Cardinal Levada: no “celibacy issue” in reception of Anglicans into Catholic Church

Catholic News Agency
10/31/2009

Vatican City, Oct 31, 2009 / 12:13 pm (CNA).- In an extensive clarification released on Saturday by the Vatican press office, Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. made clear, on behalf of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Levada, that there is no “celibacy issue” delaying the publication of the Constitution that will establish the context in which Anglicans can be received into the Catholic Church.

In a statement released in English –breaking the common use of Italian- Fr. Lombardi explained that “there has been widespread speculation, based on supposedly knowledgeable remarks by an Italian correspondent Andrea Tornielli, that the delay in publication of the Apostolic Constitution regarding Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church, announced on October 20, 2009, by Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is due to more than ‘technical’ reasons.”

“According to this speculation, there is a serious substantial issue at the basis of the delay, namely, disagreement about whether celibacy will be the norm for the future clergy of the Provision,” Fr. Lombardi’s statement explains.

Responding to the speculations, which include suggestions that also celibacy in the Catholic Latin rite would be open to discussion, Fr. Lombardi offered the official comments of Cardinal Levada.

“Had I been asked I would happily have clarified any doubt about my remarks at the press conference. There is no substance to such speculation. No one at the Vatican has mentioned any such issue to me.”

According to Cardinal Levada, Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution will be ready “by the end of the first week of November” and its delay “is purely technical in the sense of ensuring consistency in canonical language and references.”

The Prefect of the Congregation also explains that “the drafts prepared by the working group, and submitted for study and approval through the usual process followed by the Congregation, have all included the following statement, currently Article VI of the Constitution:

- 1. Those who ministered as Anglican deacons, priests, or bishops, and who fulfill the requisites established by canon law and are not impeded by irregularities or other impediments may be accepted by the Ordinary as candidates for Holy Orders in the Catholic Church. In the case of married ministers, the norms established in the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI Sacerdotalis coelibatus, n. 42 and in the Statement "In June" are to be observed. Unmarried ministers must submit to the norm of clerical celibacy of Code of Canon Law 277, §1.

- 2. The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.”

Cardinal Levada further explains that “this article is to be understood as consistent with the current practice of the Church, in which married former Anglican ministers may be admitted to priestly ministry in the Catholic Church on a case by case basis.”

With regard to future seminarians, the Cardinal explains that “it was considered purely speculative whether there might be some cases in which a dispensation from the celibacy rule might be petitioned.”

“Objective criteria about any such possibilities (e.g. married seminarians already in preparation) are to be developed jointly by the Personal Ordinariate and the Episcopal Conference, and submitted for approval of the Holy See,” Cardinal Levada said.

Rome welcomes disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church

By JAMES GRAFF, World Editor

(Oct. 20) -- The number of married Catholic priests could grow sharply as the result of the Vatican's epochal decision to welcome thousands of disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians into the Catholic church.

At press conferences in Rome and London on Tuesday, Vatican officials announced that the church would set up a special canonical structure that will ease the conversion of members of the Anglican Communion without them having to give up what the Vatican called "the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony." That means not only a body of prayers and hymns, but also a tradition of married priests and bishops.

"It's a stunning turn of events," says Lawrence Cunningham, theology professor at Notre Dame University. "This decision will allow for many more married clergy in Western churches, and that's going to raise anew the question, 'If they can do it, why can't the priests of Rome?'" says Cunningham. "I can already picture the electronic slugfest on the Internet in coming days and weeks."

The Catholic church already allows clergymen who convert from Protestant denominations to remain married on a case by case basis, and married priests are common in the Eastern Rite, a group that uses Orthodox traditions but is loyal to Rome.
But the arrangement with the Anglican Communion goes much further. Cardinal William Levada, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, announced in Rome that the church would set up a personal ordinariate -- in essence a diocese defined not by geography, but by function, like the division that serves Catholics in the military -- for converted Anglicans.

The move comes after years of discord within the Anglican Communion, which unites 77 million Anglicans and Episcopalians under the loose authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The church has been racked by schisms over the ordination of women and its stance toward homosexuality.

Some Anglicans believe the Vatican's move will deepen those divisions. "When it comes to elegant funerals, no one can beat the Vatican," wrote commentator Andrew Brown in The Guardian. "The Roman Catholic church is no longer even pretending to take seriously the existence of the Anglican Communion as a coherent body."

For many traditional Episcopalians, as the denomination is known in the U.S., the last straw was the 2003 election of openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. In protest, hundreds of churches have broken links with the Episcopal church and declared themselves in line with the conservative Anglican bishops in Africa or South America.

Martyn Minns, the bishop of one such dissident group, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said today, "This move by the Catholic church recognizes the reality of the divide within the Anglican Communion and affirms the decision to create a new North American province that embraces biblical truth."

The news is likely to have a particularly strong effect in Great Britain, where there has been a tendency for years for members of the nominally Anglican majority to join the Catholic church, from theologian John Cardinal Newman in the 19th century to former Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2007.

Such conversions have generally meant not only a recognition of the pope's authority, but also a rejection of Anglican traditions. That turning away may no longer be necessary. "Now you can be an Anglican and still be Catholic," says Jo Bailey Wells, director of Anglican Studies at Duke Divinity School. "The Anglicans never had that vote of confidence before."

Indeed, two prominent British priests who publicly broke from Anglicanism years ago stated today that after this ruling from Rome, some Anglicans "will begin to form a caravan, rather like the People of Israel crossing the desert in search of the Promised Land."

Whether that happens or not, today's decision marks a milestone in the relations between the Vatican and the church of England, which King Henry VIII established in 1534 after the pope refused to grant him a marriage annulment. Since then, religious and social battles have often marked relations between Catholics and Anglicans. Says Cunningham: "This would have been unthinkable 200 years ago, and barely imaginable in the 19th century."

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Father Dueppen and the Stripper: The Story Continues

Agencia EFE
10/8/2009

Miami (USA) — A former Catholic priest who created a scandal in Miami because of his affair with a former stripper acknowledged paternity of a child born during the relationship with the woman and now wants a large part in her custody, The Miami Herald reported yesterday on its website.

David Dueppen asked a court in Miami-Dade County that he be granted custody of the baby Marilyn Epiphany at least 70 percent of the time with the child, according to court papers filed this week.

"He has never denied paternity of the child and would like to be very involved in her life," said Raymon Rafool, lawyer for the 42-year old former priest.

The lawyer also denied the charges of alleged domestic abuse that have been made against his client.

The scandal of the love affair between Dueppen and former dancer Beatrice Hernandez broke out last September when the woman asked for support for the girl she gave birth to in January and said that the father was the former priest.

Hernandez also requested a restraining order against the former priest who, according to her, began to suggest that she attend a swingers club and a nudist colony so that she could be released from the evil spirits that Dueppen said possessed her.

The woman revealed that she met Dueppen at the nightclub where she worked as a stripper.

Dueppen worked at St. Francis de Sales, Miami Beach, the same church where famous former Catholic priest Alberto Cutie, who was captured by a photographer on a beach caressing and kissing a woman who later became his wife when he abandoned Catholicism, celebrated Mass.

The relationship between Dueppen and Hernandez ended in 2005 and she threatened to sue the church and to avoid the suit the Archdiocese of Miami reached an agreement with the former dancer through which she received $ 100,000, said the woman.

But the affair resumed in 2006 when Dueppen sought out the former dancer and two years later she became pregnant.

According to Hernandez, the former priest put into questioned his paternity, so she demanded a DNA test.

The former priest initially refused and Hernandez threatened to go to the Church with the baby.

During that time, said Hernandez, both had violent arguments and on one occasion Dueppen allegedly tried to strangle her.

The Archdiocese of Miami has reported that in 2006 it was informed through an attorney that the former priest was allegedly failing to comply with a fiduciary relationship with a woman.

"When he became aware of this, Archbishop John Favalora removed Fr. Dueppen from parish ministry and gave him a leave of absence for 13 months. During that time, he recieved professional spiritual help, including his obligation to faithfully practice celibacy and all other aspects of a moral life," a statement indicated.

After a favorable professional report, and a renewed assurance by Dueppen that he could and was willing to lead a celibate life, the former priest was reassigned to a parish in 2007, but not with the responsibilities of a pastor.

Culture Notes: "Into Temptation"

Into Temptation is another movie dealing with priests, celibacy, etc. but more interesting because it was made by Patrick Coyle, the son of an ex-Catholic seminarian who left to get married.

Official Movie Synopsis:

John Buerlein works the crossword while old women confess the sins of their husbands and the homeless sleep it off in quiet pews--just another day at St. Mary Magdalen’s Downtown Catholic Church where he is the overworked, underpaid pastor.

His shift is nearly over when a beautiful call girl enters, Linda, to confess a sin she hasn’t committed yet:

“I’m going to kill myself. On my birthday. And I’m Aries, Father, so I don’t have a lot of time.”

Then she disappears and Fr. John sets out to find her.

Along the way he befriends an ex-prizefighter, a street-smart librarian, a renegade street-whore, an omniscient cab driver, and a moody pimp who quotes Robert Frost. Together this ad-hoc congregation sets out to save a life…and possibly redeem their own.

Fr. John is hit, hit-on, held at knife point, treated to a peep show, and informed by the archdiocese in no uncertain terms that his career is in jeopardy if he doesn’t cease and desist.

Then his first love turns up after 20 years, as beautiful as ever, to tell him she is divorced and that she never stopped loving him. He was her first. She was his only. Shockingly, John’s mother encourages the reunion.

When John emerges from his descent into the world of pornography and prostitution to stand again before his congregation, he is a profoundly changed man, as are the members of his church who now hang on his every word.

The Director's Background

Patrick Coyle tells the story of his father, his inspiration for the character of Fr. John in an article in Moving Pictures:

My dad was the baby of a big Irish family that emigrated from County Mayo in Ireland and finally settled in Omaha, Nebraska. It was decided he would be "the family priest" by his mother, Margaret, at a very early age. Every proper Irish Catholic family ought to have one, or so went the prevailing turn-of-the-century thought (20th, not 21st.), and Margaret was a woman who got her way...

...So, when the time came, Jimmy went off to seminary and all was well in Grandma Margaret's world. Enter my mother, Margaret Mary Quinlan, 5-feet-2, eyes of blue, a mountain of singing talent, cute as a button and not afraid to have some fun on a dance floor. My dad heard her sing the Ave Maria in church one Sunday and went "backstage" for an introduction after mass. Eight children later, including yours truly, the rest is history. My dad went to work as a traveling salesman after serving his country in WWII.

...I began to wonder, one day, what kind of priest my dad would have made. Out came Into Temptation.

A Mother, a Sick Son and His Father, the Priest

Laurie Goodstein
New York Times
10/16/2009

O’FALLON, Mo. — With three small children and her marriage in trouble, Pat Bond attended a spirituality retreat for Roman Catholic women in Illinois 26 years ago in hopes of finding support and comfort.

What Ms. Bond found was a priest — a dynamic, handsome Franciscan friar in a brown robe — who was serving as the spiritual director for the retreat and agreed to begin counseling her on her marriage. One day, she said, as she was leaving the priest’s parlor, he pulled her aside for a passionate kiss.

Ms. Bond separated from her husband, and for the next five years she and the priest, the Rev. Henry Willenborg, carried on an intimate relationship, according to interviews and court documents. In public, they were both leaders in their Catholic community in Quincy, Ill. In private they functioned like a married couple, sharing a bed, meals, movie nights and vacations with the children.

Eventually they had a son, setting off a series of legal battles as Ms. Bond repeatedly petitioned the church for child support. The Franciscans acquiesced, with the stipulation that she sign a confidentiality agreement. It is now an agreement she is willing to break as both she and her child, Nathan Halbach, 22, are battling cancer....

Click here for the rest of the story

In Memoriam: Fr. Leo Lynch

Fr. Leo Lynch, a married priest in Saginaw, Michigan, and CITI member, passed away last week. Here is his obituary from The Saginaw News and an earlier article from National Catholic Reporter.

A Life Remembered: Leo Lynch 'stood up for others who couldn't speak up for themselves'

By Sue White
The Saginaw News
October 12, 2009, 11:11PM

“Sue,” Leo R. Lynch would start, drawing out my name, “I want to talk to you about a little something.”

Maybe it was his folk trio, The New Image, pulling together a show again for a worthy cause. Or he would share some news on his sons, Stephen and Andrew, each finding success on stages in New York City and Chicago.

Afterward, when the story came out, he’d call back again, usually leaving a message that went something like “Boy, was I surprised when I picked up the paper this morning...”

And the funny thing is, meeting with friends and family at his visitation services Monday, Oct. 12, almost everyone remembered in different ways how much he touched their lives.

Through it all, added his wife, Judy, “he was a man of God. To Leo, wherever there were people, there was church.”

Lynch died Friday, Oct. 9, after suffering a heart attack. He was 78. A funeral liturgy will take place at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, at Snow Funeral Home, 3775 N. Center in Saginaw Township, followed by interment in Roselawn Memorial Gardens.

A Bay City native, Lynch was ordained a Catholic priest in 1956 in Rome. Throughout his ministry, he was active in fighting the issues of the day, such as racism, poverty and war.

“I think of so many things when I remember my dad, but the role he played in the civil rights and anti-war movements stands out,” Stephen Lynch said. “Even when he was playing with Al Lacki and Ralph Buggia in The New Image, the songs were always about important things in troubled times.

“I respected him for that. He stood up for others who couldn’t speak up for themselves.”

In 1969, feeling he could no longer support the church’s views on divorce and remarriage, intercommunity services and the celibacy of priests, Leo Lynch resigned from what he called his “institutional” church.

Lynch married the former Judith Hayes in 1970, and continued to minister to the faithful, celebrating Mass with the Emmanuel Catholic community. As people told his family Monday, “once a priest, always a priest.”

He had many gifts, including playing the padre in the Midland Music Society’s 1980 production of “Man of La Mancha,” one of several roles he held in community theater.

Later, he watched his sons embrace the stage and Stephen Lynch receive a Tony Award nomination for his lead role in Broadway’s “The Wedding Singer.”

But doing God’s work was definitely his greater calling, his son remembered.

“I knew him as a great father, someone I could always turn to when I needed someone,” Stephen Lynch said. “But I’ve met so many people since I’ve come home, and from what they’re telling me, it feels like he reached out to everyone in the community.

“They all had a story to tell, how he affected their lives in some way. He was always helping as many people as he could. He lived his faith.”

---

Married priest celebrating Mass in Saginaw: parish cites canon law, invites priest

by Tim McCarthy
National Catholic Reporter
Feb 26, 1993

SAGINAW, Mich. - The priest was married, the parish closed, but the Mass went on.

With his wife, Judy, in attendance, Father Leo Lynch, a priest in the Saginaw diocese until he opted for secular life in 1969, wore no vestments over his blue business suit and red-plaid tie. Just the same, he was priest aplenty for the St. Rita remnant gathered that icy Saturday evening in the church they said the diocese was taking away from them piece by piece.

Last August, with closure round the corner for St. Rita and four other inner-city churches, rebellious parishioners called upon Lynch to celebrate a protest Mass in a parking lot. ABC-TV's "20/20" was there, no doubt savoring the moment during the sign of peace, when Lynch went over and embraced one of his grown sons.

No such hoopla surrounded the Feb. 6 Mass, only the third Lynch has celebrated publicly since 1969, but it was a public challenge to progressive Saginaw Bisbop Kenneth Untener. Lynch said it might cost him his part-time job as choir director for another Saginaw parish.

When members of Saginaw's Save the Churches approached him last summer, armed with the canons they said allowed him to celebrate Mass, Lynch accepted but appealed to them to ask him not because canon law said so: "Ask me because Jesus said, 'Break the bread.'"

"I have no addiction to be priest (in terms of celebrating the Eucharist)," he said, doodling at the kitchen table during a recent interview in his comfortable culde-sac home. "But these people have a right to the Eucharist."

Although St. Rita closed officially Nov. 15, there has been a Mass the-re every Saturday or Sunday since then. Usually the Masses draw 40 to 50 people who say they refuse to sacrifice their close-knit community to the larger joint parish the diocese has asked them to merge with. Married or not, Lynch is welcome.

2nd Bishops’ Synod for Africa: Married Priests Want In

The Kenyan newspaper The Standard reports today that married priests want their voice heard in the forthcoming second Synod of Catholic bishops set to begin next week in the Vatican.

Through their prelature, Married Priests Now, the clergy argue that the synod would be incomplete without the agenda of the clerics renouncing their celibacy vows.

The presiding archbishop of the movement in Kenya Rev Daniel Kasomo said the issue of married priests should be top on the agenda in the meeting to be attended by bishops from across the continent.

By the way, in an related story which we failed to report when it occured back in June (mostly because we have been keeping a distance from all these guys), the five American bishops who were part of Archbishop Milingo's "Married Priests Now" have broken with Milingo to form their own "Married Priests USA". The five are Archbishops Peter Brennan (NY), Joseph Gouthro (NV), Patrick Trujillo (NJ), George Stallings (DC) and Bishop Joaquin Perez (FL). They say that they have disassociated themselves for theological and philosophical differences...

Why are fewer Catholics taking road to the abbey?

Belfast Telegraph
Wednesday, 30 September 2009

As the number of vocations to the priesthood in Ireland falls dramatically, Malachi O'Doherty asks if this means that the Catholic Church will have to radically change its attitude to women

The single element in the secularisation of Ireland that guarantees a radical change in our religious culture is the collapse in vocations. In Catholic understanding, a vocation to the priesthood or religious life is a calling from God. Well, God has fallen strangely silent.

The churches are not emptying nearly as fast as the pulpits are. Many thousands of people in this country still want the services and support that come with at least occasional church attendance and membership of a congregation. But the church, as they have understood it, is about to disappear.

Ten times more priests are leaving the church or dying as are hearing the call and responding to it. So most of the ones we are left with are older men, many of them tired and overworked.

The 159 priests of the diocese of Down and Connor is being replenished by only one or two new vocations a year. In 1950 the diocese had one priest for every 700 Catholics. Now each priest has double that number to look after.

This is a crisis for the church but also an indicator of a fundamental change in the character of Catholic Ireland.

Once we had thousands of priests. The optimist says that Ireland was inordinately devout then and that the figures were inflated beyond what was natural; in that case a sort of normality is restoring itself now.

In other countries priests have several parishes to serve and live with the reality of half-hearted commitment among the faithful.

Ireland is simply turning into a normal western country from having been virtually obsessed with religion. It was a phase we were going through and it is over.

In the near future, many parishes will have no priest at all. A priest from outside will have the responsibility of dropping by to consecrate the eucharist, but he will not be there on Sunday to say mass. A lay eucharistic minister will distribute communion instead and lead the prayers.

That will effect two likely changes in the character of Catholic worship.

Since the line of communication from the institutional church to the people will have been broken, the power to impose dogmatic rigour will weaken. And, since most eucharistic ministers are women, we may shift in a decade from a male led church to something that looks, feels and sounds matriarchal.

Already there are more women than men in Catholic colleges studying theology, preparing for the responsibility they will inherit.

The other main churches say that they are not suffering the same rapid decline. The lonely celibate life of a Catholic priest is probably harder than that of a married pastor in the Church of Ireland and Presbyterian Church.

An indication of that is that some Catholic priests are defecting to the Church of ireland. One is Mark Hayden, in his new parish in Gorey in Co Wexford.

The Church of Ireland Chaplain at Queens University, Belfast, was a Roman Catholic and several women who have felt called to the priesthood have gone into the Church of Ireland. Olive Donahoe in Portalise is one.

An ex-priest in the North West was recently invited by a Church of Ireland bishop, over a game of golf, to cross over and take a parish. But the secular trend in Ireland is following the pattern of change in other European countries a generation before us, according to University of Aberdeen sociologist Steve Bruce: "The trajectory is the same."

There are certainly signs of growth in some of the evangelical churches but this may be masked by surges of enthusiasm which attract people from one church to another.

When Pastor George McKim started to hold prayer services in hotels in Belfast and Templepatrick in June, he drew several hundred people, but it is likely that few were new converts to religious faith. The other churches which those people had come from will have registered corresponding declines.

There was a similar surge of enthusiasm for healing services at the north Belfast Elim church last year.

This year, the Catholic seminary at Maynooth, reported an increased number of men coming forward for training.

One recent high profile recruit to training for the priesthood was former Northern Ireland international soccer player, Philip Mulryne, who has begun his studies.

To attract increased numbers the President of Maynooth, Mgr Hugh Connolly had reached out to older men and announced that he was changing the training regime to teach men to pray and lead prayer.

In the past, the main flow of entrants would have been from the schools.

Boys coming out of Catholic schools would have had daily exposure to praying in front of others and been at ease with it.

Mgr Connolly was recognising that for the priesthood to survive at all a new kind of recruit had to be won over and catered for with an education that started with the basics. The church hopes that older men, who have a clearer sense of what they want from life, will be less likely to drop out or leave the priesthood after a few years, but there is a growing sense that the priesthood is no longer a life long commitment.

The increase that is being celebrated amounts to 36 men in the whole of Ireland.

There are currently 77 men in training.

They are coming into a church vastly unlike the one they were baptised in and they will be its lonely and over worked inheritors.

And one other bad augur. Those who are close to the new generations of priests say they are much more conservative than the older men of the generation dying out. They might not fit so well into the new Ireland.

Noted German theologian suspended over celibacy

Fr. Michael Schulz, who had just been appointed in July to the International Pontifical Theological Commission, has been suspended as a priest. Schulz was ordained in 1984. He has been a professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Bonn since 2004 and he is also dean of the faculty. Prior to Bonn, he was on the theology faculty at l'Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. He is the author of numerous books including Sein und Trinität (1997), Dogmatik/Dogmengeschichte (eine Einführung in das Fach Dogmatik; 2001), Karl Rahner begegnen (Sankt Ulrich Verlag, 1999) and Hans Urs von Balthasar begegnen (Sankt Ulrich Verlag, 2002).

According to Kath.net, Fr. Schulz informed his bishop that he is in a relationship with a woman and plans to get married. The announcement of Fr. Schulz's suspension was made jointly by Cardinal Karl Lehmann of the Diocese of Mainz, where Schulz was incardinated, and Cardinal Meissner of the Archdiocese of Cologne who is responsible for the Catholic theology faculty at the University of Bonn.

As a result of the suspension, Schulz will probably lose his current teaching position, though he may be allowed to keep his salary which is paid by the state and transfer to a teaching position that does not require Catholic Church approval.

Culture Notes: Ruhama Aqui y Ahora

Flash: For those who speak Spanish and want to know the Padre Alberto story from the other side of the bed (so to speak), his wife Ruhama Canellis is going to be on "Aqui y Ahora" (Univision) at 10 p.m. tonight (9/29) filling in the gaps in this telenovela.

From Priest to Minister

Rev. Stephen Joseph Fichter has an article on the Web edition of America (10/5/2009) about Catholic priests who, like Fr. Alberto Cutié, have converted to Protestant denominations.

"...How unique is Cutié’s story? How many other Catholic priests have left the church for another denomination in order to marry? Could Cutié’s conversion signal the beginning of another wave of men leaving the priesthood? Until November 2008, when I completed my dissertation on the transition of celibate Catholic priests into married Protestant ministry, it would have been impossible to address these questions. The data I collected over the course of a year allowed me to conduct the first-ever analysis in this field....

...Thanks to information gathered from the research offices of the five mainline Protestant Churches (Congregational, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian), I was able to identify 414 such men in the United States. Following the advice of the late Dean Hoge, I did not contact the Baptist Church or any of the hundreds of small Protestant denominations, presuming that very few Catholic priests would be inclined to join them.

Nearly one-third of the 414 former Catholic priests now serving in Protestant ministry agreed to participate in my survey. Of the 131 respondents, 105 (80.2 percent) became Episcopalian, 15 (11.5 percent) Lutheran, eight (6.1 percent) Congregationalist, and three (2.3 percent) Methodist. I found a 40-year age range: the youngest was 42 and the eldest 82. Their mean age was 62.8 while the median was 64...

...When asked why they made the transition, six out of ten respondents cited celibacy....Other respondents spoke about their dislike for specific tenets of Catholic dogma. Many pointed to the publication of Humanae Vitae as a major turning point in their lives. One former diocesan priest, who is now 80 years old, said, “Humanae Vitae pushed me off the edge. I saw that act as the refusal of the Roman Catholic Church to enter the modern world.”...

Anyway, the entire article is very worth reading: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11896

Dear Wives Of Priests

I have been writing a blog for wives of priests, The Apostles Wives Club, http://theapostleswivesclub.com/, for a little over a year. The purpose of my blog is to connect with other women married to priest and to share our stories, but all I receive is silence from you. I assumed there might be many wives like me wishing to hear from each other and ready to claim their identity. When nothing happened, I understood that other wives weren’t interested or they didn’t want to talk. Instead of hearing from wives, I started hearing from women who were involved with priest in secret forbidden relationships, and I began answering their questions and addressing their issues. This lead to the idea of writing a book; so I started a book project, http://theapostleswivesclub.com/book-project/.

The editor of CORPUS Reports, David Gawlick, agreed to print an article where I could appeal to priests’ wives and their husbands for ways they could contribute. Then a funny thing happened. I started to realize that most of what I was writing about for these women were issues that most all priests’ wives have had to deal with to some degree and there wasn’t so much difference between the wives and the women not married. Instead of an article, I wrote a letter and I am including it here for you too because maybe you don’t read CORPUS Reports and you might want to contribute to my book in some way by sharing a story or a piece of advice.

Dear Wives Of Priests,

I have been intending to write an article for CORPUS Reports to ask readers, you, wives of priest, and your husbands to share with me some of your story and offer one piece of advice for women involved with priests for the book I have wanted to write. However, I couldn’t write the article because I am filled with conflict about it. I am not conflicted about wanting to write something more in book form, but I feel more conflict about how to present this subject to those of you who don’t seem to talk. I don’t know if you have ever explored the issues that we deal with on my blog, The Apostles Wives’ Club.

My blog wasn’t intended for women involved in secret forbidden relationships, but for women married to priests. However, the more I write, the more I realize that most of us women married to priests , with the exception of those who started relationships with their husbands after he left the priesthood, were once involved in secret forbidden relationships of some duration and intensity. I don’t quite know how to address this and or how to come to terms with this in an article since I believe that secret relationships are basically unhealthy and destructive.
There are so many issues involved with secrets. I believe that even if a couple eventually marries there will be issues stemming from that to deal with later. There are also the relationships that might have begun when a priest was a pastor, counselor, spiritual advisor, or confessor to a woman. Those are so unhealthy period. Maybe this is why I don’t hear from you. Maybe you just don’t want to deal with the subject.

There is just so much that really has little to do with whether or not we support a married priesthood, which is the focus of CORPUS. What I write about has so much more to do with secrets and how they affect our lives and how we live with our choices, and how we can make better choices.

I don’t know what many of the readers of CORPUS might feel about the subjects I deal with or even if they would be open to hearing about them? How would what I say compare with what you or your husbands believe about yourselves and your relationships? If you are out there what do you think about secret relationships? How has it affected your marriage?
You may feel less inclined to share and rather more inclined to tell me where to get off. I hope not and that maybe I will finally hear your voice.

Email me at eveapostle@yahoo.com . Hope to hear from you soon.

God bless!

Marcella Paliekara

Cardinal of Madrid: Married priests can't celebrate the Eucharist

UPDATE: Since this news came out, MOCEOP has issued a curt response to the cardinal which basically says that his statement reflects his conservative character and goes on to list various members of the Catholic Church hierarchy who MOCEOP says are supportive of optional celibacy. I am not going to translate this response because it was obviously compiled hastily and I have doubts about its accuracy (all due respect to our hermanos in Spain). -- RG

by José Manuel Vidal (translation Rebel Girl)
El Mundo
9/25/2009

Madrid's Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela doesn't want to hear anything about married and laicized priests. Much less them celebrating Mass. Hence, "to avoid confusion of the faithful, the archbishop of Madrid has issued a note reminding that "the Church expressly prohibits laicized or married priests from priestly ministry."

A few days ago, various media reported that two of every ten priests, or 20% of the Spanish clergy, are married and laicized. In round numbers, that would be about 5,500 priests in Spain alone. Worldwide it is estimated that the number of married priests could be around 150,000.

Many of them left their relationship with the Church along with the priesthood. But many others continue to demand, since Vatican II, the abolition of compulsory celibacy and, therefore, a return to ministry for married priests who want to come back.

There is another group of priests, almost all belonging to the Movement for Optional Celibacy (MOCEOP) who have chosen not only to make rhetorical demands, but also the policy of fait accompli. And some are working as priests. In small communities or neighborhood parishes in various parts of Spain. Not to mention overseas, where it is common for married priests to continue in ministry, given the scarcity of vocations and a blind eye from the bishops.

As a representative of this group, Julio Perez Pinillos, has claimed in various media that he, among others, served as a priest in Vallecas. "Because now one should lead the way," he said.

The archbishop of Madrid stepped up immediately to confront "some recent statements widely disseminated in the media". The first thing he says in his note, is that "the Church prohibits married or secularized priests, who have thus abandoned their priestly commitment, from priestly ministry and, therefore, from celebrating Mass as well as other sacraments".

Despite Julio Pinillos's public statements, the Archbishop of Madrid says he has "no evidence that any priest who is in that situation is offering the sacraments in any church or place of worship in the archdiocese."

Finally, the Archdiocese of Madrid's communique insists on recommending to its priests, in the Year for Priests, "a generous and fresh impetus towards the ideal of total self-giving to Christ and the Church, which is essential to responsibly exercise the priestly ministry."

The old debate on celibacy

The debate on celibacy began in the '60s, when half of Spanish seminarians were in favor of optional celibacy. Those were the days of conciliar "aggiornamento". Even Spanish public opinion, perhaps influenced by the new winds brought by the Second Vatican Council, was overwhelmingly in favor of allowing priests to marry.

Since then this percentage has continued to grow. In every survey carried out in Spain, about 75-80% of respondents support optional celibacy and married priests.

It is not a dogma

Celibacy is not a dogma but a church law that, just as it was passed, could be abolished. Jesus never said that his disciples had to be celibate. In fact, Peter, the head of the apostles, was married. In the early centuries of the Church, there were married and single priests and even bishops, without distinction. St. Paul himself only asked that bishops "have only one wife".

For over a millennium there were married and celibate priests. In the fourth century priests were required to abstain from sex the night before celebrating the Eucharist. When the Church introduced the daily Mass, the precept of abstinence became a continuing obligation. The justification was "ritual purity": any activity or experience of sexual pleasure is incompatible with contact with the eucharistic bread.

Having not achieved the imposition of sexual continence and faced with the subsequent failure of all penalties thereon, the Second Lateran Council in 1139 enacted the law of celibacy. "The priestly ordination becomes an impediment to marriage," reads canon VII of that council. The main reason for enacting that rule was economic: married priests distributed their inheritance among their sons, decreasing the property of their diocese and the Church.

Despite the enactment of the law of celibacy, in 1500 the majority of the priests were still in "marriage-like relationships." It wasn't until the Council of Trent (mid-sixteenth century) that the Church discipline of celibacy was imposed. With a few exceptions. For example, Pius IV thought of dispensing German priests from celibacy because of entreaties from the Emperor.

With ups and downs, celibacy has been imposed on since then on the Latin-rite Catholic Church. Because, in the Eastern Rite Catholic Church optional celibacy is the rule, as well as in all other Christian denominations: Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox.

Arguments Against Celibacy

1. It is a mandatory, imposed law, when in reality it is a 'charism', which by definition has to be free.

2. St. Peter was married and Paul recommended that bishops "have only one wife". Only in the fourth century did the Church demand sexual abstinence of its priests.

3. It is a law of the Church and, therefore, can be changed by the Pope at any time.

4. The law of celibacy has created a loss in priestly vocations.

5. All other Christian denominations (Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox) and even Greek-rite Catholics allow married priests.

6. At most it should be optional.

7. Priests would be more in touch with the reality of people and families.

8. Mandatory celibacy is inhumane.

9. Loneliness is hard, "a bad advisor". Marrying would avoid the "sex scandals" among priests.

10. Celibate priests, like prostitutes, have to love everybody, but nobody in particular.

11. There are many Christians who, because of the law of celibacy, don't have access to the Mass.

12. Most of the faithful prefer married priests.

Arguments For Celibacy

1. It is a law that is freely accepted by those who are ordained priests in the Roman Catholic rite.

2. Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest, was celibate.

3. It is a church law, but one that is supported by the enormous weight of many centuries of tradition.

4. There is the possibility that its abolition would lead to serious problems for the Church.

5. The denominations that allow their ministers to marry don't have any more vocations than the Catholic Church.

6. If priests are allowed to marry, those who do not marry might be suspected of homosexuality.

7. Having to deal with a family would make priests less free and less willing to dedicate themselves completely to God's kingdom.

8. It would be far more costly. How could the Church provide for not only the priest but also his family?

9. The priest is never alone. He always has the company of God, the Virgin and the faithful.

10. Like Christ, he loves them all equally.

11. Their absence can be compensated for with celebrations of the Word, presided over by lay people.

12. But other clerics would be shocked and the Church must always avoid the danger of scandal.

More from Miami...

I usually don't care to report these types of cases but I do it to drive home a point: If you are a priest and you are going to get involved with a woman and make babies, PLEASE try to pay some child support because it is the failure to do so that most often sheds a very bright and unwelcome light into your private life. Also because it is the morally and legally correct thing to do.

The priest, the stripper, and their baby

By David Ovalle
Miami Herald
9/18/09

She was an exotic dancer at a Miami strip club called Porky's. He showed up wearing a Hawaiian shirt, eager to share a night in the VIP lounge.

They began a torrid, on-and-off love affair that ended for good in January, after she gave birth to a daughter she says is his. Now, she wants child support and has filed a restraining order against him.

It might be a routine, if tawdry, court case if not for respondent David Dueppen's job: Catholic priest with the Miami Archdiocese.

The sordid story line inflicts another black eye on an Archdiocese already embarassed in May, when popular Miami television priest Alberto Cutié admitted to an affair with a woman, whom he quickly married.

Dueppen, 42, who once served at the same Miami Beach parish as Cutié, is now on leave from his associate priest position at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Pembroke Pines.

Former stripper Beatrice Hernandez filed the restraining order last week, claiming that an argument over paternity and child support escalated when Dueppen began ``grabbing her by the throat and choking her.''

``He is the devil,'' said Hernandez, 42, of Miami, who provided DNA test results naming Dueppen as the father. ``He is the devil dressed as an angel.''

The couple's past relationship was well-known to the church. Three years ago, the archdiocese paid Hernandez a settlement stemming from their long-running affair, which started seven years ago.

Within the last year, Hernandez says, Dueppen -- still a priest -- unexpectantly showed up to rekindle their romance.

The result, she says: Her baby, Marilyn Epiphany Hernandez.

Dueppen, a former Miami-Dade middle-school teacher who became a priest 10 years ago, says his lawyer advised him not to comment.

``I can't talk with you,'' Dueppen told a Miami Herald reporter Friday, adding that Hernandez's version is ``going to have a lot of inaccuracies.''

Dueppen, at his own request, is on indefinite administrative leave, said Archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, meaning he cannot perform church services or appear in priest garb.

Dueppen requested the leave for ``personal reasons'' during a meeting with Archbishop John C. Favalora in mid-August, she said.

Agosta could not say if Dueppen had revealed the baby's existence to the church, but she was unaware of the allegation. ``This information, if it's accurate, is very disappointing,'' she said.

Dueppen, looking to fulfill a spiritual void, turned to the cloth in 1999. He told The Herald at the time he had wrestled with giving up women and his dream of a large family.

``I sit down and ask Him that He give me the strength and the gifts to be able to serve His people,'' he said in an interview then. ``I am following what I believe is the will of God for me.''

A decade earlier, as a student at the University of Miami, Dueppen criticized the school's decision to install condom vending machines on campus.

``It will increase pressure for students to have sex, especially among freshmen. The only safe sex is abstinence,'' he told The Herald in a story on the controversy.

But abstinence was not in the cards when he met Hernandez, according to her account.

Hernandez says she met Dueppen while stripping near Miami International Airport. Her stage name: Lisa.

She spent a Sunday night with Dueppen -- who had shed his priest collar -- drinking wine in the VIP room. Soon, Hernandez says, Dueppen was visiting the club twice a month, and she began visiting him in the Keys, where he started out as a priest at St. Mary's Star of the Sea.

He later transferred to St. Francis de Sales Church in Miami Beach. They lived together in her West Miami-Dade town house for more than three years.

``He talked about having kids and marrying me,'' said Hernandez, who also has an older daughter from a prior relationship.

Hernandez said the relationship ended in 2006 over sexual differences.

Hernandez hired lawyer Jeffrey Herman, who threatened to sue the church under the claim that Dueppen abused his position of power by sleeping with Hernandez, and threatening her and her adult daughter with ``evil spirits'' if Hernandez left him.

The church settled out of court in July 2006, according to a Herald article at the time.

Hernandez says she and her daughter were paid $60,000. As a condition of the settlement, Hernandez and the priest were ordered to stay away from each other, she said.

According to church spokeswoman Agosta, Dueppen then went on leave to come to terms with his ``very public vow of celibacy.'' He returned after 13 months, she said.

``We are a forgiving church. He was addressing the issues and we were assured the issues had been resolved,'' she said.

Hernandez's current lawyer, Michael Feiler, said the church knew Dueppen was a problem and should have done more to ``police its ranks.''

``Instead of taking actions to correct his behavior, they just moved him 15 miles up the road,'' Feiler said.

By early 2008, Hernandez had quit her stripping job and opened a dollar store in Miami. One day, Dueppen showed up, she said.

``He has been looking for me everywhere, in every strip club,'' she said. ``A friend of mine ended up telling him the address of the store.''

They renewed their romance. ``He started talking about having kids again. He wanted to start fresh with me -- and I'm still in love with the guy, and I fell for it,'' she said.

Then, Hernandez discovered she was pregnant.

Dueppen ``refused to believe he was the father and repeatedly told [Hernandez] that she was crazy,'' according to the restraining order.

The priest, she said, finally relented to a paternity test after she threatened to tell the Archdiocese. Despite results showing Dueppen was the father, he refused to pay child support and threatened her into staying quiet, she said.

``Any movement you do -- you call the cops, you call the Archdiocese -- we are powerful,'' Hernandez, in the restraining order, quoted Dueppen as saying. ``You know what I will do. I will take this child away and you will never see this child again.''

Hernandez will be seeking child support and a permanent restraining order, said Feiler, who will represent her at a hearing in Miami-Dade family court on Thursday.

Culture Notes: The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival

A new novel on our favorite subject to be released on 12/29/2009 for your holiday reading. Here's the pre-release review from Publisher's Weekly:

The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival
by Ken Wheaton
Kensington,
$15 paper (320p)
ISBN 978-0-7582-3852-8

Authentic Cajun touches (and recipes) spice up Wheaton's delightful debut yarn about faith and the yearnings of the flesh. Fr. Steve Sibille, the reflective protagonist, is re-evaluating his vow of celibacy after being tempted by Vicky Carrier, the sinfully conceived but beloved daughter of St. Peter's church's former padre. Father Steve considers the repeated advice of his family friend Miss Rita, a scene-stealing African-American centenarian who tells Father Steve that what he needs is a woman. Things get stickier for Father Steve when his gay friend, Fr. Mark Johnson, quits the priesthood and the Rev. Paul Tompkins attempts to woo St. Pete congregants to his Pentecostal church, leading to a big showdown and the festival of the title. Wheaton writes with an infectious energy, and his affection for the characters and culture is authentic without being overbearing or cheesy. Do the bon temps rouler? In Wheaton's hands, they sure do. (Jan.)

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%.