The Forbidden Couple: Gabriella's Story

This is the story of Gabriella Loser Friedli, a Swiss woman who became involved with a Dominican priest. She went on to found the Swiss support organization for women companions of priests, ZÖFRA.

Plein Jour
August 2009

In love with a priest, Gabriella Loser Friedli has paid dearly for feelings condemned by the Vatican!

From hiding in broad daylight to scandal. Confessions.

Twenty-two long years of silence to bear the seal of forbidden feelings. Yes, when they met, Gabriella and Richard had no right to love each other: He was a Dominican priest.

She sees herself again at 22, with her fresh draftsman's diploma. A rough period, though. "I was really bad off," she said simply. Between the lines, it included anorexia, family problems, deep malaise.

So she spent a few days of rest in a convent. She was introduced to a priest to help her. It was Richard who lent her an ear. Not love at first sight, no. But a quality of exchange that quickly causes her turmoil. "We spent the day together walking in the mountains. And it was so nice, so normal that I told him my whole life." In him, she just saw the man of the cloth, the only one whom she can trust. "It was protection, security for me who at that time had problems with men."

The relationship could have stopped there. Like an invigorating sunny spell. But Richard continued to send postcards, to support her through small signs of affection. Bonds of friendship were formed. They intensified. "Love had nothing to do with it. He was really a friend." Richard taught at the University of Freiburg at that time. He offered her a job in his department. She accepted and moved. "Slowly, very slowly, I felt that my feelings changed." His did too. "We both knew we had no right to love, so we did not say the words."

And yet, love is what it was. Broader, more visceral feelings, less platonic too. For Richard, the internal conflicts that could have arisen from his vows of chastity did not really take place. "I was not pierced by contradictions. I had no guilty conscience because I do not preach on this dimension of the Gospel," he says readily.

The Weight of Guilt

Still. For Gabriella, daily life weighed heavy. "It was harder for me. He had all his work, his colleagues, the monastery of which he was prior; I had my job and otherwise I waited." With the weight of guilt. Solitude. The inability to share with others what was at the center of her life.

They never went to movies together, you never saw them in each other's arms or just hand in hand. They could never catch themselves dreaming together of raising a family. Only her sister was aware of this relationship that was incompatible with the priesthood. "It made us sick, physically. How could Richard manage this gap? And then he was terrified of being discovered and losing the job he loved."

Yes, how could one not feel stifled by such a strong love, enclosed in a shroud of silence? After six years, Gabriella Loser Friedli decided to distance herself. Take a fork in the road. Give herself another opportunity. Such as the desire to start a family, to live openly, try conformity. She met someone else. Another man, Michael, who will always remain the "second" man. "Richard was very happy for me, very understanding. But when he saw that I actually moved in with this person, he exploded. He started yelling that he loved me, that I was his whole life. "

At that moment, he was ready to break his vows to find a way for his love relationship.

The arrival of a son

A twist of fate, one of life's ironies. Gabriella was then expecting Michael's child. As "a gift from this other relationship that she struggled to break." "Yes, I found myself pregnant with two men who loved me. But I continued to live alone." Richard remained at her side.

In the photos, he is the father who carries Jonathan, takes him to the park in the cradle of his arm. "We could never walk all three together. When Jonathan started talking, we had to pay even more attention lest he betray the intimacy of the ties that bound us." Richard began to look for work. And finally left his religious community to take an apartment in town.

Until one day, suddenly, the secret flies apart. An aide denounced their situation to the bishops. "The Church was willing to let bygones be bygones if I moved to Berne with my son. Richard has refused." Exclusion proceedings. "From one day to another, he lost everything: he was forbidden to teach at the university, say Mass, direct a choir. After thirty years of commitment, he left with 3000 francs! A defrocked priest becomes nonexistent. Where is the forgiveness and understanding so preached by the Church?"

Not to mention the scandal, anonymous threats, insults, outraged colleagues. And friends who crossed to the other side of the street. "Who looked at the suffering we have endured? People turned their backs on me, they slammed the door on me, the offending one." They were married, in a civil ceremony of course, in 1994 "to confirm their love and so that Richard could adopt Jonathan." The same year he found a position at the University on another faculty. Now a new challenge remained: learning to live together openly.

Today, they have turned the page. Obviously they moved away from the parish. They rarely go to these churches "that do not have the answers you need." Under the greying hair, the serenity, there is an element of rebellion. Something that still grumbles, "against the system, not against God who had nothing to do with it." "Yes, I am resentful of the Church. But not only because of our history. We still had lots of luck, others never get ahead, they don't find any work because the bishop puts in his veto. You starve if you're honest!"

Incomprehension

She still keeps the faith. Since she finds her strength in a small isolated chapel, in front of her house on a hill. Gabriella is silent. For a long time. She speaks again to reemphasize "the scandal of this system that does not see that priests are humans with needs, emotions like other men. This is not just about sexuality but also about exchange, sharing and friendship." Like this palpable link, this rich complicity that has nourished her and Richard for so long.

Appeased, and indestructible. They are a couple who only have a vocation to love. Off the highways of dogma. "If God gave us this space to create this love, it is not for nothing. It's absolutely crazy what we lived through. But I probably would do the same thing again." The evidence that behind some acts of disobedience, great professions of faith are sometimes hidden.

A place to speak out

How many priests are stifled by this law that forces them to amputate themselves from human love? There are no official statistics on this hidden reality. According to Gabriella Loser Friedli, almost 50% of priests are living in a similar situation. To assist women affected by the celibacy of priests, Gabrielle Loser Friedli participated in the creation of an association in 1992: ZÖFRA, of which she is now president. Bi-monthly discussion workshops, confidential advice or prompt support, this association provides a forum for people in need. In all, some 420 women have already contacted it.

Carlos “Flecha” García: "I want to love and be loved"

Fr. Carlos Garcia, priest, social activist and local head of Caritas in Mendoza, Aregntina, left the priesthood a year ago after more than two decades in the ministry. Diario Los Andes caught up with him to find out how secular life is treating "Padre Flecha".

by Ignacio Zavala (Engl. trans. by Rebel Girl)
Diario Los Andes (Argentina)
9/5/2009

He is one of the reference points in Mendoza on community work and solidarity in action. He carried thaht banner all his life. Today he no longer does so from the Church but from a position in the government.

A year ago, Carlos "Flecha" Garcia resigned from the priesthood and decided to face a new life to find love and overcome loneliness. He confesses that he began a relationship, but says he took that step after "leaving the priesthood", at 46. During the conversation, at first he seems somewhat tense and uncomfortable. Then he relaxes and chats while reclining in his chair holding a cup of coffee from which he sips every so often.

"I bought new duds, the ones I was wearing were all donated," he points out at the beginning of the conversation. When answering, he thinks a while, clasps his hands and plays with them while looking for the answer and the right words.

You are no longer "Padre Flecha" as your people called you for 26 years. Who is Carlos Garcia today?

"I am a person born in the province of Buenos Aires, Miramar and who arrived in Mendoza with his family in search of work at age 13. I am a person who is trying to find himself. I always try to be very honest with myself, especially, and with others.

Why did you leave the priesthood?

"After 40 years we all make an assessment of life. I was greatly affected by my mother's death three years ago and the death of my father a while ago. And a year ago, the death of Father Jorge Contreras, to whom I was very close, also affected me deeply. He was my teacher and a role model.

I thought about what I wanted for my life, for myself, with the solitude in which a priest is left after everyone is gone. I am a very loved and recognized person. I thank God for everything and I gave the Church everything I could, I held nothing back. But the personal and emotional loneliness that a priest has is very strong.

And I'm not just talking about sexuality, but of all that a person carries emotionally and all that goes with the family. My dream is that of every human being: to be fulfilled and helping others to be so. I do not think I can do it alone. I will ask those who are with me to also help me towards self-fulfillment, with all that that means: leaving some things, taking on others and making decisions like this.

Was Flecha hit by the arrow of love?

In this process of finding and being honest with myself I realized that, as the Bible says:" It's not good for man to be alone." First came love for myself, to meet with that heart that was giving itself to others, but that had not left space for itself. Today I am trying to learn to love and be loved, like every human being. I closed one stage and have let myself begin to love, which is another learning process.

How do you think people took your decision?

It was a personal discernment with the help of some friends who helped me financially because I did not have a cent on which to live. Then I had to look at what I could do for work and I sought out some people connected with politics. I do not deny that I am a friend of the Governor. He had once made me an offer, I had said no and now I was seeking a position where I could be of service to others. I took a year to discern this. I was not in good spirits, I had been feeling discouragement and distress. During the first months I had psychological support and thought: "I have to get better, I have to put things in their place."

How do you feel now that you are out of the Church?

I feel good because I have been consistent with myself: I love God, love people, love my church to which I have given my life and with which I have very good dialogue. The Church has always respected my decision and not questioned me. It's a personal decision to enter and exit. I did not leave because of any sanction. I went through the procedure and asked the Church that I might no longer participate in the ministry. I am a priest for life through consecration. I continue to profess the Catholic faith and faith in the sacraments, but I also believe that the Church needs to renew itself in many ways.

Is celibacy a problem for the Church today?

I don't know if it's a problem but it is a real reason why many of us leave or have left. It may be one of the things that weighed on me too. It is an element that the Catholic Church ought to change. I had a Christian vocation, but also a human one. I took this step because I was also faithful to my humanity.

How was the transition from religion to politics?

I don't know if I went into politics. I remain consistent with my commitment to society and I remain in areas where one can propose a group vision, one above and beyond what reality imposes. My life right now is not marked by a partisan political decision, but by a decision for the common good. Politics is the commitment to the common good; from that standpoint I'm in politics. My task is to support and coordinate the Provincial Councils for Children and Disability and I am supporting the formation of the Senior Citizens' Council.

Do we live in times of religious disbelief? Is there a crisis of faith in society?

People are in crisis and in some way all religions as well. People are searching. There is need for faith in the people, therefore there is much popular piety. It also happens that the expected renewal of the Catholic Church is not as desired. There, I dissent ecclesially with the conservative positions.

What is the greatest probem in our society?

The word that sums it all up is inequity, inequality. There is an inequity in the possibility for human development. Today, personal commitment is above commitment to the common good and in all sectors the savage struggle makes us want to save ourselves alone. Solidarity is not enough. There is not a real commitment to transform the situation of all sectors. Each person has a role wherever he is in transforming this situation, solidarity campaigns or welfare programs are not the only things that can respond to this.

Deciding to leave

We just did a couple of posts about priests' children and also about Fr. Peter McDonough's decision to leave the priesthood to be a father to his child. Now thanks to Ella and James Preece's Catholic and Loving it! blog, we have Fr. Peter's own words about his decision. Ella is a member of the Catholic Deaf Association and received Fr. Peter's e-mail:

Dear friends

I am very sorry I have very sad news to share with you concerning myself. I am retiring from Salford diocese. It has been a long and difficult journey for me in the last few years. Over four years ago I informed the bishop that I have a son. He was very understanding and supportive and said that I could continue in the priesthood as long as I remained a celibate. The mother of my son, [mother's name removed], has given me full support in this. However, [child's name removed] is growing fast and is continually asking questions, which has made things very difficult for us. I also need to think of his needs and rights. I have been attending a course of therapy, spiritual direction as well as a lot of discussions, discernments and prayers and I have reached a decision where I feel it is right for me to become proactive and become a full time father to [child's name removed] and to protect the good name of the Church. This morning I celebrated Mass with the Deaf community for the last time and I have informed them of my situation. I am sorry to have broken news to you like this, I would have preferred to share the news with you personally but it is not possible. Fr Frank Parkinson has kindly agreed the bishop’s invitation to replace me. However, although I will be leaving the priesthood, I will continue to offer my support to the CDA and I will be involved in all things relating to the CDA as long as the Council will accept me in my role as secretary. Work and preparations for the CDA Conference 2009 is progressing well and I will still be involved.

I ask your patience, understanding and prayer,

Peter

More Vatican tea-leaf reading...

Another tantalizing statement from Vatican Secretary of State Cradinal Tarcisio Bertone has people speculating, wondering if maybe the Vatican is laying the groundwork to readmit married priests. In an interview in L'Osservatore Romano, in response to a final question about the Year For Priests, Bertone answered: "...L'Anno sacerdotale sta suscitando un grande entusiasmo in tutte le Chiese locali e un movimento straordinario di preghiera, di fraternità verso e fra i sacerdoti e di promozione della pastorale vocazionale. Si sta inoltre irrobustendo il tessuto del dialogo, talora appannato, tra vescovi e sacerdoti, e sta crescendo una attenzione speciale anche verso i sacerdoti ridotti a una condizione marginale nell'azione pastorale. Si auspica anche che avvenga una ripresa di contatto, di aiuto fraterno e possibilmente di ricongiungimento con i sacerdoti che per vari motivi hanno abbandonato l'esercizio del ministero...."

Translation: "...The Year For Priests is stimulating great enthusiasm throughout the local Church and an extraordinary movement of prayer, fellowship with and among the priests and pastoral promotion of vocations. It is also strengthening the fabric of dialogue, sometimes frayed, between bishops and priests, and special attention to priests reduced to marginal status in pastoral ministry is growing as well. One also hopes for renewed contact, fraternal support and possibly reuniting with the priests who for various reasons have left the ministry..."

A priest's son's plea to Benedict XVI

This article talks about a plea from writer Marc Bradfer, author Fils de prêtre ("Son of a priest", Elytis, 2003), to Pope Benedict XVI to acknowledge the children of priests and help bring them into the light. Bradfer's most recent book is Je te salue, Marie, rencontre avec Sœur Emmanuelle (Elytis, 2008) about the late French nun and social activist on behalf of the rag-pickers in the slums of Cairo.

Journal du Dimanche
8/22/2009

In a letter posted Friday, Marc Bradfer, son of a priest, asks the pope to recognize the situation of the hidden children of the Church. How many are there in France?

His grandmother died of grief. "Heir to the moral anguish" of his parents, he himself has long suffered from this gash in the family history. Marc Bradfer, son of a priest, posted a poignant letter to Benedict XVI on Friday. While the debate about the hidden children of the Church seems to be resurfacing at the Vatican, he asks the Holy Father to finally "tell the truth", to "open a path to freedom."

Marc Bradfer's wound opened suddenly in a car. He was 15 years. "I was with one of my brothers. We talked about my father, who had died five years earlier. And there we learned that before he had us, he was a priest." A long quest followed. For himself, on a psychoanalyst's couch. In the footsteps of his father, a priest in northern France. The latter met his mother, then aged 19, during the Second World War. "My mother was the daughter of a notable person. This story was a scandal. My father had to choose -- either he stayed with her, or he was going to continue his ministry abroad. He had the courage to chuck everything, to never see his parents again. My mother was consumed by that all her life, she felt very guilty. The atmosphere was rotten in the family. One of my brothers committed suicide at age 21."

In his letter, Marc, now an editor and writer in Toulouse, puts the names of his parents, Albert and Jacqueline Courson Bradfer, forward. Devout Catholics who were never entitled to a religious marriage. As if, now that they are both deceased, he would reunite them before the pope for eternity. "There is a time to conceal, but also a time to acknowledge," implores the one who was presented to John Paul II during an audience on October 6, 2004 and blessed as the "son of a priest." The first step of a personal acknowledgement that he wants to see extended to all those sons and daughters of the clergy.

Nine centuries of secretes, silence and suffering

A demand that comes naturally back to questioning celibacy for priests. An exception of Catholicism, imposed since the twelfth century but that is not dogmatic. Nine centuries of secrets, silence and suffering. Today, according to figures from Christian Terras, editor of the journal Golias, 20 to 30% of priests in the West lead a love life, 50 to 60% in Latin America and 80 to 90% in Africa. In the early 2000s, there was a movement towards the light with the publication of numerous stories of children of priests and the creation of associations of companions. Then, seeing that nothing changed, the voices were mostly stifled. Sometimes Marc Bradfer loses hope: "The cardinals who are in Rome are 50 to 85 years old. These men have the power -- do you think they will give priests the freedoms they have denied themselves?"

However, the Church has been traumatized by bloody affairs such as the case of the priest in Uruffe. The priest who, in the 1950s, after having shot his pregnant girlfriend in the head, cut her open, baptized the baby and then killed it before slashing the face to erase any resemblance.

An almost official preventive procedure has therefore been put in place in a climate of widespread hypocrisy. "The method is almost always the following," a married priest says. "We are asked to distance ourselves from the person, to abandon our child. In return, the church pays child support. The mutual aid association, Le Pélican, which also deals with alcoholic or depressed priests, takes care of it." These situations were more common in the years 1950-1960. Today there are fewer priests, and given their average age, fewer still would be fathers. "In the period from 1965 to 1985, 10,000 of us left the Church, about 1,000 of us were expecting a child," this priest adds. Some of the children experienced guilt. Yet there is nothing more normal than the love of a man and a woman. At the same time, when priests have companions, children, you destroy a social structure. The domination of the bishop over the priests through celibacy. That is what the Catholic hierarchy does not accept!" In the North, Bernard Corbineau, head of a group speaking for married priests, hopes simply that the "leaders of the Church have the courage to listen to the voice of the people of God." According to a recent TNS-Sofres poll for La Croix, 82% of the general population supports the marriage of priests. Among Catholics, the proportion is 73%.

France: Recognizing priests' children

By Catherine Coroller (translation by Rebel Girl)
Libération
August 21, 2009

Father Jacques Nieuviarts, director of the national pilgrimage to Lourdes (the one on August 15) was not aware. Mgr. Jacques Perrier, Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, had vaguely heard about it on the radio. Father Marie José de Antonio, head of pastoral care for migrants in Hautes-Pyrenees too. Officially at least, the possible recognition by the Vatican of children of priests, revealed on August 2 by the Italian daily La Stampa - and denied the next day by the Pope's spokesperson - was a non-issue for the clergy present in Lourdes last weekend.

According to that newspaper, Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, has organized several meetings on the explosive issue of children of priests. Objective: to keep the existence of DNA testing from raising a multitude of lawsuits on paternity recognition before the courts, with the damage it would cause to the finances and image of the Church. The counter-attack devised by the Vatican, according to La Stampa, is a kind of civil contract guaranteeing the social rights of the mother and child. The child could inherit the personal property of his father, and the latter could give him his name, which is difficult for him to do today, except by leaving his ministry.

"Innocents". Fathers Nieuviarts and de Antonio are not against this development. "These children are innocent," says the first. The second agrees: "It's not their fault." Father de Antonio is an elderly man. However, the rule of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, which ordain married men, leaves him dreaming: "When I see Lebanese Maronite priests who are fathers, I sometimes think if I had done my studies in Lebanon, I could have married too."

Ideally, Jacques Perrier is not against the recognition of children of priests either. "There may be something to do." But for him, it's a microproblem. "There are certainly cases, but perhaps fewer than we imagine. We have not seen a group of 500 fellow-priests come forward. In the three diocese where I have been, I was aware of only one case. And the priest left the church to get married." "The bishops always repeat the same arguments," retorted Jean Combe, a former priest, a member of Plein Jour, the support group for companions of priests in the struggle for abolition of the rule of celibacy in the Catholic Church. Although there are no statistics available for France, there are 3,000 children of priests in Germany, according to the British Catholic weekly The Tablet.

As for the key stakeholders, the children, priests' companions and defrocked priests, reactions vascillate between hope and bitterness. Marc Bradfer, son of a priest is convinced that Rome is condemned to proceed: "The DNA tests are conclusive and the church will be forced to clarify its position so as not to be cornered by the judgments and scandals." "It is true that there are descendants of priests who could turn up, and that the Vatican is afraid of scandals of the kind that happened in the United States" with pedophilia, Bernard Corbineau, a member of the European Federation of Married Priests, also opines. However, he does not believe in a rapid evolution of the Vatican: "I am very skeptical."

Money. Would the recognition of priests' children radically change their situation? "First, it is not established; the Vatican is feeling its way," observes Dominique Venturini, president of Plein Jour. And then, the reason that Benedict XVI is considering this evolution is neither humane nor humanitarian, it is a question of money, so that the children do not claim an inheritance from their father. "Finally," she stresses, "What about women in this story? Nothing. They do not exist. What we want is recognition of the couple." For Marc Bradfer, however, recognition of the child includes that of the mother: "There is no child without a woman. To recognize the fruit is to recognize the trees that made them ripen and be born."

Also the son of a clergyman, Jean-François Jaudon wishes that the Church would go further. "It seems to me important that the Vatican allow priests to live their lives as men as they see fit, allowing them to marry and to start a family in the same way as in Islam or Judaism." For Bernard Corbineau, "the Church would have to finally recognize that a man can serve religiously in a marriage as well as in celibacy." For "it is not chastity or celibacy that makes the priest, it is his commitment."

Catholics in Saltillo, Mexico divided on celibacy

By Jesús Castro
Vanguardia (Mexico)
August 23, 2009

The old debate on priestly celibacy continues and now in the Saltillo community, public opinion is divided. According to a poll by Vanguardia, 55 percent of Catholics surveyed agreed that priests should be allowed to choose between getting married or being single.

Over half of those surveyed think that the number of priests is insufficient to tend to the Catholic community.

Sixty-seven percent of those who were polled think that if the Church allowed clerics to marry, it would be a motivating factor for young men deciding to enter seminary.

The survey also showed that priests continue to have the esteem and trust of the faithful, since 52 percent would allow their children to live in the house of a priest, concluding that it would be good for their spiritual formation.

Nonetheless, 84 percent believe that many of the pedophilia scandals and priests with secret families are due to the celibacy requirement for clergy.

On the other hand, among those who are not in favor of allowing priests to marry, there are many answers such as "because it's a rule of the Church", "people would view it as wrong", "that's how Christ ordered it", without offering any weighty reasons, like those raised in the report last Monday in Semanario.

"Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Jesus asked his disciples to be bachelors," said Mario Mullo, president of the Latin American Federation of Married Priests, and even Bishop Raúl Vera himself agreed that celibacy "is nothing essential to priestly ministry, and that is precisely the reason why there are arguments about celibacy, because celibacy is not essential to the sacrament, but it is a discipline," that the Pope can change if he wants to, but the subject is "not up for discussion", the prelate stated.

"I am a priest and I am married"

By Jesús Castro (English translation by Rebel Girl)
Vanguardia (Mexico)
August 17, 2009

"I am Veremundo Carrillo, I have been a Catholic priest for forty years and have been married for twenty years to Rosario Reveles, with whom I have two children."

"My name is Flor de María Sandoval Vázquez, a doctor by profession, I am the daughter of Eulalio Sandoval Trejo and María Vázquez Sosa; he is a priest and she was the mother superior of a convent."

Luis Miguel Sánchez: "Yes, I am a priest, I live here in Saltillo, but I am from Acuña, I have had my wife since 2000 and I am happy with my three children, two boys and a girl."

They, like over 100,000 cases in the world (3 thousand in Mexico according to the International Federation of Married Priests), dream that one day the Roman Curia will agree to optional celibacy for priests.

But now, in this 2009 that Pope Benedict XVI has consecrated and dedicated as the Year of the Priest, Rome's interest in its ministers does not appear so genuine. The Vatican has closed the door to dialogue with those who would open the debate on priests being able to marry or married laymen being able to receive Holy Orders.

"That is not going to change, celibacy is a gift of the Church, a gift from God," says Christopher Pierre, the apostolic nuncio, refusing to go deeper into the subject. Raúl Vera himself, the bishop of Saltillo, sustains in an interview: "That (celibacy) is not up for discussion in the Church at all."

Nonetheless, Vera, Mario Mullo, president of the Latin American Federation of Married Priests, and Veremundo Carrillo, all agree that the first apostles had wives and children and that up to the 16th century it was a very common situation.

That has been proven historically. There have been popes whose sons were popes, saints whose sons were popes, saints whose sons were priests, bishops, cardinals, archbishops, and even kings.

Then "if it doesn't say in any part of the Bible that Jesus required or obliged priests to be celibate, why does the Church demand that they be?" -- it's the voice of Mario Mullo, but also the root of a debate that has not been listened to by the Church for centuries.

WOMEN ARE NOT A SIN

He looks like a priest -- you an see it in his walk -- his speech is like a constant homily. It was easy to identify Veremundo Carrillo in the Instituto Zacatecano de Cultura. He had barely opened his lips when he revealed what could not be concealed: "Yes, I am the priest." We had not asked him anything, but he already knew we had guessed.

A dark jacket over a polo shirt and dress pants give him the appearance that he surely acquired in seminary, and maintains today, half a century later.

"But I am no longer in the ministry, I have been married since 1982," he confesses as if he were going to come out with a story worthy of Almodóvar.

"I always liked women" -- that was one of the first sentences that from him, a gentleman of almost seventy, sounded strange. He uses glasses, but the movement of his eyebrows and his shining eyes show a natural gallantry that he says he always had with women.

So, why did you become a priest?, we asked him.

"From the moment I entered seminary, at that age, I began to see the implications of celibacy. Of course I felt a great attraction to women and to one in particular. And, well, I renounced that -- I don't think that even the girl I liked realized that I was renouncing her. I saw that this was one of the requirements and I decided to accept celibacy -- God would help me now, I said."

I was 12 years old. The rest of his stay in the Zacatecas Seminary and then in Montezuma, New Mexico, United States, was a struggle against this natural instinct, that the formation directors in the Seminary characterized as sinful.

Jean Meyer, in his book Celibato sacerdotal ("Priestly Celibacy") cites on several occasions how Rome condemned sexual practices including between spouses:

"Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for the desire to have descendants that will bless your name forever" (Tobit 8:7) is the Biblical text on which the Church even today bases its indication in Canon Law that coitus should have procreation as its main goal.

The author notes that from the 1st to the 10th century, even priests were required to "abstain from having sexual relations with their wives on the day in which they would be celebrating the Eucharist."

"Nothing more contrary to what the Bible itself says," Mario Muller, president of the Latin American Federation of Married Priests observes, and he quotes from the book of Genesis: "It is not good for the man to be alone...and [he] unites with his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

I AM GOING TO GET MARRIED

But Veremundo's priestly vocation was genuine. "It was the most beautiful phase of my life, I do not regret my priestly vocation, I was completely sure I wanted to be a priest," he says.

He was ordained a priest and because of his intellectual gifts, they sent him to study in Salamanca, Spain, from which he returned a doctor in Greco-Roman Classical Philology, also steeped in liberation theology and partaking of the principles of the Cuban Revolution. It was 1968.

He worked close to the poor and with the peasants. In the University of Zacatecas, where he gave classes, he identified with the masters of the left -- even his own bishop came to accuse him of being a Marxist. "You are not able to distinguish between the Christian motivation of the Cross and an atheistic one. It doesn't bother me that I walk with atheists, many of them are better than you," Veremundo answered.

But that was not all that his return to Mexico awakened in him. "I asked God, with that phrase in the Bible that says 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be'."

And where was your heart?

"Well, in women."

Then, being pastor of Jerez and after ten years in the ministry, he realized he could no longer go on carrying that cross. He made a decision: to seek a girlfriend, leave the priesthood, and then get married.

"I am offering my resignation as a priest, I am going to get married," he told the bishop. The prelate, it seems, already learned in how to solve these problems, answered him: "If you want, I'll move you to a better place," but Veremundo didn't accept.

Over the years, Rosario, who became his wife, remembers a similar case. "Once a priest who also left the ministry told us that he said that to the same bishop -- 'but it's that I already have children and a woman' -- and the bishop answered: 'Well, have them, but don't let it be seen, and we will help you to support them.'"

It seems to be the Church's typical solution to avoid scandals, but what bishops like that really foment is what hundreds of married priests are fighting for, "that it be accepted that priests can have children and get married", "returning to the roots of the Church, when celibacy was not obligatory, because this question of obligation is just a discipline, the Church invented it," Mario Mullo opines.

Raúl Vera explains it thus: “Celibacy is imposed on them (priests) because it is a discipline of the Church, but it is also voluntary -- Jesus said clearly in the Gospel of St. Matthew that continence should be voluntary for the Kingdom of Heaven."

But other economic motives existed for this prohibition. Vera says that the clergy from the 4th century on assumed a mentality of feudal advantage: bishops with lands, clerics with princely ranks, priests whose objective was receiving economic compensation.

"Within that mentality, the issue of maintaining a family of course influenced the turn to priestly celibacy," Raúl Vera said.

REJECTION

Veremundo Carrillo knows this; he talks about it his way once he is in his house in the town of Guadalupe, Zacatecas, where he introduces us to his wife, 20 years younger than him. She, with wavy black hair, tells the other part of the story that marked her forever.

A story similar to those that Jean Meyer reveals in his book, when the Church from the Middle Ages on persecuted, jailed, and condemned priests who got married, who had children. Their women were accused of being sinners, provokers, almost demons.

Veremundo met his current wife in Jerez -- she was a parish secretary and taught catechism. Their relationship, before marriage, was never carnal -- they confess that they never kissed. But in 1981 they were already in love and after he separated from priestly ministry, they decided to get married. Then other problems came.

"I lost all my friends in the town. One day when I went up for communion they asked me if I would dare to take communion with that mouth. My best friend told me I could not longer come in to her house. We both went to our old friends, and they shut the door on us", Rosario says.

Flor de María Sandoval Vázquez's parents, Eulalio y María, endured the same thing. He was the priest-chaplain in the convent where his wife was Mother Superior. There, the priest and nun fell in love.

"Well, my mother left the convent in '81, more or less, because she was pregnant and she went to live in Torreón, my father continued to serve in Zacatecas, then my mother went to San Luis and my dad came to visit her each week," says the doctor, seated in the Carrillos' dining room.

They were rejected too, says Flor, "we had no contact with our blood family, they cast us aside. One of my dad's uncles who was also a priest said that we were the daughters of sin, and people spat on my mom in the streets."

Then both the Carrillos and the Sandovals found an association of priests who had resigned that was founded by the late married priest Antonio Quintanar. It was called “Presencia Nueva” ("New Presence") and it later affiliated with the Latin American Federation of Married Priests.

There they found company. Their children learned to view it as normal to say that their fathers were priests. "I told them at school, my dad is a priest, isn't yours?", Flor says.

Also from this trench they have been working to talk with the Catholic Church and present arguments about why they believe that priestly celibacy is now obsolete, archaic, and therefore should be optional.

WE ARE NOT A SCHISM

In spite of his appearance -- more like a good-natured bishop than the father of a family -- Veremundo in particular is not interested in going back to the ministry -- he says that his fight is so that others can take advantage of this possibility, not for himself.

"No, no", he said hurriedly.

Ever since he offered his last Mass in a little town in the Zacatecan mountains, when he announced that he was leaving the ministry, he has not consecrated a single host. Now he says it on the edge of tears: "I didn't cry that day; but now I want to, because the people said goodbye to me with so much affection and I have not forgotten that."

Rosario also speaks: "We are in the Church, there are those who did this in hiding, but not those in the association -- we don't want problems with the Church."

On some occasions, Veremundo says, he has given extreme unction, especially in extreme cases, such as an accident, since with that he is not incurring a violation of his "a divinis" suspension, since those cases are anticipated in Canon Law -- he even heard someone's confession once because it was also an urgent case.

With respect to this, Mario Mullo says: "On some occasions the Eucharist is valid in the family, in small groups, in extreme cases where there is no priest -- in short, they are cases anticipated by Canon Law, but it should not be done publicly, or in defiance of the hierarchy, we are not claiming to be a schism."

YES IT CAN BE DONE, BUT...

"So, the Church, the Pope can abolish the celibacy law for priests?" -- that is the last question we ask Veremundo.

"Of course, because when it did not exist, they created it, clearly they can undo it, they have to study it, propose it and do it, the Pope has that authority," answers the one who now is only called Father by his two sons, professional who would never, he says, be allowed to enter the seminary.

Armando Martínez confirms the fact. “The Pope himself has all the ability to make the change. He could do it with a Papal decision. He would not have to convene a council.

"Surely if such a thing were to happen it would come from a pastoral recommendation, from listening to his bishops, from calling on his cardinals for advice."

Raúl Vera agrees with him, but he sees as impossible that after Vatican II, a Pope would decide to call on the Church again to reflect on a subject that is, he says, "not up for discussion." The president of the Catholic lawyers also indicates that he is certain that the subject of optional celibacy is not on Benedict XVI's agenda.

Jean Mayer cites a conversation between Monsignor Samuel Ruiz and John Paul II, where he asked the Pope's permission to ordain married men in Chiapas, "the Pope answered literally, 'I can't make that decision, but I am not shelving the matter, I am leaving it to my successor.'"

For his part, Mario Mullo is hurt when he admits the impasse with the current Church. "I can't tell you either that celibacy is going to be abolished as long as this Pope lasts or another one comes in, but we will continue to raise consciousness and that will produce change someday. I am sure of that."

Is it time to let priests marry?

Following the shocking revelation of Fr. Peter McDonough's love child and his decision to leave the priesthood to focus on being a real father, the Manchester Evening News posed this question to a couple of people...

by Paul Taylor and Simon Donohue
August 13, 2009

NO, they shouldn't marry, says Dr Robert Aston, a former medical officer for Bolton and Wigan:

"The fact that our priests are celibate is something that the great majority of us find of tremendous value," says Dr Aston. "Our priests are fathers. They have given themselves totally to us without reservation.

"That is the essential thing - total self-giving, service, dedication and loyalty to their own people and through their own people to God."

To Dr Aston, 64, the concept of self-denial is a basic Christian principle, and "we as Christians are expected to take up the Cross and follow God, our Lord, and we do that by total self-giving according to our state in life."

But how can a priest plausibly minister to families if he never has a family of his own?

"I can understand people thinking that," says Dr Aston, of Horwich, Bolton.

"But you don't have to be in a particular position yourself to be able to advise others. That's what we expect of lawyers, doctors, all professional people. We don't expect them to be in the same condition as ourselves. In many ways, independence, impartiality and fairness can sometimes be better."

Should the rules of the church alter with the changing times?

"St Paul in the New Testament refers to celibacy as being a desirable state, so we are talking of a tradition which goes right back to the origins of Christianity," says Dr Aston.

"Should truth bend with the fashions of time? I would hope the church would not bend to passing fashions or strong public opinions or democratic process in the form of pressure groups."

Is there a discussion among Catholics as to whether the priesthood should be celibate?

"All things are discussed and have been discussed not just by modern Catholics but throughout the history of the Church. Don't just look at celibacy, look at anything within the Church," he replies.

There are, of course, some Catholic priests who do have families - priests who have come to Catholicism from an Anglican ministry, and been permitted to bring their families with them into the Catholic priesthood. Where do they stand in this argument?

"I would regard them as dedicated people who have given lifetimes of services within their own community," says Dr Aston. "I speak as a former Church of England member myself. I was brought up CofE and became Catholic in my twenties. These are people who had terrible pangs of conscience in not being able to accept the way their own church was going and have sought communion with the Catholic church. There has been a pastoral awareness within the Catholic church of the needs of these people, and an exception made, out of compassion."


YES they should marry, says the Rev Michael Gaine:

AT the age of 79 and having served for the vast majority of his life as a Catholic priest, the Rev Gaine admits that his one regret is never having had a wife and family.

"Perhaps that is something I have missed out on," he says.

"I think that I could have done my job just as well with a family."

Rev Gaine has campaigned for 20 years now on the subject of the ordination of married priests - or priests who might one day go on to become married - and says that it has been a frustrating battle for him against both senior bishops and the might of Rome itself.

He has now disbanded his campaign group, the Movement for the Ordination Of Married Priests, and says that the Roman Catholic church might be inflicting damage upon itself by failing to modernise.

"Twenty years ago, when I first started out on this campaign, it was suggested that lay people within the church simply would not accept the idea of priests who were not celibate.

"I now think that many lay people within the church wouldn't mind so much at all.

"I have written any number of articles to senior people stressing the spiritual, historical and psychological reasons why it makes sense, but to no avail."

Rev Gaine, who served as a teacher at a Catholic college in Liverpool and was a secretary to two prominent north west bishops, says that there are good practical reasons why the ordination of married priests would be good for the church today.

"The number of clergy is declining substantially," he says. "When I first became a priest, there were many, many priests and they tended to live together in a presbytery.

"That meant that there was companionship and support for priests.

"Today I fear that many priests are working alone in communities where they can be quite isolated.

"Allowing married priests would alleviate that problem of isolation and help to increase the number of people seeking ordination."

Rev Gaine says his situation is all the more frustrating given the way the Roman Catholic Church has permitted married priests who have converted from the Anglican church into the fold.

"Those people tend to work in hospitals and prisons and other institutions rather than within parishes, but they are still celebrating mass," he points out.

"It seems to suggest double standards that we have married men leading mass in some parts of the church, but we still do not allow the ordination of men who do not wish to remain celibate into the priesthood."

Priest to the deaf Catholic community resigns

This posting is dedicated to all those priests who think that by hitting their silver jubilee they are home free, as a reminder that the price of celibacy is eternal vigilance. It also makes me very sad that the Church is continuing to lose good men because of an outdated policy. As Padre Alberto was important to Spanish-speaking Catholics internationally, this priest is very important to the deaf community and not just in his native England.

One of the deaf Catholic community's best known priests, Fr. Peter McDonough, who had been serving as pastor of St Joseph's Mission to Deaf People in the Salford diocese, England, has stepped down after admitting he has a four-year old child. Fr. McDonough, who is profoundly deaf and communicates with his flock in sign language, was ordained by Pope John Paul II himself 27 years ago. After a period of reflection and conversation with his bishop, McDonough decided that his first responsibility was to his family. Vicar General Mark Davies said McDonough would be greatly missed. He added: "It was with great sadness that the deaf community and the whole Catholic community in Collyhurst learnt of Father Peter's decision." A video of Fr. McDonough's 25th jubilee is still available on the diocesan Web site.

Fr. McDonough's expertise on deaf ministry will also be missed internationally. He is the author of Ephphata, the proceedings from the first International Catholic Deaf Religions Conference in Liverpool, in 1996. The title 'Ephphata' meaning 'Be Opened', reflects the spirit of the conference, in which thirty-one Deaf Religious and Priests from ten countries came together to share their experiences of deafness and deaf ministry and vocation.

Other articles online by Fr. McDonough about deaf ministry:

• The Deaf Need Dialogue, The Tablet, May 2007


• Ministry amongst Deaf People, Paper given at the one day conference, University of Louvain, Belgium, May 19, 2003.


• The Call to Discipleship in the Global Deaf Community in the United Kingdom, Many Languages, One Faith: The International Pilgrimage of Catholic Deaf Peoples, Rome, June 2008

A map to the future church

By Tom Roberts
National Catholic Reporter
July 16, 2009

Part of the "In Search of the Emerging Church" series

She is listed on one Web site as belonging to a "set of people" who "are unfortunately acting like JUDAS -- Just Undermine Doctrine And Spirituality," the designation complete with garish red upper case letters.

OK, so it's not difficult to find off-the-wall extremes in the Catholic ether, and Sr. Christine Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, is somewhat accustomed to being depicted, in her words, as heir to "the bad girl of the Bible."

All of that, however, may say more about how deeply invested we are these days in caricature rather than truth about such matters. In most cases the reality -- conservative to liberal -- is usually less jagged around the edges and more complex than the opposing side would like to think.

In the case of Schenk, the sound bite composite of what she's about -- ordain married men, ordain women, solve the priest shortage -- is as unfair as it is easy to construct.

The reality is that FutureChurch, an organization based in the Cleveland diocese, was one of the first, if not the first, Catholic church groups to understand the deep implications of the growing priest shortage and to begin to act on information that was available to many but spoken about by almost no one. There is, at this point in history, a certain poetic balance to FutureChurch's existence in the diocese, which is going through the throes of a realignment caused largely by the priest shortage.

FutureChurch was organized here in 1990 when the parish council of the Church of the Resurrection, following an eight-month study, passed a resolution in response to a decision by the U.S. bishops to initiate the ritual permitting Sunday worship in the absence of a priest for parishes that didn't have access to Mass on Sunday.

That was a time when parishes in some dioceses could still imagine doing such a thing and when organizers like Schenk could go to the local bishop (it was Anthony Pilla at the time) "to be clear that we respected church leadership and that we respected his leadership. We knew that the decision-making for these issues rested not with him but in Rome," Schenk said in an extended interview in Cleveland in April. The group told Pilla that "we would always do everything we could to be respectful of his leadership, but that we would be public about our concerns." In return they asked that he "avoid undercutting the legitimate theological presuppositions about married priests, and certainly in 1990, the whole discussion of women's ordination, which had not been opposed yet by Rome."

The group was ahead of its time in understanding the problem and took advantage of the leading edge of research that eventually would define one of the fundamental realities that now shapes any conversation about where the church is headed -- there just aren't and won't be enough priests to continue to organize the Catholic community as it has been.

Anyone searching for what might be emerging in the church of the future would do well to pay a visit to Schenk.

That is not to suggest that Schenk and her organization -- which has grown from 36 people representing 16 faith communities in the Cleveland area to 5,000 members from across the country and internationally -- have an inside track at the Vatican or influence with U.S. bishops. Quite the contrary. As one writer once put it, she is among those Catholic idealists who advocate for change but are under no illusions about what they might change. Groups like FutureChurch are at a point in history where they keep assembling the information, educating and wondering what will come of it all.

Let's organize

What about doing nothing and waiting to see what happens? One gets the sense that Schenk is genetically incapable of such passivity. There's a community organizer in her background, and an activist in the Civil Rights era. "It's not good to sit on your anger," she said at one point in the conversation, "You've got to organize."

And so she has.

One of the first things that FutureChurch did was exploit the data that had been generated by sociologists Richard Schoenherr and Lawrence A. Young for their groundbreaking 1993 book, Full Pews and Empty Altars: Demographics of the Priest Shortage in the United States. Schoenherr had been working on the issue for years and the project that resulted in the book was originally sponsored by the then United States Catholic Conference (now the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) with a grant from the Lilly Endowment. However, as the picture emerged of a church that would increasingly suffer a shortage of priests, some high profile bishops began to disparage the work and ultimately the conference pulled its support.

The work continued under different auspices. Schoenherr's and Young's gloomy predictions may have proven an inconvenient truth for the hierarchy, but it was solid social science that has held up in the years since as the numbers of ordained clergy continued to fall off.

If the bishops didn't like the data, they couldn't refute it. "We were able to use that data diocese by diocese when we went out with our work to let Catholic people know what was going to happen. Over about three years, I probable spoke at about 60 or 70 dioceses," said Schenk. "I lost track after a while."

The organizer had a strategy. She coordinated often with chapters of Call to Action and other local reform groups who would notify the religion writer at the local paper. "We would go in with the statistics from Schoenherr-Young. The news media would go to the diocese and say, 'Is this true?' The diocese would say, 'Yes, it's true,' and then the whole story would come out. Very often it was the first public acknowledgment that the diocese made that yes, the priest shortage was real and it was happening."

All of that occurred between 1995 and 2000.

The group had also developed a program called The Future Priestly Ministry that "laid out all the other ways of meeting the sacramental needs of Catholics besides a male, celibate priesthood," Schenk said. "It had information about a married priesthood and the history of celibacy. It also had materials about women's roles in the church, going back to Jesus and the women [of the New Testament] and the whole history of the suppression of women's leadership in the church."

But then came Pope John Paul II's 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that declared ordination is reserved to men and slammed the door on any discussion of alternatives to an all male celibate clergy. By extension, most parishes slammed the door on the discussion, so FutureChurch had to adjust. The group developed a second project inspired by a study done by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious that named 15 things that could be done now to advance women's roles in the church.

Rehabilitating Magdala

The new program meant "putting the whole issue of ordination on the side because women's roles in ministry in the church is a much more convoluted effort politically than the issue of a married priesthood. There was a lot of work that needed to be done on that, so that led us into the whole issue of our Mary of Madgala celebrations."

Schenk and FutureChurch probably had the greatest effect of any single group in rehabilitating, at least for a U.S. audience, the woman who had previously been depicted by male preachers as the reformed prostitute of the New Testament. It all went with raising awareness about biblical women. "When we first launched the study in 1997 or 1998, we were actually written up in The Wanderer saying this is terrible and heretical. In fact, when they checked their facts, they found out that in 1969 the Vatican had acknowledged that she wasn't a prostitute."

FutureChurch began with a few Magdala celebrations, 23 to be precise, around 1997, and the following year the number grew to 153, "and ever since then, we've had between 250 and 400 a year."

"What I realized is that this Mary of Magdala, retrieving historical memory, was touching something very deep in the psyche of women because much as we love Jesus and revere our Catholic Christian tradition, most of us never saw ourselves in the Jesus story because it has always been presented to us as Jesus and 12 men," Schenk said.

"Lo and behold, once we get into the biblical scholarship that's not the case at all, because we know the Galilean discipleship had both women and men."

Schenk speaks with certainty of such things now, and she acts with assurance even though Vegas would give slim odds on her accomplishing the kind of radical change she has in mind for the institutional church. It is difficult to imagine a time when she thought of herself as "a little corn-fed hick from Lima, Ohio" convinced that she'd never get the scholarship to Georgetown University that a priest in high school had encouraged her to pursue. But even back then she thought of herself as "high energy and pretty smart." She got the scholarship and eventually the degree. Then a master's in nursing from Boston College. And later, in 1993, a master's in theology.

All of that and experience as a community organizer with the United Farm Workers Union in Philadelphia and a nurse midwife in Cleveland working with low-income pregnant women. She was 25 before she joined a religious order, the Medical Mission Sisters, with whom she stayed for six years. "But I kept getting depressed and I wasn't so sure about the celibacy thing, so I left. About five years later, I found out I was horribly hypothyroid, and that cured the depression once I figured it out."

In the meantime, she had become deeply involved in her parish and fallen in love with a guy, but it didn't work out. She stayed in touch with her Medical Mission friends, and kept dating, but "it seemed like every time I was dating, I was two-timing God. I just couldn't shake it."

She also kept going on retreats and ultimately realized that religious life "was really my life path." So she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph but not before confessing "that my whole life I seem to end up getting into these causes that can be edgy, and if that was a problem, we had better talk about it." Apparently they were then and continue to be just fine with "edgy." "They have been terrific from the beginning," she said.

The order supported her work with FutureChurch for the first three years until it was clear that it "could become a real organization." The order's leadership "really believed in what we were trying to do, and it's because of them and their belief in the mission that we are around."

Pursuing a bigger God

As much as the mission may appear to be advocating for ordination of married men and women, it is just as much aimed at preserving Catholic communities. She knows all about the demographic shifts underway and the effects of the clergy shortage. She doesn't believe all parishes should be saved, but she does believe that instead of simply mandating downsizing to better match the number of parishes with the number of priests, dioceses should look into alternatives -- from greater use of lay parish coordinators to encouraging greater economic sharing among rich and poor parishes. And, somewhere down the road, even ordaining people who now are excluded from that level of leadership.

Her motivation at times is personal. She took her master's degree in theology at St. Mary's Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. Her thoughts initially didn't run to ordination. "I was just so glad to have the opportunity, but when I was finishing and my classmates were being ordained and I wasn't, I got it at a whole other level how wrong this was." Her teachers loved to hear her preach and wished they could hear more of her, but there came a time when the pulpit became off limits to her as her male classmates moved on.

"It was at a much deeper level that I recognized what a violation this was of the call of the Spirit in a person. I went through a pretty big grief time, but I have always been blessed with wonderful spiritual directors and I still am."

Since then, she said, she's "come to the realization that my deepest call is more about reform than ministry. I have to say [being prohibited from ordination] was extraordinarily painful because I loved all the theology. I was growing by leaps and bounds inside, and then to see that that was cut off by something as arbitrary as gender. If anything, that fuels my passion for the work I'm doing now."

Her consolation now is the understanding that "Jesus struggled his whole life with his religious tradition. He was about helping it come to a fuller awareness of the breadth and depth of the love of God and stretching their own boundaries. I feel like I'm following a good path there."

She says she regularly checks her motivation. "I ask myself, 'Where is this coming from? Is this coming because you're mad or because it's a passion about being about that big and wide reign of God like Jesus was?" If it's done out of some sense of political correctness, she said, it won't last. "The other thing is far deeper. I console myself that Jesus was rejected by his own tradition and so was Paul. He was thrown out of all the best synagogues in the Mediterranean world, so when I get upset that one diocese or the other won't let me speak on church property, I just remind myself that it's all part of it. … The end result is going to be so worth it."

What is the end?

"The end result is that we can come to a bigger knowledge of how wide the love of God is."

Culture Notes: La pasión de Gabriel

OK! Here is a new film out of Colombia (to be screened nationally in that country starting this Thursday) that showcases a priest who is equally committed to the poor, to peace, and to the woman he loves. "La pasión de Gabriel" is already getting LOTS of buzz in the Spanish media and has garnered a Best Actor award for its star, Andrés Parra (Father Gabriel), in the 2009 Guadalajara Film Festival. The film is written by Diego Vásquez and directed by Luis Alberto “Peto” Restrepo and, in addition to Parra, stars María Cecilia Sánchez as the priest's girlfriend, Silvia.


Official plot synopsis: "Gabriel is a priest who is passionate about life, obsessed with justice and in love with a woman. His deep vocation, his eagerness to help his people advance, and his human passions will be his own crucifixion."

I can't wait until this hits the screen in this country. I especially like the line in the trailer where Silvia, in a pique, asks Father Gabriel: "Do you think it's easy being the priest's girlfriend?" -- to which I'm sure many of the women who read this blog and are in similar relationships will offer a heartfelt "AMEN!" Meanwhile, here is the trailer:



MORE INFORMATION (in Spanish):

• "La pasión de Gabriel" Official Web Site


• "La pasión de Gabriel": Despiadada metáfora sobre la libertad y la muerte, NotiCine, 8/4/2009


• “Que Dios nos coja confesados”: Andrés Parra, El Espectador, 3/18/2009
  

Back at the altar in Fiji

This is such a lovely story, but it reminds us that we should keep striving for a Church where men like Fr. Johns won't need to wait until their wife's death to serve as priests again.

Unbroken vows
By Jone Luvenitoga
Fiji Times
Sunday, August 02, 2009


Father Daniel Robert Johns left the priesthood in 1977 and married the love of his life. She was a nun just as he was in the order of ordained Catholic leaders relinquishing all known physical needs for spiritual enhancement. He took the vow of celibacy and then left the mission again.


On Wednesday, July 28, 2009 after 32 years, he returned to his priestly duties after losing her to a long and agonising battle against diabetes. She was the comforter in his struggle against an incident in the past he held against himself, which caused the death of a very close friend. It was the very reason that drove him out of the church.

It was only after her death that he returned to the church with his spirit revived, continuing the work of assisting those in need of spiritual guidance. And before a congregation of family members, friends and church attendants, he stood at the altar and presided over his first Mass after receiving his letter from the Vatican giving him back the authority that awaited his return.

Those who knew the priest questioned his departure but it was the months of seeing the pain he caused a family that drained his strength like an ebbing tide leaving him tearful and aghast throughout his remaining time with the priesthood. Beyond all sanctity of his priestly duties, he stood powerless against the pain that devoured him day after day.

The year was 1977. A time he will never forget for the events that broke his spirit and had led to his retirement from the church. And getting married was a way to share his pain.

For the next 28 years of their lives they lived and enjoyed themselves with the fondest of memories that seem to decorate his room now. The story of their life captured in the images of time where love once blossomed captivated by the hugs and kisses.

"That was the reason I left the church," Father Johns said.

He was returning from a church mass in the province of Ra where he met a group of friends who were marketing company products to what sounded like a festival in full swing. Having the heart of a good Samaritan he offered them a lift back to their homes and hotels where they were staying.

It was along the highway where fate claimed the life of one of his passengers. They had hurriedly taken her to the hospital where doctors gave them the reassuring news of the minor state of her injuries. Without checking for internal injuries both the doctors and friends including him were so relieved leaving in a state of peace and joy.

"It was just minutes later when doctors called and said she had died while we were still on the highway back home. And being the wife of one of my best friends, every tear that followed seemed to point a finger at me," he said.

He said for months he went from priest to priest trying to find the solace he needed but to no avail.

"Under the power of ordination, there are prayers for everything in the world. A prayer for confession and penance which I seek both, but inside I was dying for comfort and it got worse whenever I met my friends."

He said the belief is such for the Catholic priests who are given the power to forgive sins through confession that lead to the prayer, 'whose sins you forgive will be forgiven. Whose sins you retain will be retained'.

"My sorrows led to the feeling that mine were not forgiven seeing the damage I did to a family so in love," he said.

Leaving the church he said at times he was forced to defend his choices, stating his departure was not against the church nor was it done for another human since he married just months after his departure from the church.

"But marriage took its place in my life as another comfort zone I was desperately seeking."

Withdrawing from the priesthood, they married. For the church wouldn't recognise their marriage provided he was released from the priesthood first. And in the comfort of marriage his life built back the wall once shattered.

She remained in the church as a school teacher but worked from numerous Catholic schools around the islands packing their bags and moving wherever her posting took them.

Together they reaped the luxuries of life with him working in a managerial position always. First at Hookers Fiji where he was the sales manager before joining Flick Pest Control which he assisted in a managerial position and then to Red-All. He was still in the pest control business before the coups of 1987 when he moved to Parliament House as the General Voters Party secretary until 2005. It was the year his soul mate left him forever.

In the final days of her life just minutes away from death, he was sitting beside her holding her hands. She opened her eyes and took one last look at him before closing them forever. He said the colour seemed to drain from her face as death made its claim again.

"It was at that time as I was taking my last long look at her when a miracle took place right before my eyes. And I saw the hands of God at work once more as a reminder of my work that is left here on Earth."

He said her face seemed to glow and she looked full of radiance. Never once had she looked so beautiful as she did back then. It was only for a while but it was enough for him to understand the reward that awaits a beautiful person is given straight after death.

And on July 28, he returned to his first mass at the Sacred Heart cathedral. A week held holy in the hearts of every Catholic worldwide known in the as 'the feast of Saint Martha, the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead.

"Her name was Martha also. Lazarus came back to life. The same thing my wife did for me."

Photo: Father Daniel Robert Johns (right) performing his first mass after 32 years. Assisting him is Father Iosefo Tuvere at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Suva.

Amnesty for priest-fathers?

UPDATE 8/3/2009: In response to inquiries about the story that appeared yesterday, the Vatican press spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi today denied that any such meetings are taking place and called the La Stampa account baseless. I'm leaving both versions up and you can decide what you want to believe. So far, La Stampa has not responded, modified or retracted their initial story.

Some very exciting news out of Rome today. The Italian newspaper La Stampa reports that the Congregation for the Clergy is holding a series of meetings about the issue of priests who have fathered children out of wedlock, essentially aiming to take a pro-active approach to the issue and avert the onslaught of expensive lawsuits that accompanied the sex abuse scandal.

According to La Stampa, some components of the suggested solution, which is based somewhat on the pastoral provision that has allowed for an influx of married priests from other denominations into the Catholic priesthood, include allowing the priests to publicly acknowledge their offspring and give them their last names without losing their clerical positions. The priest's assets would be divided into personal vs. ecclesial and the priest would be able to give his children support and an inheritance from his personal assets, such as his clerical stipend or salary.

Some experts quoted in the article are even suggesting that this might also be paving the way for allowing priests who have sought formal dispensation to get married and who continue to be of good character, to return to some kind of pastoral role, given the indelibility of the sacrament of Holy Orders.

It's not a lot but it's a little sign of hope. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Muy Muy Pitiful

The most entertaining part about reading news stories from Central American sources is that they will present interviews exactly as given, warts and all. Here is a translation of a pretty pathetic interview with Fr. José Lázaro Portillo Mejía, a Salvadoran priest who fathered two children on the side back when he was serving as pastor in Muy Muy parish, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Seems like his bishop in the Diocese of Santa Ana, El Salvador, where he has been serving more recently as pastor of San Francisco Javier in Ahuachapán, only found out about it after the mother of the two children ages 6 and 9, Silvia del Socorro López González, successfully sued the priest for child support.

According to the article in the Nicaraguan newspaper, La Prensa (7/15/2009), the bishop of Matagalpa, Msgr. Jorge Solórzano Pérez, said he had been told by the bishop of Santa Ana, Msgr. Romeo Tovar Astorga, that Fr. Portillo Mejía had left the priesthood and would also be leaving El Salvador and going to work in the United States as a lay person. Portillo Mejía refused to talk to La Prensa, but then gave the following interview to Víctor Hugo Dueñas from the Salvadoran newspaper Diario El Mundo who caught up with him still in his parish assignment there:

Originally from the city of San Miguel, José Lázaro Portillo Mejía says that he "always wanted to be a priest." Twenty-two years ago he was ordained at the hand of the current Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Gregorio Rosa Chávez.

On January 2, 2007, Portillo was designated the priest responsible for San Francisco Menéndez parish, Ahuachapán, located more than 125 kilometers from San Salvador.

He had come from Costa Rica, where he had been sent after a couple of years in Muy Muy (Nicaragua) where he had become the father of a family, although still wearing the collar.

His case definitely reawakened the thorny and occasionally acrid debate over the Catholic celibacy [requirement], loyalty and frankness to members of the religious community, and the double standard of society.

From his church in Ahuachapán, Portillo answers Diario El Mundo on these controversial subjects.

Father, two children in Nicaragua have been attributed to you and you are also involved in a legal process around some land you left them...

...Let's talk over there because this is very delicate

[The tape recorder is turned off and the priest invites me to enter a building under construction, an annex to the parish. The conversation starts up again]


Father, I was telling you about a publication...

[The pastor interrupts] Do you know what this means? It's going to end my career...

That is not the intention, I'm just coming for an opinion...

But who granted you [information] about this?

Your story is published, with details about the female catechist, the places where you were. It's on the Internet...

On the Internet?

Yes, and I'm looking to get away from that. To find out your version on what has been published...

[The priest signalled to turn off the tape recorder, because some parishioners were less that 1 1/2 meters away. When they left, the conversation began again.]

Two children have been attributed to you, nine and six years old...

[Interrupts] No, look, I would ask that we not do this because it is affecting not only me but the whole church. Me, yes it's true, I had those relationships, but I have responsibly left all the assets in the hands of other people. What is happening is that she (Silvia del Socorro López, the mother of the children) has misused them (the assets), her husband is trying to take them away from them and the thing is that the children's grandfather is doing everything possible so that he doesn't ruin them...I don't have anything to do with it anymore. I left properties, understand me?

Yes, I understand this part, but the point is that you procreated while you were a priest...

Not that, not that...it's such a delicate subject...

That's why I came here...

But you are finished with me. But you know what the press is like...

I have come to get a version...

It would be better to address my superiors, the bishop, and let him dispose.

[The tape recorder is turned off again because the parishioners have come back and now they are looking on with curiosity. The priest tells them that he will speak with them shortly.]

Father, one of the precepts of your church is celibacy. What happened with that?

It's a problem of humans. A situation where one, sometimes without wanting to, gets into these situations.

How long have you kept up this relationship?

It was an occasional thing.

There are two children. One nine and the other six. That's a long lapse of time between the two...

I left for them what I already told you.

I'm not referring to possessions but rather, how are you in the face of the community?

I repeat: It is an occasional situation.

Was she a catechist?

No, she was a parishioner.

What about the historical Catholic precept of celibacy and your service to God?

Failed, right?

I understand that in Nicaragua they are aware of this because you acknowledged the paternity but what is your situation as a priest?

Well, I'll tell you, I didn't have any charges there. Nothing really.

But you revealed a lot of what happened.

It was, I repeat, an occasional situation.

And you have now revealed to the Church leaders here what happened.

My superior knows about it, yes, he knows.

Who?

The bishop.

The one responsible for Vicariate 2 or the Vicar General?

Only the bishop, but I would ask you that we -- we have to -- reach a mutual agreement. Yes it's true, I am responsible for all this situation, but it isn't necessary for me to lose all the work I perform, because then my whole human and ministerial situation would be over.

And did you think about that before? The consequences...

Well, one doesn't analyze it.

It's like the sequel to a decision that has been made?

The effect is that there are two children and ...I don't think we should publish this. This happened over there and now is another reality in my life.

[The priest pauses for a few seconds]

I know what the press means, you know it. What point of conciliation we have in this.

You are telling me that you didn't talk about it with your hierarchy here, at least not most of them. What do you think that your community thinks?

Well, it would cost me. They would no longer accept me.

Your sermon today just alluded to this, to a pastor who commits mistakes, faults, who has sins. Did you intuit that this would happen?

No, the subject was already there.

A coincidence?

Yes...We are made of flesh, right?

[Once the formal conversation had ended some parishioners had gathered outside of the church to try and find out what was going on. The priest went up to the altar where some babies were waiting to be baptized.

Before (during an almost two hour long Mass) Father Portillo gave the host to 92 members of the Church, sang the "Our Father", and led the prayer of the Holy Creed: "por mi culpa, por mi culpa, por mi gran culpa..." [Translator's note: This reporter didn't recognize that those words are from the Confiteor, not the Credo].]

Photo: Fr. Portillo and his children (faces blanked out to protect their identity as minors)

The Devil Made Me Do It!

...and here I was thinking that when priests and women are attracted to each other, it was just a normal human reaction....From an interview with Fr. Thomas Gary, an exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose published on Catholic San Francisco (7/8/09), emphasis added:

...Any manifestations [of possession] that have proved difficult to confront - physically or emotionally?

I always have another priest with me. Demons attack the exorcist and they attack where the exorcist is weakest. It's not so much a physical attack, although down through the ages there have been recorded appearances where saints claimed they had been attacked by demons. I never experienced a physical attack. Mine have been more spiritual, psychological, emotional.

For example?

Sexual temptation, trying to really jeopardize my celibacy, creating emotional disturbances in me where I might not trust certain people who are very significant in my life, particularly in the life of the parish. The temptation to seek inappropriate ways to gain intimacy with others. Exacerbating the experiences of loneliness that appear in a priest's life at times. Those are all ways...

The Pastoral Provision comes to Prince Edward Island, Canada

Meet the priest—and his family
Written by Katie Engelhart
Macleans
Thursday, July 9, 2009


A Prince Edward Island man is set to become the province’s first married Catholic priest. Martin Carter, a former Anglican clergyman, will be admitted to the Catholic priesthood in August. Currently, the Roman Catholic Church does not support the ordination of married men. P.E.I. Bishop Vernon Fougere explains that Carter, who is married and has three sons, “had to petition the Holy Father—the Pope—for permission”; the whole process took almost four years. And Fougere stressed that Carter’s case was exceptional: “In the Catholic Church, we do not ordain married men. [This] does not mean that permission will be given tomorrow to every married man to be ordained.”

Still, Timothy Scott, a Catholic priest who is also president of St. Joseph’s College in Edmonton, says that the ordination of married men has been happening for 15 or 20 years—but “quietly.” And, Scott says, there’s a catch. The exception to the Church’s rule of celibacy for priests is only made for men who were priests or ministers in other Christian denominations—Anglican or Lutheran, for example—and then converted to Catholicism. A man who is born Catholic and later marries can never become a priest. “It’s a bit confusing,” he concedes. And every case needs the approval of the Vatican.

Scott says the conversion of Anglican priests to Catholicism is part of a broader trend among conservative Anglicans frustrated with their church’s more liberal practices. In particular, he says, many Anglicans disapprove of ordaining women and performing blessing services for homosexual couples, and so might be drawn to the more orthodox Roman Catholic Church. So what do the the members of Charlottetown’s St. Pius X parish think of their recently converted priest? “I have not done a survey, but the people I have spoken to in the shopping malls are elated that this can happen in the Catholic Church,” claims Bishop Fougere. “A lot of people see the Church as being very rigid, but that is not always the case.”

Kenya: Married Priests May Be Expelled

Daniel Nyassy 5 July 2009

Nairobi — The Catholic Church will consider taking further disciplinary action against priests who defied the vow of celibacy.

At the same time, the Vatican will not change the rule of celibacy for Catholic priests, the Pope's representative in Kenya, Archbishop Paul Lebeaupin warned on Sunday.

He said Catholic priests who had joined the "Married Priests Now" sect could be declared lay men by the church, which is just a step from being excommunicated.

"These priests have another chance of coming back to the church if they denounce their current stand. But if they continue that way, the church could take a further step and make them ordinary lay men," he said.

The Apostolic Nuncio said the priests, some of them already married, and Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, were outlawed by the church to celebrate Eucharist and were not recognised as ministers by the Vatican.

Archbishop Lebeaupin warned Catholics against being deceived by the runaway priests saying the sacrament given by these clergy were invalid.

The Archbishop made the remarks at St Anthony Cathedral in Malindi where he ordained six clergy into priesthood at the weekend.

Great significance

Peter Kamau, Elijah Kinyua, Constantine Kimondo, Bernard Malasi and Anthony Kitema took their vows and were ordained priests in a colourful ceremony also attended by Malindi bishop Francis Baldacchino and 26 priests.

"Being a Catholic priest is not a right, it's a calling from Christ. It's not a job and it is not for riches, big post, honour or prestige. It's a lifetime commitment with the mission of Jesus Christ," he said.

The Archbishop maintained that there was great significance in celibacy in serving God and all priests must fully commit themselves and be faithful to it.

CITI member and wife parents of new twins

We are going to indulge in a little "family" celebration with this story about a member of the Rentapriest family's new bundles of joy. Fr. David Grainson and his wife Sarajean have just become the proud parents of Matthew and David, conceived through IVF due to Sarajean's age. Grainson was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1998 but after three years he found that although he loved the ministry, celibacy was not for him. He married Sarajean in 2001 and now has his own Emmaus Catholic Ministry, through which he performs weddings.

'It's never too late' 53-year-old is new mother of twins
By Anthony Bottan
Herald Online
July 02, 2009

Even at 53, Valley Stream resident Sarajean Grainson had a biological clock that never stopped ticking.

And now, six weeks after the birth of her twin sons, she wants women to know that it's never too late to be a mom.

After having three children with her first husband and watching them all graduate from college, Sarajean, who was divorced, remarried in 2001, at age 46. Her new husband, David Grainson, then 34, was a former priest and had never been married. The two wanted to have children of their own, but since Grainson had already been through menopause, they were unable to conceive children naturally.

After speaking to a 40-year-old friend who underwent in-vitro fertilization, Sarajean decided that the procedure was the best choice for her. To increase the chances of a pregnancy, she was implanted with two donor eggs from East Coast Fertility, a clinic in Plainview, in April 2006, and gave birth to a son, Luke, that December.

But there was still something missing. "I was one of four kids," Sarajean said. "We loved each other and were always there for each other, and I didn't want [Luke] to be without that."

So she and David went back to East Coast Fertility in September of 2008, hoping to give Luke a younger sibling. This time three donor eggs were implanted, and two of them turned out to be viable. The Grainsons were told they were having twins. "I was in shock," Sarajean said. "I was hysterical crying."

Because of her age, doctors had to closely monitor Sarajean's health from the beginning of her pregnancy. Dr. Vincent Klein, a specialist in high-risk pregnancy at North Shore University Hospital, gave her check-ups every two weeks, monitoring her for two of the most common signs of trouble in older women who are pregnant, hypertension and diabetes.

But there were no complications, and Matthew and David were born on May 23. "It was a triumph, medically and personally," Klein said, explaining that women who are in their 40s and 50s can still have children if they are in good health. "I think people should consider it if it's right for them."

David Grainson, who said he left the priesthood because of the church's rule of celibacy, said that after he and Sarajean had Luke, it felt right being a father, but he didn't know if he could love another child as much as he loved Luke. Yet when he saw Matthew and David for the first time, his worry dissipated almost instantly. "I found out that I could love more than one child like I love Luke," he said.

David is writing a daily journal on the lives of his boys, and plans to tell them how they were conceived when they get older. He say he doubts they'll have a problem with it. "It's as important and big a deal as you make it," he said. Asked if he wonders how he and Sarajean will handle teenage boys when he's in his late 50s and she's pushing 70, he said he doesn't think age matters. "As long as they know they're safe, secure and in a loving home, it's all the same, no matter the age," he said.

Sarajean added that she thought long and hard about the consequences of having children at an older age, but now urges women in their 50s to pursue their dreams of having a family. "Go for it," she said. "If you can do it, then do it. You have to be healthy, get good doctors and be able to swing it in your mind. The biggest commitment is to a family."

She added that having children again has helped her live life one day at a time. "You rush them when they're little," she said. "... I enjoy the moment now because that wedding day dance comes so fast."