hills, Queens, two church volunteers disagreed on the relevance of indulgences for modern Catholics.

Octavia Andrade, 64, laughed as she recalled a time when children would race through the rosary repeatedly to get as many indulgences as they could — usually in increments of 5 or 10 years — “as if we needed them, then.”

Still, she supports their reintroduction. “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.”

Karen Nassauer, 61, said she was baffled by the return to a practice she never quite understood to begin with.

“I mean, I’m not saying it is necessarily wrong,” she said. “What does it mean to get time off in Purgatory? What is five years in terms of eternity?”

The latest offers de-emphasize the years-in-Purgatory formulations of old in favor of a less specific accounting, with more focus on ways in which people can help themselves — and one another — come to terms with sin.

“It’s more about praying for the benefit of others, doing good deeds, acts of charity,” said the Rev. Kieran Harrington, spokesman for the Brooklyn diocese.

After Catholics, the people most expert on the topic are probably Lutherans, whose church was born from the schism over indulgences and whose leaders have met regularly with Vatican officials since the 1960s in an effort to mend their differences.

“It has been something of a mystery to us as to why now,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Root, dean of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C., who has participated in those meetings. The renewal of indulgences, he said, has “not advanced” the dialogue.

“Our main problem has always been the question of quantifying God’s blessing,” Dr. Root said. Lutherans believe that divine forgiveness is a given, but not something people can influence.

But for Catholic leaders, most prominently the pope, the focus in recent years has been less on what Catholics have in common with other religious groups than on what sets them apart — including the half-forgotten mystery of the indulgence.

“It faded away with a lot of things in the church,” said Bishop DiMarzio. “But it was never given up. It was always there. We just want to people to return to the ideas they used to know.”

Ministering to Your Needs

My blogging colleague, Fr. Rich, gets some well-deserved publicity for his services -- RG

Choosing the Wedding Officiant That’s Right for You
by Kelley Granger,
Chronogram Magazine
January 30, 2009

Once the dress has been chosen, the venue selected, the cake ordered, and floral arrangements figured out, you’re closer to the decision that should be at the literal heart of a wedding—finding the appropriate officiant to create the ceremony that best fits you as a couple. Most wedding literature provides minimal guidance for finding an officiant, especially when compared to the focus given to the more glamorous aspects of the wedding. But finding the right person is crucial: It sets the tone of the entire celebration and ensures that the words spoken and promises made are tailored to your feelings and beliefs.



Before you begin looking for an officiant, sit down with your significant other to discuss your expectations and what type of ceremony you both envision. Consider your backgrounds—will you be bringing a strong religious or cultural foundation to the wedding, or are you planning a service to include two faiths? Do you want to acknowledge a spiritual union without prescribing to a specific belief system? Or would you prefer a civil or nonreligious ceremony? The answer to these questions will be the first criteria to narrow your search. From there, reflect on the people you know who may be a good fit or begin a search. The Internet has many resources for local options, including a search for clergy and ceremony officiants within the vendor section of www.hudsonvalleyweddings.com and the Hudson Valley city guide on The Knot’s website.

Once you’ve found a few choices that seem promising, get in touch. “Take time to discuss ahead of time what the vision for your ceremony is and what your values are and prepare questions to ask an officiant,” says Puja Thomson, an interfaith minister from New Paltz who has been performing ceremonies for 13 years. “Then, after selecting a minister or two to interview, go with an open mind to meet with your first choice. Ask your questions. Notice what questions he or she asks you. Tune in to what you sense; whether you feel comfortable and trusting with the officiant. Do you feel heard? Is your point of view respected? Are you on the same wavelength? You’ll very quickly find out if you’re compatible or not.”


If you’re going the traditional route with a religious wedding, do your homework if you’re not using a clergy member that you or your partner knows. “If [the couple is] looking for a sacred moment, they should be very careful to find someone who is genuinely religious and will approach their wedding with the care that it deserves,” says Father Richard Haselbach, an ordained Catholic priest from Carmel. “I would look for seminary training and somebody who approaches you, not like [you are] a business client, but [instead as] someone who cares about your spiritual wellbeing.”

Make sure that the candidate takes a sincere interest in you and your significant other, your wishes, and your story as a couple. Ask the officiant to also share their own story to further investigate your compatibility. Through these talks, you may discover more flexibility than you thought possible. For example, though the Catholic religion says couples must marry within the church, Father Haselbach agrees to do weddings at most any location, frequently participates in interfaith ceremonies and says he is about to help his first gay couple in a ceremony. He is also part of a growing number of priests who have become married themselves—and since leaving what he calls the “corporate” church, is now working with CITI Ministries, an organization that promotes the spiritual services of married priests. While perhaps not the right option for those with certain beliefs, Father Haselbach’s policy of nonjudgment and willingness to help anyone on their path to God has brought him to officiate more than 100 ceremonies per year.

Couples may also find themselves charmed by the explanation of how the officiant came to help couples celebrate their marriages. Thomson, who was given the first name “Puja” by the spiritual master Osho in India in 1974, received her name well before she ever performed a wedding. The name means ceremony, worship, or offering—and was a hint of the destiny she would later fulfill as an interfaith minister.

Zoe B. Zak, a rabbinical assistant for the Woodstock Jewish Congregation, has another kind of story—she was moved by a couple she met at a Toronto music festival a number of years ago who were very much in love, but the groom was Jewish and his Polish bride was Catholic. “In all of Canada there wasn’t one rabbi who would marry them,” Zak says. “They desperately wanted a Jewish ceremony and were very hurt not to be able to find someone to support their marriage. I learned everything I could about a Jewish wedding ceremony and I went to Toronto and performed this wedding, and it was an incredibly moving experience for me [to be] standing under the chuppah with this couple at this sacred and amazing time in their lives.” Soon after, Zak began receiving requests to do more weddings and began specializing in interfaith weddings. Some rabbis, who cannot traditionally perform interfaith weddings, began referring couples to Zak for their ceremony. She is currently in rabbinical school and has halted her officiating until she is finished.

After getting to know your possible officiant and making a choice, you’ll have the opportunity to meet with them to begin preparing the ceremony details. For Thomson, who was ordained as a minister of natural healing and has studied energy work with the Healing Light Center Church for about 15 years, this preparation is essential to a meaningful ceremony. “I ask each couple to fill out a detailed form giving me information, not only about the date, place, and cast of characters of the wedding, but also about themselves—what they appreciate in each other, their value systems (because their vows are going to be based on shared values), religious and cultural backgrounds, and current spiritual perspectives, their wishes for the ceremony, and more,” she says.

She’ll then share sample ceremonies with the couple and allow them to alter and add anything they’d like, often within the framework of three main parts: a beginning that may include a welcome, opening prayer, reading, music, or an address about marriage and the couple; the core of the ceremony with a declaration of intention, a reciprocal exchange of vows, and a prayer of blessing; and a finish that may include another reading or song or elements from respective traditions (like a unity candle or the breaking of a glass). Thomson then makes the pronouncement of marriage, sanctions the first kiss, and offers a final blessing. To be legal, she says she is required to do just two things—have the couple exchange vows and pronounce them to be husband and wife. Aside from those, couples have a lot of freedom to carefully construct a unique and personalized ceremony. She recommends Daphne Rose Kingma’s book Weddings from the Heart: Contemporary and Traditional Ceremonies for an Unforgettable Wedding (Conari Press, 1995), a guide that offers advice from the search for an officiant to each segment of the ceremony.

Megan Park and Joe Belluso chose Thomson to lead their wedding in Danby, Vermont, in 2000. She chose not to have any specific religious focus during the outdoor ceremony Thomson helped her put together. “We just really wanted to talk about the simplicity of it and to us that’s what it was all about, we didn’t need the pomp and circumstance,” Park says. Throughout the process, she says Thomson was encouraging, helpful, and made the couple feel like there were no rights or wrongs. “Her lovely [Scottish] brogue was very calming. When you’re getting married there are 80 million things to think about, and this was one less. Her presence is just really comforting.”

Interfaith couples will find a number of officiants willing to work on their ceremony throughout the Hudson Valley. Zak has worked closely with a number of priests to perform Christian-Jewish weddings, Thomson is open to ceremonies from all spiritual paths and Father Haselbach has collaborated often on interfaith weddings—he believes he and a Hindu priest from Albany may be the first in the country to have created a joint Catholic-Hindu ceremony.

For these couples, the planning process is only slightly different than it would normally be in that clients meet with both officiants to discuss their options and to blend the various traditions and rituals into one ceremony.
Some couples may wish to have a civil ceremony or to ask a friend or family member to officiate for them. At their wedding in December, Shari and Fred Riley Jr. of Modena had the best of both. They asked a local judge, who was also close friend, to officiate at their wedding. “For me, it felt important to have somebody who had some sort of connection to us,” Shari Riley says. “There was a true connection that enhanced the whole ceremony, rather than having a stranger that didn’t know us. I think there was genuine happiness on [our friend’s] part, making the ceremony more genuine.”


If you have a friend or family member you would like to have lead your ceremony, information on ordinations is typically easy to come by online, as well as the actual ordination. Zak used www.spiritualhumanism.org to receive her ordination, although her work is coupled with an intensive study and work within a religious community. Any person who plans to pursue ordination should make sure they’re fully aware of the laws and responsibilities pertaining to ceremony officiants.

No matter what type of ceremony you’re planning, make sure that you’re comfortable with your officiant and being faithful to your own wishes as a couple. As Thomson says, “A wedding ceremony is the energetic jumpstart for a couple’s marriage. It’s a very sacred and important moment. Honest communication pertaining to the ceremony is important and bodes well for good communication in the marriage.”


RESOURCES

Puja A. J. Thomson, (845) 255-2278
www.rootsandwings.com

Father Richard Haselbach, (914) 804-1944
www.fatherrich.com

Zoe B. Zak, (845) 255-6156
www.zoebzak.com


Photo: Father Rich Haselbach presides over the ceremony of Bonnie Jeanne Regan and Jimmy Gerhart at their wedding in the Dominican Republic.

Catholic Order Jolted by Reports That Its Founder Led a Double Life

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
New York Times
Published: February 3, 2009

The Legionaries of Christ, an influential Roman Catholic religious order, have been shaken by new revelations that their founder, who died a year ago, had an affair with a woman and fathered a daughter just as he and his thriving conservative order were winning the acclaim of Pope John Paul II.

Before his death, the founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had been forced to leave public ministry by Pope Benedict XVI because of accusations from more than a dozen men who said he had sexually abused them when they were students.

But most members of the Legion continued to defend Father Maciel, asserting that the accusations had not been proved. Father Maciel died in January 2008 at the age of 87, and was buried in Mexico, where he was born.

Now the order’s general director, the Rev. Álvaro Corcuera, is quietly visiting its religious communities and seminaries in the United States and informing members that their founder led a double life, current and former Legionaries said.

The order is not publicly confirming the details of the scandal.

Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legionaries, said only: “We have learned some things about our founder’s life that are surprising and difficult for us to understand. We can confirm that there are some aspects of his life that were not appropriate for a Catholic priest.”

Some former members said they expected the order to renounce its founder, but Mr. Fair said: “He is the founder and he always will be the founder of the order. That’s one of the mysteries that we all see in life is that sometimes good things come out of less than perfect human beings.”

In Catholic religious orders, members are taught to identify with the spirituality and values of the founder. That was taken to an extreme in the Legionaries, said the Rev. Stephen Fichter, a priest in New Jersey who left the order after 14 years.

“Father Maciel was this mythical hero who was put on a pedestal and had all the answers,” Father Fichter said. “When you become a Legionarie, you have to read every letter Father Maciel ever wrote, like 15 or 16 volumes. To hear he’s been having this double life on the side, I just don’t see how they’re going to continue.”

Father Fichter, once the chief financial officer for the order, said he informed the Vatican three years ago that every time Father Maciel left Rome, “I always had to give him $10,000 in cash — $5,000 in American dollars and $5,000 in the currency of wherever he was going.”

Father Fichter added: “As Legionaries, we were taught a very strict poverty; if I went out of town and bought a Bic pen and a chocolate bar, I would have to turn in the receipts. And yet for Father Maciel there was never any accounting. It was always cash, never any paper trail. And because he was this incredible hero to us, we never even questioned it for a second.”

Mr. Fair said he had no comment about whether Father Maciel had misappropriated money, fathered a child or sexually abused young men.

The Legionaries, founded in 1941, have grown as the church in many countries has shrunk. It has 800 priests in 22 countries, and 70,000 members worldwide, many of whom are lay people in its affiliate, Regnum Christi.

Tom Hoopes, managing editor of The National Catholic Register, which is affiliated with the Legionaries, posted an apology on the Web on Tuesday for having dismissed the sexual abuse accusations, saying, “I’m sorry to the victims, who were victims twice.”

For more than you ever wanted to know about this story see the American Papist Blog.

Celibacy is no longer sacrosanct in Poland

by Thijs Papot
Radio Netherlands
04-02-2009

More than half of Polish priests say they would like to marry, while more than a third are said to secretly violate their vows of celibacy. Is it realistic to expect Catholic priests to abstain from sex in today's world?

"I was happy as a young priest, but at a certain moment loneliness began to eat away at me," says Jozef Strezynski (58). He found himself facing a dilemma when he met a woman who he felt strongly about. After sixteen years as a priest Strezynski left the church and married.

"I thought about it for four years before making a decision," says Strezynski, who is now father of two children. "I came to the conclusion that it did not make any sense to remain an unhappy priest."

Sexual relationship

Jozef Strezynski is not the only one who wrestled with the demands of the priesthood. A Polish sociologist who spoke to more than 800 active priests came to the conclusion that nearly 54 percent of them wanted to live with a woman. More than a third admitted having a sexual relationship with a woman and 12 percent said they had a permanent relationship. Wieslaw Dawidowski, an Augustinian priest in Warsaw, is not surprised by the figures.

"I know a lot of former priests who have left the church. I wouldn't be surprised if bishops had relationships as well. It is only human. So let him who is without sin, cast the first stone."


Father Davidovsky says that celibacy can no longer be taken for granted in the Polish Catholic Church. The need for a relationship reflects changes in a society which has grown more free and secular since the fall of communism.


"Being celibate is no picnic. Which is why I always tell young men that they should think it over carefully. They have been raised to believe that being a priest is something beautiful which requires sacrifices. However, nowadays the priesthood isn't that cool anymore."

Married life

Sexual abstention by priests is an inseparable aspect of the Catholic teachings. Having a married life could be in the way of the union between the priest or pastor and God. Furthermore, a fear of nepotism and hereditary functions within the church have cited as arguments to introduce and uphold celibacy.

Celibacy is not an original doctrine and was not introduced until the Middle Ages, journalist and church scholar Adam Szostkiewicz emphasises. He is expecting that the falling interest in becoming a priest will make the debate flare up again:

"It is an absurd idea to continue with the celibate for the Catholic church, when even in Poland, possibly the most Catholic country in Europe, seminaries are getting emptier and emptier. I'm not expecting any changes under the current Pope, Benedict XVI, but something will have to change after him."


For the foreseeable future, married priests will remain a taboo within the Polish Catholic Church.

"It is a mistaken belief that a priest who founds a family and lets go of the celibate would be committing treason to God. I think it is the other way around: someone who refuses to live a double life, but who is honest towards the one he loves and towards god, is taking a heavy burden, but at least he's honest."

San Angelo Diocese ordains married former Methodist minister as priest

By Jimmy Patterson
Online Editor
My West Texas News
Published: Friday, January 30, 2009 3:27 AM CST

SAN ANGELO -- Over 100 people gathered Wednesday evening to witness one of the rarest events in the Roman Catholic Church: the ordination of a married man and former Methodist and Episcopal minister as a Catholic priest.

Family and friends on hand at the diocese’s Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown San Angelo received a taste of just how unusual Rev. Waldo Emerson “Knick” Knickerbocker’s ordination was when San Angelo Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer open the proceedings by stating something of the obvious.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said to a smattering of chuckles. “Ordaining a man as a priest who is here with his wife, his children and his grandchildren. So I just hope I get it right.”

How rare is it?

According to Knickerbocker and wife Sandie, both of whom are lifelong students of both Protestant and Catholic theology, such an ordination has been performed in the United States only about 85 times and fewer than 100 times in the world since Pope John Paul II first allowed what the church refers to as a “pastoral provision.” The provision was adopted in 1981 especially for use in the United States. It has also been extended to England and other countries where bishops have requested special permission to ordain former married Anglican or Episcopalian ministers to the Roman Catholic Church.

“I came to the conviction that the fullness of truth was to be found in the Catholic Church,” Knickerbocker said of his decision. “It’s not that other Christian communions don’t have truth, but I became convinced that the fullness of truth was in the Catholic Church.”

In 1993-94, Rev. and Mrs. Knickerbocker became members of the Roman Catholic Church. After careful review and prayer, Knick requested to become a Roman Catholic priest in September 2005. For 32 years, Knickerbocker taught Church History and Christian Spirituality on the faculty of Memphis Theological Seminary, a Cumberland Presbyterian school in Memphis, Tenn. After becoming a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Knickerbocker worked for Catholic Charities and then served on the staff of the Seminary in the Doctor of Ministry program.

In accordance with the terms of the provision, Knickerbocker was first ordained a deacon. That Mass was conducted Dec. 28, 2008, which also happened to be “Fr. Knick’s” 70th birthday. His priestly ordination Wednesday occurred on the occasion of he and Mrs. Knickerbocker’s wedding anniversary.

“Since the summer of 2005 when Knick answered the Lord’s call to offer himself for the Catholic priesthood, we have had strong convictions about his being a priest,” Mrs. Knickerbocker said. “However, we also have had much anxiety — for two reasons: one, we are not worthy for this holy vocation; and two, our lives will be changed forever. The Lord knew I needed a word from Him about Knick’s becoming a Catholic priest. About a year ago, the Lord said, 'Do this for love of me.'”

The Diocese of San Angelo includes 10 parishes in Midland-Odessa and others in surrounding areas.

In attendance for the Mass were Deacon Dan Brown of Memphis, Tenn., a friend of the family, and Fr. David Knight, a Catholic priest and author who, according to Mrs. Knickerbocker, prayed for Fr. Knick for 20 years as he discerned his calling into the Church and ultimately the priesthood.

Knickerbocker’s realization was a long route, starting with his ordination as a Methodist minister in 1966. In 1972 he completed his Ph.D. in Church History at Emory University. In 1973 he began teaching at Memphis Seminary. Knickerbocker said that it was teaching Church History, as well as other factors, that led him to the Episcopal Church and, ultimately, the Catholic Church.

The decision to allow married Episcopalian clergy to serve as priests in the Roman Catholic Church respects not only the decision of their conscience that requires them to profess a fully Catholic faith in the Catholic Church but also their call to ministry, accepted in good faith, in their tradition that permitted a married priesthood. In providing this exception to individual married clergymen, the Holy Father and the bishops of the United States wanted to make sure that everyone understood that celibacy remains the normal tradition for priests in the Western Church.

Pfeifer, who has worked for several years to prepare Knickerbocker to become a priest, said, “I am very happy that finally my good friend can be ordained a deacon and priest. There is no finer candidate for the diaconate and priesthood than Knick Knickerbocker. I ask God’s blessings upon him and his good wife.”

Knickerbocker will serve as a sacramental priest in parishes in Junction and Menard offering much needed assistance to Fr. Michael Udegbunam and Deacon Tim Graham who have been stretched covering both churches.

HISTORIC MOVE FOR U.S. CATHOLICS

U.S. Catholic reform organizations have joined together in an unprecedented move to form the American Catholic Council (ACC), calling for a historic national assembly of the American Catholic Church—lay, religious, priestly, and episcopal.

The organizations involved include the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), Call to Action (CTA), Corpus, FutureChurch, among others.

ARCC president, Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue Dr. Leonard Swidler, stated: “The Reform Movement of the Catholic Church in America—in the spirit of Vatican II—is on the cusp of a great leap forward.”

Swidler went on to say that “ARCC and other organizations have for several years been promoting the idea of all major Catholic Reform groups in the U.S. joining together in an American Catholic Council to move our common agenda forward. The great leap forward is now being launched!”


“The way the Church is now is not the way it was meant to be,” said John Hushon, a VOTF board member who serves as the ACC co-chair. He added that, “Vatican II attempted to recapture the universal call to ministry, but this promise has not been fulfilled.”

Many other reform organizations are in the process of formally endorsing the American Catholic Council “Declaration for Reform and Renewal,” which launched the call for a national council. The Declaration, found online at www.americancatholiccouncil.org states: “We seek reform of the governing structures in our Church so that they reflect the better aspects of the American experience: a democratic spirit, concern for human rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and a tradition of participation and representation.”

The American Catholic Council is scheduled to take place in Detroit in the fall of 2011—the 50th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and the 35th Anniversary of Cardinal Deardon’s “Call to Action,” which was designed to actualize the reforms of Vatican II for the United States Church.

See www.americancatholiccouncil.org and www.arcc-catholic-rights.net for more information on the American Catholic Council and the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church.
This press release is endorsed by Spirited Lay Action Movement.
www.spiritedlayaction.org

In self-published book, Fairfield woman tells of priest who fathered her son

By Amy Calder
Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel
01/25/2009

FAIRFIELD -- Judy Soucier sits in her Fairfield living room and talks tenderly about the Roman Catholic priest who fathered her child 36 years ago, but who would not commit to a lifelong relationship.

"He still was the man I loved," she says. "He still is, to this day."

Soucier, 65, wrote a book about her love affair with the priest called "Perfect: A Love Story."

Self-published in 2008 as an autobiographical work, but with characters that have fictional names, it describes the priest's alleged, but futile, attempts to convince Soucier to abort her child and the church's alleged insistence that she go out-of-state to have the baby and then give it up for adoption. She was 28 at the time; he was 36.

Soucier now identifies the priest as the Rev. Marcel Dumoulin, who until 2004 served as pastor at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Fairfield. He also served at parishes in Augusta and Winthrop. Dumoulin, 73, lives at a nursing-care facility in Lewiston, where he has Alzheimer's disease. Their son, Christian Soucier, is 36 and lives in New York City.

Catholic priests are required to be celibate; however, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland last week acknowledged that Dumoulin fathered Soucier's son. But the Diocese says the church would never support an abortion, as the book suggests, and would not encourage a woman to give her child up for adoption if she did not want to do that.

Soucier took Dumoulin to court in Androscoggin County on Nov. 17, 1983, seeking child support when her boy was 11. The court awarded Soucier a lump sum of $6,000, plus monthly payments until he was 18. The case was entitled "Judith Soucier vs. Marcel Dumoulin."

Soucier says she didn't at first plan to publish her story, which she initially wrote as a memoir intended for just her son, Christian Soucier.

"I wrote it because I wanted to give it to my son for Christmas in 2006," she says.

But she self-published the book and approached the Morning Sentinel after friends and family read the manuscript and convinced her it was a story she needed to share with the world.

"They said, 'This must be told.'"

Romance turns a corner

Soucier's book recounts her life as a teacher, friend, daughter and lover of the sea whose life takes an unexpected turn when she meets a Roman Catholic priest -- Dumoulin -- who in the book is called Matthew, in Lewiston, and falls in love. It forever changes her life.

The book is set mainly in Brunswick and Lewiston, where Soucier lived in the 1970s. It describes a happy romance that turns sour when she becomes pregnant.

Father Matthew takes her to a trailer at the edge of what now is a parking lot for the Marden's Surplus & Salvage store in Lewiston. There, they meet with a tall minister and the two men arrange for her to have an abortion.

Matthew then drives her to a clinic in New York City and she is prepped for the abortion, but she cannot go through with it. The book describes in detail the events that took place when Dumoulin drove her to New York for the abortion and she decided not to have the procedure, she said.

They drove home in silence. Once back in Maine, a diocesan vicar asked her to come to St. Paul's Retreat Center in Augusta. Once she arrived, the vicar urged her to leave the state, have the baby and give it up for adoption but she refused, she said. She met with him again in Portland at his request and he was unsuccessful in trying to convince her to go away, have the child and offer it for adoption. That vicar has since died.

Soucier says that afterward, another priest came to her home and said he was a messenger from the bishop, who asked that she leave the state, have the baby and give it up for adoption.

The priest allegedly offered her an envelope containing cash and said the money was separate from any travel and medical expenses, which would be paid by the church. Soucier said she did not accept it.

"He brought $3,000 and said, 'This is for you, and all arrangements and expenses will be paid,'" Soucier said.

That priest also has since died.

'Why take the back door?'

After she gave birth to her son, Soucier had minimal contact with Dumoulin; their romance ended after she became pregnant, she said.

The last time she saw him at the nursing home several months ago, his mind was merely a shell of what it once was.

"He didn't even know me," she said. "It's just very sad."

Soucier's cousin and lifelong friend, Yvette Rousseau, accompanied her on that visit.

Rousseau, 73, of Lewiston, introduced Soucier to Dumoulin many years ago and her character is featured in the book. Rousseau was a parishioner in Dumoulin's church, The Holy Family Church in Lewiston, and he was a close friend who spent time with her and her family during picnics, parties and snowmobiling trips, she said.

Rousseau, now retired after 52 years of nursing, describes herself as a devout Catholic who is disturbed by the way the church handled Soucier's pregnancy.

"I think the true message is, why doesn't the church deal with their problems the right way?" she says. "Why take the back door? Why hide it and deal with these poor little children that could have been put up for adoption or aborted? I kind of blame the church for not taking a stand. That's why the church has gotten away with so much. The Catholic Church has to take a stand on important issues."

Rousseau says her first husband reported Dumoulin's love affair with Soucier to the bishop and after that, Dumoulin stopped visiting her family for a while. She and her husband ultimately divorced and he has since died.

Rousseau says Dumoulin never acknowledged to her or anyone in her family or circle of friends that Soucier's baby was his.

"He always kind of beat around the bush about it but never actually came right out to say, 'I have a son and Judy was the mother,'" Rousseau said. "He never was honest about it. I think now, why wasn't he truthful? As close as we were, he never told us. I always felt bad about that."

Rousseau says it was as if his position as a priest was more important to him than anything else.

"He never let down his guard. The worst part was, he was trying to get rid of the child. I don't know how he could sleep at night and then preach in the pulpit. I just feel like he goofed, big time, and so did the bishop."

But despite Dumoulin's foibles, Rousseau still holds an affection for him.

"He made a mistake, he goofed, but he is human. He made a big mistake. But he's still Father Dumoulin."

She says there is no question in her mind that Soucier is telling the truth about his plans for her abortion and the church's subsequent attempts to send her away to have the baby and then give it up for adoption.

"It all took place," she says. "I've always admired her for staying strong and taking a stand. She's the strong one."

Nancy Snow is another longtime friend of Soucier who is featured as a character in the book. She saw Dumoulin and Soucier together in the early 1970s. Snow says she also admires her for carrying her baby to term and raising him, despite pressure to do otherwise.

A retired 33-year teacher, Snow, 75, of Brunswick, describes Soucier as someone who loves children and is very good with older people.

"She's very kind, and if she does something, she takes on a project and she does it 110, 120 percent. She always, always went above and beyond."

Snow says she hopes big things happen with Soucier's book, which is being sold in bookstores and on the Internet.

"I thought it was wonderful and I think it would make a great movie."

'Mon dieu. It comes back'

Father Dumoulin smiles and welcomes a guest at the nursing-care facility in Lewiston, where he shares a small room with another patient.

The retired priest appears cheerful, lounging in a recliner, wearing casual clothes and sporting a navy blue beret.

He talks easily, but does not seem to have a grasp of history. Asked when he left Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Fairfield, he says he does not remember.

But, shown a photograph of Soucier, his face lights up immediately.

"That is good," he says. "She's good. Judy Soucier. Mon dieu. It comes back. She's so good, kind, you know. Look how beautiful that is. Oh, it's good."

He then touches the paper on which the photo is printed.

"That was the lady that was the best for me, you know?" he says. "Tres bien. It's wonderful."

The neat, simply decorated room has puzzles, books, and photographs on a table.

The only clues to Dumoulin's spiritual past are a crucifix that hangs on a wall and small statues of Mary and Jesus on a bureau.

'I still try to fly'

Dumoulin's son, Christian Soucier, is an environmental consultant and marine biologist, married and living in New York City.

He declines to talk about his relationship with Dumoulin, other than to say he is not comfortable discussing it because of the priest's advanced age and medical condition.

The book, he says, is his mother's story, not his own.

"I support her 100 percent," he said. "It made her strong. What I'm most proud of is where we are today. She gave me an opportunity to go out and try to fly. I still try to fly, every day."

He says his mother worked hard all his life to provide for him and make sure he went to college -- even working with pregnant and parenting teens, ironically, for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. Christian Soucier ultimately earned a Ph.D in biology with a focus on ecology evolution and behavior.

"I think that, obviously, a lot of what she experienced in our situation drove her to the career path that she took," he says. "It was the ultimate sacrifice."

When he read the book, he was horrified by the treatment his mother received, he says.

"It's true hypocrisy -- there's no doubt," he says. "The hypocrisy of the church in instances like these is appalling."

He hopes the book's release provides closure for his mother, whom he never knew to have a relationship with a man while he was growing up. He says he learned why, after reading it: She long harbored a great love for Dumoulin that continues to this day.

Judy Soucier says she chose a life of celibacy after her breakup with Dumoulin.

After giving birth, she stayed home for three years to raise her son and then went back to work as a social worker for the Diocese for 11 years. She then worked for the March of Dimes for 21 years.

Judy Soucier was adopted at birth, grew up in the Catholic church in Lewiston and describes her adoptive family as loving, caring and very supportive. After her parents died, she searched for her birth-family members and found them in 2003. She moved to Fairfield to be near them in 2007.

She describes herself as a Christian but stops short of saying she is Catholic.

"I go to church, but I go to the church God built," she says, referring to nature. "I went to the Catholic church until I was pregnant with Christian. I've always believed in God. I've never lost my faith. Actually, I think I have a deeper, stronger faith than I ever did. I do know that the reason I have Christian today is, God wanted him on this earth."

---

Church acknowledges Dumoulin fatherhood, but takes issue with other details

By Amy Calder
Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel
01/25/2009

The Rev. Marcel Dumoulin never denied that he fathered Judy Soucier's child, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland said last week.

"We have a fair amount of documentation on this," Diocese spokeswoman Susan Bernard said Tuesday.

But Bernard said the Diocese has no information in its files that would indicate Dumoulin ever tried to convince Soucier get an abortion, nor that other priests urged her to go out-of-state to have the baby and give it up for adoption.

Soucier says her book about her love affair with the priest is true; only the names are fictional.

But Bernard takes issue with Soucier's claim, made in the book and to the Morning Sentinel, that plans were made for Soucier to have an abortion and that Dumoulin drove her to New York to a clinic with the expectation that she would go through with it. She said that is the worst claim Soucier makes in the book.

"The Catholic Church is very much against abortion, so I have a hard time believing a discussion encouraging abortion would take place with anyone," Bernard said. "And again, there is nothing in our files that shows anything like that. This is a story from the mother's point of view and there is no one who can refute it."

Dumoulin, she said, is not in a position where he can defend himself against the claim.

"He's been suffering from Alzheimer's for a long time," she said.

Soucier's book, "Perfect: A Love Story," chronicles her love affair with Dumoulin in the early 1970s and her resulting pregnancy. She says she fought priests' attempts to get her to abort or give the child up for adoption, and ultimately, she gave birth to a boy and raised him alone.

The book describes one vicar's efforts to urge her twice to go out of state to give birth and then give the baby up for adoption. He has since has died.

Soucier also said a parish priest visited her while she was pregnant and told her he was a messenger from the bishop and that the bishop wanted her to go out of state, have the child and give it up for adoption. She said he gave her an envelope containing $3,000 cash and said the money was for her, and that all other expenses for the birth and adoption would be paid by the church.

Bernard acknowledged she has not read Soucier's book. She said she has no information about any such attempts by the vicar to urge her to give the child up for adoption.

"That would have been in his record and Father Dumoulin's record and I've gone through the whole thing," she said.

She said she did not recognize the name of the priest Soucier said had approached her as a messenger from the bishop and offered her $3,000. Soucier, however, said he was a priest in Lewiston and later baptized her son, Christian, at her home.

Asked if a priest fathering a child is an unusual occurrence, Bernard said: "It certainly isn't something that happens every day. Of course it's unusual. Priests take a vow of celibacy."

If a priest finds himself in a situation where he falls in love with a woman or is drawn to a woman, he is supposed to go to a superior, usually a bishop or other spiritual director, and tell him what he is feeling, Bernard said.

"They are encouraged to take time and discern what they want because the church does not want to have priests in the church who are confused or don't want to be there," she said.

In Dumoulin's case, that did occur, she said, referring to Dumoulin's going to a superior with his situation.

"I think it may have happened after she got pregnant," Bernard said. "It's not 100 percent clear on the documents but it looks as if Father Dumoulin came, I believe, to the bishop and said, 'This is what's going on. There's this woman and she's pregnant and she is going to have my baby...' "

She said Dumoulin made a decision that he still wanted his vocation and recommitted to that vocation. Church officials said he needed to be responsible to the child, but did not force him to leave his vocation or to marry, according to Bernard.

Bernard said Dumoulin was born in Lewiston and attended grammar school in QuŽbec, Canada, and Rumford. He then attended high school at St. Charles Seminary in Sherbrooke, QuŽbec. At the time, one could choose to go to the seminary while in high school, Bernard said. Dumoulin attended the Seminary of Philosophy in Montreal and the Grand Seminary of Montreal.

During his 33 years as a pastor, he was assigned at parishes in Old Town, Lewiston, Chisolm, Biddeford, Auburn, Bradley, Grand Isle, Winthrop, Berwick, Augusta and Fairfield. In Augusta, he served at St. Augustine Parish; in Winthrop, at St. Francis Xavier, Bernard said.

"He retired in 2004, but he was not well at all in 2004 and really being very much helped along for some time, even in 2004," she said.

Bernard said Dumoulin was not disciplined for his actions.

"It's not a crime," she said. "This is not about a crime, to father a child. He certainly did break his vow of celibacy and that is a mistake to do that."

As to Soucier's claim that she was urged to give the baby up for adoption, Bernard said the church supports the concept of adoption but if that is not what a person wants, the church would not encourage it.

"We think adoption is a wonderful thing," Bernard said, "but in this particular case, I have no reason to believe the church would have strongly advocated for it."

Healing Schism, Pope Risks Another

The New York Times,
January 26, 2009

By RACHEL DONADIO
ROME — A day after Pope Benedict XVI said he would revoke the excommunications of four schismatic bishops, including one who has denied the Holocaust, concern about the pope’s decision extended into the Vatican itself.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the director of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the liaison for Vatican-Jewish relations, said Sunday that he had not been consulted. “It was a decision of the pope,” the cardinal said in a telephone interview.

That Benedict apparently did not widely discuss a matter that has provoked anger among Jewish groups and liberal Catholics was not out of character, however. It was just the latest example of how the pope is increasingly focused on internal doctrinal issues and seemingly unaware of how they might resonate in the larger world.

As such, it perfectly captured the theological aspirations — and political shortcomings — of his four-year-old papacy.

In 2007, Benedict approved broader use of the Latin Mass, a reform sought by the same traditionalists he has now reinstated, but one seen by many in the church as divisive. The year before, the pope angered Muslims when he cited a medieval scholar who said that Islam brought things “evil and inhuman,” and he was seemingly ill prepared for the repercussions. He later apologized.

Again this weekend, a doctrinal question exploded into a global polemic. Benedict’s decision to extend an olive branch to the four men was apparently born from a deep personal and theological desire to heal the only schism in the Roman Catholic Church in a century.

On Saturday, he said he would welcome back into the fold the four members of a sect founded in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The bishops are members of the St. Pius X Society, which was founded in 1970 by a French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, in opposition to Vatican II reforms. They were excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 after Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated them in unsanctioned ceremonies.

The most contentious of the four is the British-born Bishop Richard Williamson, who in a recent television interview said he thought the “historical evidence” was against six million Jews dying in Nazi gas chambers.

Some saw the pope’s decision as part of a trend, or at least an indication of his priorities.

“There is obviously a theological strategy, but the repercussions on the public opinion field beyond the church are obviously only secondary in priority,” said Mordechay Lewy, the Israeli ambassador to the Vatican.

The move baffled Alberto Melloni, a professor of church history and the director of the liberal Catholic John XXIII Foundation for Religious Science in Bologna, which produced a history of Vatican II. “What is very inexplicable to me is how it’s possible to not calculate the consequences. This is abnormal,” he said.

The Society of St. Pius X does not appear to have issued any public statements on Bishop Williamson’s views on the Holocaust. But the society has never been welcoming toward other faiths.

Jewish leaders said the pope’s decision was a setback. “It’s a very serious situation,” said Riccardo di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome. He said the tenets of Lefebvrism were as worrisome as Bishop Williamson’s personal views.

Rabbi di Segni said he did not know what the next chapter would bring. “I don’t know what kind of resolution there can be at this point,” he said.

In a public statement, the Vatican said Saturday that the revocation was a step toward full reconciliation with the Lefebvrists and that further talks would seek to resolve the “open questions.”

Other liberal critics said the pope’s decision to welcome the Lefebvrists showed that he was more willing to embrace schismatic conservatives than wayward leftists.

In his days as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict censured many left-leaning prelates, including ones adhering to the Marxist-inflected Liberation Theology movement popular in Latin America.

“I would be happy if the pope would be for reconciliation, especially also for people on the progressive side,” said Hans Küng, a professor of theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, who has for decades been Benedict’s most formidable critic on the left. A Catholic priest, Father Küng was forbidden by the church to teach theology.

The revocation seemed to move the papacy further toward intellectual concerns rather than the daily lives of Catholics. Under Benedict, the church “risks becoming a Vatican hierarchy disincarnated from faith,” said Ezio Mauro, the editor of the center-left daily La Repubblica, who writes on church-state issues.

Father Küng agreed. Benedict “does not see that he is alienating himself from the larger part of the Catholic Church and Christianity,” he said. “He doesn’t see the real world. He only sees the Vatican world.”

"Imported Priests

Week of January 26, 2009
ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY
By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

Just after Christmas, The New York Times ran a series of page-one articles on the importing of priests into the United States. Although the focus was on India and various African countries, the phenomenon is much broader than that.

In the past, missionaries were recruited from countries with a surplus of priests, such as Ireland and the United States, to minister in countries with a dire need of priests, such as the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Has something happened to reverse that situation? Is there now a higher priest-to-people ratio in the United States than in the countries from which some American dioceses are now recruiting priests?

The answer is a resounding “No.”

According to the Times and the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, in 2006 there was one priest for every 1,510 Catholics in the United States. That contrasted with a ratio of one priest for every 6,276 Catholics in Mexico, one priest for every 8,513 Catholics in Brazil, one priest for every 4,214 Catholics in Nigeria, one priest for every 4,343 Catholics in Kenya, one priest for every 6,845 Catholics in Uganda, and one priest for every 8,478 Catholics in the Philippines.

Only in India, among the countries supplying “missionary” priests for the United States, is the ratio more favorable than that of priests-to-Catholics in the United States. In India, as of 2006, there was one priest for every 786 Catholics.

So the evidence is clear: the Catholic Church in the United States is drawing down the number of priests in countries in much greater need in order to supplement the dwindling ranks of the priesthood in the United States.

Yet another point needs to be stressed: these “missionary” priests are not being recruited from Uganda, for example, in order to minister to congregations of Ugandans in the United States. For the most part, there is not a single Ugandan in the U.S. dioceses to which these Ugandan “missionaries” have been called.

Rather, these imported priests are simply replacing priests who have died, retired, or resigned, and are serving in whatever parishes need them for the celebration of Mass and the administration of the other sacraments. Is there a more pastorally sensible solution to the priest-shortage in the United States than recruiting priests from countries with far greater needs?

To Pope Benedict: Be Catholic!

The latest move by Pope Benedict XVI to reinstate four schismatic bishops of the St. Pius X Society—which rejects the liberalizing decrees of Vatican Council II (1962-65)—is shocking as it negatively highlights the millions of Catholics he apparently is not interested in reaching out to, including the millions deprived of the Eucharist because of the medieval law requiring that only celibate males can be priests.

Last spring the Pew Foundation found that there are currently 65 million American Catholics—and 30 million former American Catholics! These latter are not Vatican II rejectionists like the Traditionalists, but most likely are either Catholics who are deeply disappointed at the anti-Vatican II Restorationism of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, or never really learned about the Freedom Spirit of Vatican II in the parched years after the appointment of Cardinal Wotyla as Pope in late 1978.

We of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC, founded in 1980 in the wake of the Vatican repression of Catholic thinkers in 1979) welcome the reaching out to the few million Traditionalist Catholics.

We also cry out for a reaching out to the 30 million alienated former American Catholics! (How many more millions of former Catholics are there elsewhere in the world!?) We also look for a reaching out to the untold millions of the 65 million current American Catholics who are barely holding on to their church membership by their fingernails, threatening to swell the ranks of the 30 missing millions.

Personally, I also plead with my former colleague on the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen, Professor Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, to reach out not only to the right, but also to the left. Make our Church truly catholic, universal!

Professor Leonard Swidler, Ph.D., S.T.L.

President, Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church

E-mail: dialogue@temple.edu ; Tel: 513-508-1935

Web: arcc-catholic-rights.net

Response to “Bellingham Catholic Church welcomes married priest”

Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Times –
Intended for Publication

Although the Roman Catholic Church universally demands celibacy for its clergy, Thomas McMichael, a married Evangelical Lutheran minister with a wife and two teenage sons, was recently ordained to the priesthood to serve in a Bellingham parish.

As Catholics, we have grown accustomed to dealing with such inconsistencies from our religious leadership.

Despite the church’s harsh rules on personal sexuality and marriage, it managed to create the worst sex abuse scandal in the history of religion in the United States. Its hard line against gay and lesbian love is contrasted by the fact that over fifty percent of priests and bishops are gay and many are in active relationships. This is so well known that one famous Catholic author, Father Donald Cozzens, refers to the priesthood as a “gay profession” in his writings.

The ordination of McMichael hits a particularly strident chord in the lives of over one hundred and forty Roman Catholic priests here in the Puget Sound area. Over the past twenty five years, those priests left the homosexual culture of the priesthood to start new lives, find new jobs, marry women and raise their own families. Time has shown that the straight priests tend to leave and the gay priests tend to stay. While I wish Father McMichael success in his newly won position, I cannot help but wonder how his family and those who invested in his growth and development in the Lutheran church feel over his abandonment of their beloved religious tradition.

This ordination creates an interesting mirror image irony. A married Lutheran priest is now working with a predominantly gay Roman Catholic clergy while, outside the walls, shunned cradle Catholic married priests spiritually serve the seventy percent of Catholics who also feel alienated from church leadership and their policies.

I believe this irony could resolve itself for all involved if the church would reinstate its original tradition of a married clergy and if society would accept those gay men who find it easier to hide behind religious institutional masks than to openly be the people God created them to be.

John Shuster
5647 Perdemco Ave SE
Port Orchard, WA 98367
360.649.2055 cell

Marriage to priest leads to ‘Apostles Wives’ Club’ support network

By Sharon Roznik
Fond Du Lac Reporter (WI)
1/7/2009

Local artist Marcella Paliekara said she sometimes felt like an island unto herself after marrying her husband, Frances Paliekara, 13 years ago.

“He was a resigned Roman Catholic priest, we lived in the Pacific Northwest, and I hadn’t yet met any other women who were married to priests,” she said.

In fact, the women she did know told her not to tell anyone, believing she had crossed into a forbidden realm by marrying a man of the cloth who once vowed to be celibate.

Things changed this past August when Paliekara started sharing her experiences on a blog she calls “The Apostles Wives’ Club.” Her intent is to reach out to women involved in relationships or married to Catholic priests.

“I wanted to know what other women were experiencing. I had a lot of questions about my own life,” Paliekara said.

She soon discovered that there were women out there who also felt they had no one to turn to. Some wrote to Paliekara privately. Others spoke openly about loving “the spiritual man.”

“Everyone’s story is so different. I don’t know exactly what direction this blog will go, but for me, this has been a long journey and an interesting one,” she said.

Calling herself Eve, in one posting, Paliekara talks about her own feelings of separation from the church: “The biggest problem for me since I married my husband has been my freedom to practice my faith. I can’t say I was a holy roller, but sometimes it was quite intense as I attended Mass every day …

“I really miss the feeling that I can freely practice all of my Catholic faith. I sometimes still go to Mass every day, and when I sit quietly in the chapels where I choose to go, I forget that I am not totally accepted. I can still feel God sometimes very powerfully, but now we have a different relationship. I don’t quite know what it is or what it means.”

She and her husband, Frances, met while he was on sabbatical in Spokane, Wash., during a break from his missionary work in Africa.

“We started up a friendship, and when he went back to Africa, I went there to work for the American Embassy,” she said. “After some time, we just decided we cared a lot about each other and came back to the United States and got married.”

As a faithful Catholic, Paliekara said the choice was difficult for her. Young girls are taught never to think about priests in that way, as a man who could have a relationship with a woman, or even as a human, a person beyond the role. She thought about Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, and how she served as the preacher’s faithful partner for decades.

“In almost every other religion, ministers are allowed to marry, and their wives are revered,” she noted. “But women who marry Catholic priests face rejection from their family, their friends and the community.”

Some women and priests keep their relationships hidden and continue to live for years in secret. Even in today’s society, women who have relationships with priests are still thought of as a seductress or temptress, Paliekara said.

“From my family, there was some negativity and, later, acceptance. My mother was very old when I got married, and she was fine with it, but my husband’s family took a long time accepting us,” Paliekara explained.

David Gawlik, a former Catholic priest from Mequon and editor of Corpus Report, a publication that promotes a renewed and inclusive priesthood, said Marcella’s blog is unique because it provides, for the first time, a voice for women who love priests.

Often, these wives feel like they are branded with the proverbial “scarlet letter” because of their marriage to a priest, Gawlik noted.

“Marcella affirms the loving relationship between married priests and their wives. She eloquently indicates that they are a circle of women whose lives were changed by a relationship with a Roman Catholic priest,” he said.

According to Corpus.org, there are more than 20,000 married Catholic priests in the United States. Gawlik estimates that about 400 of them are living in Wisconsin, although there are no clear statistics.

“It’s not something the Catholic Church wants to make public,” he said.

Some of the married priests continue to practice at faith communities like that of Jesus our Shepherd Community Church in Allenton, referred to as an inclusive faith community.

Paliekara said she chose the name “Apostles Wives” to honor the men who are called to serve Jesus, including married Catholic priests,

“Once you are ordained as a priest, you are always ordained. I think it’s a great sorrow for most priests who leave the church. It’s a terrible burden for them,” she said.

Columnist MJ Harris of Florida, a contributor to the blog, calls herself an “out-of-the-box Catholic.” She met her husband Jim in 1968, when she was a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps and he was a Catholic Navy chaplain from the Chicago Diocese. They married in 1974 and enjoyed 29 years together until his death in 2002.

In 2006, she married Joe Halpin, a former Jesuit priest.

For her, writing for the Apostles Wives’ Club is a form of therapy, she said.

“We are definitely unheard voices, and we are as diversified as a garden of flowers. There is no way to package us all together. However, we have a common denominator. We are wives of Roman Catholic priests, which of course, we are not supposed to be. It is time for strong voices, strong knowledge of who we are, and a rightful place in history,” Harris said.

Paliekara said she and her husband are members of an Episcopal church, and Frances serves as a non-denominational chaplain. Yet she still attends Catholic Mass, sometimes daily.

“What I love is being present in the liturgy. My faith is not in a hierarchy, or mandated rules. I was taught to love Jesus Christ, the sacraments and the church,” Paliekara said.

She hopes the stories on her blog can someday be compiled in a book she plans to call “Sacred Stories from The Apostles Wives’ Club.”

Bellingham's Assumption Church welcomes first married priest

John Stark
The Bellingham Herald
Posted: January 19, 2009

BELLINGHAM - The day after his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, Father Tom McMichael stood in front of the altar at Assumption Church after Sunday Mass, while members of the congregation raised both hands in a gesture of welcome and blessing.

The welcoming of a new priest is a special moment for any church, but this moment may have been more special than most: At McMichael's side was Karin McMichael, his wife of 23 years.

McMichael, 48, is the first married priest in the Archdiocese of Seattle, which includes all of western Washington. He and his wife have two sons, aged 19 and 21. McMichael expects to be working at Assumption part time at least until this summer, while also celebrating weekend Masses at Skagit County churches.

The Sunday, Jan. 11, event was no surprise to the parish. McMichael had been on the church staff as a seminarian and deacon for several months, the culmination of a process that began in November 2005. That was when McMichael informed his congregation at Lynden's Hope Lutheran Church that he was resigning to become a Catholic.

McMichael took that step with no assurance that he would be able to continue the religious vocation he loved.

"Perhaps the most difficult part of this was giving that up, and not being sure if I would be able to continue," he said. "There was no guarantee that this door would open."

While priestly celibacy remains the rule in the Roman Catholic Church, there are exceptions. In the 1950s, McMichael said, the Roman church allowed some married Lutheran pastors in Germany to be ordained after conversion. And some small Eastern-rite churches that accept the authority of the Pope have a long tradition of married priests.

In the U.S., Pope John Paul II approved the ordination of converted, married clergymen from other denominations in 1980, according to information on the archdiocese's Web site.

If some Catholic priests can have wives, why not all?

"That's not a question I can answer," McMichael said.

McMichael and every other would-be priest in his situation must apply to the Vatican for permission to be ordained, and must undergo seminary training in Catholic doctrines.

"They make it very clear ... that this is the exception," McMichael said. "The rule, if you will, in canon law is celibate clergy. But they also acknowledge the possibility of exceptions."

At present, there are somewhere around 100 such priests in the U.S., McMichael said. He doesn't think he and others like him are paving the way for the general acceptance of marriage for priests.

"It's not a step toward married clergy as the norm, and I think that's made very clear throughout the process," McMichael said.

As McMichael tells it, his transition from Lutheran to Catholic, and from Lutheran pastor to Catholic priest, was a lengthy one.

He was born into a Swedish-rooted Lutheran congregation, where pastors and congregation are, in his words, "very comfortable with Catholic forms, with the Eucharist, with vestments, with a high view of the clergy. ... That was the kind of Lutheran I was, and the kind of Lutheran religion I was attempting to live."

He got his religious training in a seminary that included other young men training for the Catholic priesthood, and he always felt comfortable with an inclusive view of the Christian faith. As he saw it, reunification of all Christian churches was the ultimate goal, and the reunification of Lutherans with Catholics was part of that.

The Catholic Church has taken significant steps in that direction in the past 50 years, McMichael said, shifting to celebration of the Mass in local languages and working to smooth out theological differences over the role of faith, good works and divine grace in human salvation.

But as McMichael saw it, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was moving in a different direction in the years leading up to his decision to leave, away from the traditional liturgy and becoming more "Protestant," more concerned with maintaining a separate denominational identity.

"Some of us had to deal with the question of whether we belonged," he said.

McMichael and his wife decided they didn't. Both made the conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, and both had to submit to "a stack of paperwork" as the first step toward McMichael's Catholic ordination.

"Rome, and the Archdiocese of Seattle, wanted to have a sense of who I was, and why I was coming," McMichael said.

He acknowledges that not everyone in his new church, or his old one, may be supportive of what he has done. But he has received support aplenty. Some former parishioners at Hope Lutheran went to Seattle for his ordination, and members of Assumption also have been welcoming, he said.

He said he especially values the diversity of the Catholic Church: The Assumption congregation is a rainbow of ethnic groups, income levels, and theological viewpoints.

"It has been especially gratifying to be received by people who are coming from very different theological perspectives," he said. "I just rejoice in the gathering for Eucharist with this incredible diversity of people. ... This is the one thing that would bring them together."

He hopes that his own ministry will further unite, rather than divide.

"Not everyone can do what I did or would want to," he said. "I would hope that it would encourage better relations between Lutherans and Catholics."

Photo: Fr. Tom and Karin McMichael

Multigenerational Ministry 2: United Kingdom

Son joins his father in Catholic priesthood

By Jerome Taylor
The Independent (UK)
Monday, 12 January 2009

With celibacy a fundamental tenet of the Catholic clergy, you might think it should be all but impossible for a father and son to both be priests.


But that is exactly what has happened this week in Birmingham in what is believed to the first case of its kind for 900 years. This morning, Father Dominic Cosslett, a 36-year-old newly ordained priest, begins his job as assistant priest at St George's Church in Worcester. But what makes his ordination so unusual is that his father, Ron Cosslett, is also a priest at a church just up the M5 in nearby Darlaston.

The historical pairing came about because of a get-out clause introduced by the Vatican which allowed Anglican clergy to convert to Catholicism.

Although Catholic priests are forbidden from marrying and have to remain celibate, the Pope made an exception for those priests who married in separate denominations and then converted to Catholicism at a later date.

Many of those in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Church, for instance, defected to Catholicism in protest over the ordination of women priests and some were married. They are allowed to stay within wedlock despite being priests in the Catholic Church but are expected to remain celibate. Fr Dominic, who is not married, was ordained at a packed ceremony last month at Christ the King in Coventry by Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who also ordained Father Ron three years ago.

Speaking at the ordination, Archbishop Nichols said: "This is a unique occasion and a great day in the life of the diocese. Both a father and his son, after his ordination, will be serving as Catholic priests."

But although their ordination might be deemed somewhat unorthodox in the modern Roman Catholic Church, 900 years ago it would have been perfectly plausible. Although celibacy became an increasingly important issue for the Vatican during the 9th and 10th centuries, it was not until the First Council of the Lateran in 1123 that Rome officially declared clerical marriages invalid.

The Vatican had become increasingly concerned about the behaviour of their clergymen and felt that priests should be married to the Church above all else. Until then, it was perfectly acceptable across wide tracts of Christendom for priests to marry and have children. Even the Popes were known to marry. Pope Hormisdas (514-523) fathered a son who later became Pope Silverius (536-538) while Pope Hadrian II (867-872) was the last married pontiff.

In recent years, the question of whether the Vatican should once again allow priests to marry has resurfaced among reformers who believe that allowing married priests would help to attract newcomers and reduce clergy shortages, particularly in the West. Thirty years ago, there was one priest for every 1,797 Catholics compared to one for every 2,977 nowadays.

Fr Dominic's arrival at St George's is not the first time he has been a priest – he originally trained for the Anglican priesthood at the high church Mirfield College of the Resurrection before being priested in 1997. He then underwent a shortened form of training to become a Catholic priest under guidelines agreed by the Vatican for the reception of Anglican clergy who defect to the Catholic Church.

In his ordination mass booklet Fr Dominic wrote: "I especially want to thank my parents and family for the support and unwavering love they have shown me over the years."

Photo: Father Dominic Cosslett, 36, left, and his father, Father Ron Cosslett, 70, right, were both ordained by Archbishop Vincent Nichols

In Quiet Rebellion, Parishioners Keep Faith

New York Times
January 5, 2009
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

SCITUATE, Mass. — There are sleeping bags in the sacristy at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church and reclining chairs in the vestibule, but no one here gets too relaxed. “Please be ever vigilant!” a sign by the door warns, and the parishioners who have occupied the church since it closed more than four years ago take it as seriously as a commandment.

St. Frances was among dozens of churches that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston decided to close and sell in 2004, not least because of financial turmoil made worse by the abuse scandal in the clergy. But while most churches closed without a fight, parishioners at St. Frances, a brick A-frame on a wooded hill, and at four other churches rebelled.

For 1,533 days, the group at St. Frances has taken turns guarding the building around the clock so that the archdiocese cannot lock them out and put it up for sale. They call it a vigil, but by now it is more of a lifestyle.

“It’s much more of a living 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week faith,” said Margy O’Brien, 78, a parishioner since St. Frances opened in 1960. “My generation of Catholics have paid, prayed and obeyed, but you get to a point where you’ve had it.”

The archdiocese will not provide priests to most of the vigil churches, and it has removed most statues, altar cloths and sacred objects. It changed the locks at St. Frances in October 2004 but unwittingly left a fire door open, an error the parishioners call a miracle.

The archdiocese has not tried to evict the parishioners or shut off the heat and electricity. Three of the five vigil groups have appeals pending with the Vatican, but if the appeals fail, as is likely, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, may run out of patience.

“They can’t go on for infinity,” said Terrence C. Donilon, a spokesman for the archdiocese. “These have to end at some point, but how, I don’t know.”

In the meantime, some 100 parishioners at St. Frances take turns sitting in the church for hours at a time, including overnight shifts in the sacristy, where the priest once dressed, and the reconciliation room, where confession was heard.

The vestibule serves as their living room, and the sanctuary, with houseplants on the altar and finished jigsaw puzzles on a back pew, as a place to meditate or even walk laps. Bobbie Sullivan, 57, who determined that 19 times around the sanctuary is a mile, said she planned her weeks around a sign-up sheet by the door. Her husband died in 2006, and sleeping alone in the reconciliation room, under an electric blanket, does not bother her.

“It’s warm, it’s pretty, it’s quiet, it’s peaceful,” Ms. Sullivan said of the church, where she passes the time writing cards, quilting and paying bills. “It’s a great place to get your work done.”

The closing of parishes in Boston in 2004 was the leading edge of a wave of closings around the country. In announcing the closings, Archbishop O’Malley said they were brought on by a shortage of priests, dwindling attendance and money problems.

There are now 292 parishes in the archdiocese, down from 357 in 2004, Mr. Donilon said. But the archdiocese is spending $880,000 a year to maintain the five vigil parishes and nine others that it cannot sell yet because of civil suits or appeals to the Vatican.The Council of Parishes, a group that formed to advise the vigil parishes, has helped similar efforts in New York and New Orleans, where two churches have been occupied since October. It also helped parishioners at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Adams, Mass., start a vigil last month. Peter Borré, the group’s leader, said the Boston vigils were “the longest-duration, broadest-based passive resistance movement” ever by American Catholics.

Much of the St. Frances parishioners’ anger comes from the sense that their church was unfairly singled out. Unlike others, it was in good physical condition and financially solvent, said Jon Rogers, 49, a vigil organizer. He and others say they believe the church’s location doomed it. When it closed, the property had an assessed value of $4.4 million.

“We have 30.3 acres of prime coastal realty here,” Mr. Rogers said. “It’s a land grab; they need the money.”

The archdiocese, which in 2005 announced an $85 million settlement with victims of abuse by priests, originally hoped to make some $200 million from the sale of closed parishes. So far, proceeds have fallen well short of that.

St. Frances has stayed in good condition since the vigil started, but other churches are not as lucky. In Everett, an industrial city north of Boston, St. Therese Parish has gone without water or heat since its boiler broke in October and the archdiocese refused to repair it.

The parishioners keeping vigil there — a group of about 35, according to the leaders — sit in pews wrapped in blankets, use a rented portable toilet and collect rainwater for their plants.

“I just don’t want to give in to it,” said Mary Tumasz, 83, who spends several hours a day at St. Therese after attending Mass at another church. “I’m praying and hoping, but it doesn’t look good.”

The other churches with vigils are Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Boston; St. Jeremiah in Framingham; and St. James the Great in Wellesley.

Many of the St. Frances holdouts describe being transformed from passive Catholics to passionate, deeply involved members of a spiritual community that they say could be a model for the future of the troubled Catholic Church.

“You would think because there are fewer and fewer priests that the various archdioceses would welcome a new configuration,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “Let the lay people do everything but the sacramental.”

Since St. Frances has no priest, parishioners lead services that include everything but consecration of the host. On the Sunday before Christmas, about 50 parishioners attended a service conducted entirely by women, including two who distributed communion. The hosts had been consecrated elsewhere by a priest described by Mr. Rogers’s wife, Maryellen, as “sympathetic.”

Parishioners also hold suppers in the vestibule and meet Tuesdays to say the rosary. They raise money as a nonprofit group, donate to charities and open the church to outsiders seeking comfort or repose.

“Lots of troubled people have come through, and all they need, really simply, is someone to connect to,” said Karen Virginia Shockley, 43, who participates in the vigil with her two teenage sons. “Usually there’s an older person here who will sit down and just listen to you.”

The Rev. Thomas Foley, the archdiocese’s cabinet secretary for parish life and leadership, expressed regret in an interview about the timing and abruptness of the closings. Boston Catholics were already reeling from the abuse scandal, Father Foley said, and the closings were “too much, too soon.”

In an open letter in 2004, Cardinal O’Malley called the closings “the hardest thing I have ever had to do in 40 years of religious life.”

Father Foley said the vigil keepers should “peacefully let go” and “consider that there are welcoming parishes around them that will benefit” from their presence. But members of the St. Frances group said they hoped to meet with Cardinal O’Malley this month and would propose buying the church with donations.

Some parishioners have grown so disenchanted with the Catholic Church hierarchy and so fond of the vigil routine that they cannot imagine returning to the old way.

“I cannot go back to the priest and the vestments and that, I always felt, prince-of-the-church approach,” said Mary Dean, 61, who keeps vigil at St. Frances at least four hours a week. “I’ll always be a Catholic, but I may not be able to worship in the mainstream Catholic Church.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/us/06vigil.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1

Married priests have their say

BY SHARON ROZNIK
The Reporter

Rev. Don Wright of Campbellsport likes to recite the adage “once a Roman Catholic priest always a Roman Catholic priest.”

The resigned priest lives in Campbellsport with his wife, Ann, and serves as one of the clergy at Jesus our Shepherd Community Church in Allenton.

While Wright calls living the life of a married priest “beautiful” and “unbelievably fulfilling,” he still feels the stigma the Catholic church has put on married priests for “breaking a promise and committing an unforgivable sin.” The result is a shunning by “faithful” Catholics, and an inability to serve the church unless the ordination is annulled by being laicized.

“What gives us great joy is to serve those people the official Roman Catholic Church has turned away or turned off,” he said. “This includes people who are divorced and remarried, homosexuals, as well as those horrified by the Church’s handling of sexual abuse by the ordained.”

Some time back, his wife Ann told him: “I pray all day.”

“That conversation with God takes many forms but without the usual ‘includes,’ as it did while I was in active ministry, praying the Liturgy of the Hours. My morning prayer is usually prayed with one of my sons over the phone and I pray my evening prayer with my wife before we turn in,” Wright said.

It was 1970 when Father John Schmitz, formerly of St. Peter, burned his “Roman collar” and left the Catholic priesthood. In the prior decade he had served at St. Mary’s Parish and School in Fond du Lac

“I was very unhappy. I was on the cutting edge of theology, being a campus priest, but I felt like I was being used. It took 30 years to get over the pain and write about it,” he said.

His book “A Funny Thing Happened on My Way Out of Church,” published by Caritas Communications in Mequon, tells how he married a former nun named Jo Ann, raised a family and never looked back.

In the early church, celibacy was not required, Schmitz points out in the book. Some of the Apostles were married. The gospels speak of Peter’s mother-in-law. Paul’s advice to Timothy, on the qualities of the bishop, mentions that he be married but once. Some of the early popes were married. Schmitz said the “Eastern” churches never required celibacy as a condition for ordination, a tradition held to the present.

Schmitz said his biggest fear in leaving the priesthood was how he was going to make a living.

“The seminary education certainly didn’t prepare you to make a living outside the church. We had scant income, maybe $50 a month, and even scanter savings,” Schmitz said.

These days Schmitz lives in Brookfield with his second wife (Jo Ann passed away of cancer), officiates at about 20 weddings a year, and helps feed the poor through the Knights of Columbus in West Allis. He is retired from his second career in the insurance business.

“I have never regretted it, in fact someone just told me the other day ‘John, you’ve done more good since you turned your collar around and put a necktie on,” Schmitz said.