Reflections on Priestly Celibacy

Before sharing the article on celibacy by Fr. Castillo that I promised, I'd like to share some depressing news. The Vatican just upheld the excommunication of Call to Action Catholics by then Bishop Robert F. Vasa of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska 10 years ago. The current bishop, Fabian W. Bruskewitz concurred with his predecessor and compared his actions to parents telling their children that they can't test everything in the medicine cabinet or under the sink. And while you are choking on this demeaning simile, Bruskewitz has a message for CTA members: "The best lesson that can be learned from everything that has happened is that one finds happiness, joy and satisfaction in obedience to the church." If you really want to read more about this decision, you can find details from Catholic News Service.

And now for a progressive perspective...

Reflections on Priestly Celibacy
by José María Castillo, SJ
Santiago de Chile
Crónica Digital
November 28, 2006

This article was originally published in Spanish and is available here. English translation courtesy of Rebel Girl.

According to the gospels, Jesus did not impose the obligation of bachelor living on any of his apostles. St. Paul says that some apostles lived with Christian wives and adds that they had the right to do so (1 Cor 9:5).

In the letters to Timothy (1 Tim 3: 2-5) and Titus (Titus 1:6), in explaining the qualities a bishop should have, it says that he should be faithful to his wife and know how to rule his household and his children well, because "if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of the church of God?" (1 Tim 3:5)

That is how things were until the 4th century. It is known that at the Council of Nicea (325 AD) some bishops wanted to "introduce a new law" that "ordained" men (bishops, priests, deacons) "not sleep with their wives."

Faced with this petition, Bishop Pafnucio yelled that one should not impose this heavy yoke on consecrated men, adding that the matrimonial act is worthy of honor and that matrimony itself is immaculate. (Socrates, Hist. Ecl. I:9). And the Council of Gangres (345 AD) condemned those who said that one should not receive communion from the hands of a married priest.

Nonetheless, at the beginning of the 4th century, right here in Granada, at the Council of Elvira, the law of continence -- not the law of celibacy -- was imposed on the clergy, that is to say, they couldn't avail themselves of their marriage from the moment of their ordination. This discipline continued for centuries.

This caused serious complications. For example, the First Council of Toledo (397-400 AD) ruled that the wives of clergy who sinned with someone else should be severely punished by their husbands in such a way as not to cause their death. And the Third Council of Toledo (589 AD) decided that the wives of clergy who sinned with another should be sold as slaves and the proceeds given to the poor.

In Eastern rite Christianity, the discipline was different: the Trullan Council (692 AD) set the law that remains in force in those churches and permits clergy to marry. "The nuptials are honorable and matrimony is immaculate." Therefore it is not true that the celibacy law is a law of the universal Church. It is a law of the Latin rite Church.

How long can we say that the celibacy law has existed? It was Pope Innocent II who at the Second Lateran Council (1139 AD) officially declared that marriage for priests was not only prohibited, but also invalid. From then on, priests (in the Latin rite Church) remained unable to marry. How was that decision reached? In the case of the bishops, economic criteria were decisive: There was the danger that a married priest would leave the properties of the Church as an inheritance to his children. But the determining factor was the principle of "ritual purity."

That was demonstrated in the best historical study made about this specific point (R. Gryson, Les origines du célibat ecclésiastique, Duculot, Gembloux, 1970). According to this principle, "only those who are pure can have access to the sphere of the sacred." But the conviction that sexual relationships contaminate and stain has been held since time immemorial.

The Greeks (Pythagoras, Empedocles) taught this way before Christianity. And the Jewish priests lived this way, who were married, but when they had to serve in the Temple, they had to stay in the Temple, without consorting with their wives. This was one of the arguments that was used in Rome when the daily celebration of the Eucharist was imposed in the 4th century. This is why the continence requirement was also imposed on clergy at that time.

This way of viewing sexuality as something that renders one impure is not accepted in current culture. This is why other arguments are usually used to justify keeping the celibacy law.

These are arguments that should be qualified. Because if you say that one who does not marry loves God more, you are really saying that God can be the jealous rival of a human love. But God is not (nor can He be) this way. What God most wants is for the love between humans to be as intense and authentic as possible.

Another reason that is usually provided is that someone who marries cannot devote himself as completely to the apostolate, which is true in some cases.

But it is not true that we priests devote more time and will to our task than the time and will other professionals put into their work -- business people or artists, for example.

So why is this church law still in effect? Experience teaches us, and psychologists endorse it, that whoever controls the emotional and sexual life of a person, secures that person's obedience. Probably this reason is stronger than we might imagine, even though many are not aware of it.

Aside from that, I don't think that if the Church allowed priests to marry, more people would enter the seminaries and novitiate programs. The crisis in vocations has deeper roots that now is not the moment to explain. Many Protestant churches have the same crisis in pastors.

And we know that Protestant pastors can marry. We have to remember as well that the sexual instinct only has three possible outlets: satisfaction, repression, or sublimation. But repression brings serious problems for the person who is forced to live that way. And sublimation for religious reasons is, of course, an admirable gift.

But it is not easy to understand how such a sublime experience could be lived by hundreds of thousands of people as those who want to devote themselves to apostolic ministry in the Church must live. Out of this come the "double lives", the scandals. Therefore I think that it would be better to eliminate this law that is more and more difficult to uphold each day.

Central America: Boosting the status quo on celibacy

SEDAC, the Central American Bishops' Conference, which has been meeting in Tegucigalpa, Honduras decided to put in their 2-cents worth on the celibacy question. They called on their priests to value "cada día más el don del celibato que han recibido" ("each day more and more the gift of celibacy they have received" through ongoing formation. SEDAC added:

"El celibato sacerdotal vivido en madurez afectiva, signo de la radicalidad de su entrega libre a Cristo y a su Evangelio, es un precioso ejemplo para todo joven del valor de la castidad y para aquellos llamados por el Señor a la vida consagrada y al sacerdocio ministerial, un acicate a no dejarse vencer por el temor"

Translation: "Priestly celibacy lived in affective maturity, a sign of the radicalness of the free gift of themselves to Christ and His Gospel, is a precious example for all youth of the value of chastity and for those who are called by the Lord to the consecrated life and priestly ministry, an incentive not to let themselves be conquered by fear."

And they end with a quote from Deus Caritas Est in which Pope Benedict XVI calls celibacy the best testimony of the God in whom we believe and who impels us to love.

Later I will have a somewhat different view on the subject from a well-known Spanish Jesuit theologian to share with you, but I need some time to translate it.

Groups express concern over Married Priests Now

The Daily Record of 12/7/2006 contains an article reflecting the split in this movement between Married Priests Now and other groups calling for an end to mandatory celibacy such as CORPUS and CITI. The other groups are uncomfortable with Archbishop Milingo's connection to Revd. Sun Myung Moon and also the schismatic nature of Married Priests Now.

The connection with the Unification Church "'doesn't click with most Roman Catholics,' said Russell Ditzel, president of CORPUS, a national organization representing 1,500 priests who left ministries in the Roman Catholic Church to get married."

In the article, Peter Paul Brennan, who was ordained a bishop by Milingo within the structure of Married Priests Now, denies that Moon has any involvement with the movement but goes on to say that Milingo's wife receives funds from the Unification Church and, as Milingo is no longer on the Catholic Church's payroll, this is how the couple lives.

CITI also declined to participate in the Married Priests Now convention and Louise Haggett, CITI's founder, said: "We are Roman Catholics and plan to stay that way."

The rest of the Daily Record article is available here.

Belgian priests back end to celibacy rule

Another example of how the Magisterium is out of touch with the Sensus Fidelium on the celibacy issue:

Brussels, Dec. 6, 2006 (CWNews.com) — Nearly 80% of the priests in Belgium's Flemish region support the admission of married men to the Catholic clergy, according to poll results appearing in the newspapers Gazet van Antwerpen and Het Belang van Limburg.

The survey of 234 priests found that a clear majority -- 57% -- believe that their work load is now too heavy. Questioned about the findings by Gazet van Antwerpen, Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels said that he was not surprised by that result, observing that priests are aging (the average age of the survey respondents was 67) while their responsibilities are unchanged.

Cardinal Danneels added that he was not surprised by the priests' support for an end to the requirement of clerical celibacy. "Celibacy is not easy to live," he observed, and "everyone knows that celibacy is an ecclesiastical rule that could change."

However, the cardinal voiced his doubts that the shortage of priests could be eased by admitting married men to the Catholic clergy. "I don't think there are many married men prepared to become priests," he said -- noting that Protestant churches, despite their tradition of allowing married ministers, are experiencing a similar drop in the number of clergy.

Renegade bishop set to rattle Rome

More about Archbishop Milingo's activities and some interesting details about the links between Married Priests Now and the Unification Church. Prof. Charmè's remarks at the end of the article about the de facto changes in the definition of "Catholic" are also interesting.

Wednesday, December 6, 2006
By Sachi Fujimori
Herald News

A Roman Catholic Archbishop from Zambia with a colorful history of rousing the Vatican and ties to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, will once again annoy his bosses this Sunday when he ordains three married men as priests at a church in West New York.

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo returned to the United States this July to kick-start his movement, known as Married Priests Now. This weekend he will host a conference at a Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, convening as many as 600 married priests from around the world. On Sunday, Milingo will perform the ordinations at Trinity Reformed Church in West New York. Milingo would have had little luck finding a local Catholic Church to perform the ordinations. He was excommunicated by the Vatican in September after he ordained four married men as bishops, including a priest from Newark. Excommunication renders all of Milingo's holy activities illegal in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church.

A Clifton resident and coordinator for Married Priests Now, Bishop Dairo Ferrabolli, is sanguine about the Vatican's rejection.

"We are Catholic. If the Vatican doesn’t want to recognize us, it's OK," he said. "The mother is rejecting the son. What do you want the son to do?"

Ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in Brazil in 1979, Ferrabolli said he had to resign from his church when he married. He then formed an independent church, the Catholic Family Church, with about 350 families in the United States and the Caribbean, according to Ferrabolli.
He also occasionally performs spiritual services for weddings and birthdays, he said. He is still married today with two daughters and a son.

Milingo and his followers say that allowing married Catholic priests to return to full ministry is a solution to the priest shortage, will improve the status of women in the Catholic Church and serve as a model of a Christian family.

The weekend-long conference of renegade Catholics is partly funded by a group associated with Moon, the controversial South Korean founder of the Unification Church, known for his deep pockets and mass weddings.

"We are a new organization. We don't have much of a budget to take care of things," said Ferrabolli of their sponsorship.

Milingo has been associated with Moon before. In 2001, Moon chose a South Korean wife for Milingo, and married the couple in one of his mass wedding ceremonies. After pleas from Pope John Paul II, Milingo renounced the marriage. But he reportedly reunited with his wife when he returned to the United States this July, according to the Catholic News Service. Clifton's Ferrabolli also has ties to one of Rev. Moon's organizations.

The connection may be more than just sponsorship, according to John Gorenfeld, a New York-based freelance writer who is currently writing a book about the Rev. Moon and the Unification Church.

On his Web blog devoted to Moon, Gorenfeld reveals that the Web site for Married Priests Now (www.marriedpriestsnow.org) was registered under the same domain name of Moon's personal Web master, David Payer. Payer's name has since been removed, but his Iowa address and telephone numbers remain. The same contact info appears on the domain registration for the Unification Church homepage.

Moon is known for trying to build inter-religious federations, said Gorenfeld. And his partnership with Milingo and the renegade Catholics could serve to bolster his legitimacy, he added. In 2004, the ex-president of Uganda married a Japanese women selected for him by Moon in a mass satellite wedding ceremony.

Moon is "interested in aiming big and finding wives for influential figures who come under his flag," said Gorenfeld.

This weekend's conference in Parsippany will include a holy Mass, linking via satellite 1,200 priests and their wives from Europe, Africa and Latin America, said Ferrabolli. The activist clergy will be dressed in full regalia, just like their counterparts in Rome.

Milingo does not preside over a church today. But if you ask him and his followers, their Catholic Church has no walls. Milingo often presides over mass, said Ferrabolli. "Even when he travels, he carries all his holy items. We pray mass in the airport. We celebrate the Eucharist."

Milingo's push for married papacy is getting the attention of his bosses at the Vatican. In a November meeting in Rome, led by Pope Benedict XVI, Catholic leaders met to "discuss the disobedience" of Milingo, according to a Vatican statement. By the meeting’s end, the Vatican reaffirmed their stance on mandatory celibacy for priests. Some experts say the Vatican is concerned over Milingo's activities because of the fear of his influence. He was an archbishop of Zambia. Africa and South America are regions where the Catholic Church is showing its greatest growth.

"The Catholic Church is becoming a complicated diverse community,” said Stuart Charmè, chairman of Rutgers' department of philosophy and religion.

"And the unquestioned authority of the Church of Rome is no longer taken for granted by some parts of the Catholic Church in new markets in the third world.

"In some ways it's a showdown of authority," said Charmè.

And he doesn't see the Vatican backing down any time soon.

"The Catholic Church is an extremely tradition-bound institution, comprised of men who were socialized in a different generation, not open to change," said Charmè.

Monsignor Robert Wister, a professor of church history at Seton Hall University, said Milingo's support for married clergy "is not the answer to the priest shortage."

The Vatican, too, is concerned about the shrinking ranks of priests he said, but has responded by stepping up their efforts to encourage men to become priests.

Matrimony and Holy Orders: Reading the Vatican Tea Leaves

I wish I knew more Portuguese since it seems like the most interesting prospects for Vatican "tea leaf reading" on celibacy are coming out of Portugal and Brazil.

According to the O. Estado de S.Paulo, Cardinal Hummes, before he backtracked, "admitiu ontem que a falta de vocações sacerdotais possa levar o Vaticano a discutir a ordenação de homens casados. 'Embora os celibatários façam parte da história e da cultura católicas, a Igreja pode refletir sobre essa questão, pois o celibato não é dogma, mas uma norma disciplinar', disse d. Cláudio, lembrando que alguns apóstolos eram casados e que a proibição do casamento só veio séculos depois da instituição do sacerdócio." In English: Cardinal Hummes said that the lack of vocations could lead the Vatican to discuss the ordination of married men. He added that even though celibate people are part of Catholic history and culture, the Church can reflect on this question because celibacy is not a dogma but a disciplinary norm and he recalled that some of the apostles were married and that the prohibition against marriage came centuries after the institution of the priesthood.

The Cardinal goes on to say that the Church is not a static institution and can move when it has to. He says that it may start slowly with a discussion of whether to reopen the celibacy debate at all. And again he reiterates that this discussion is being prompted by the shortage of vocations, particularly in Europe.

By Monday, the headline was "Dom Claudio denies any opening by the Vatican on celibacy" (article in Portuguese). At this point the Cardinal does a 180 degree turn and says that ending celibacy is not the solution to the shortage of vocations since this is due to other factors like the modern secularized culture. And the Vatican says that Dom Claudio's remarks were misinterpreted.

With all due respect, I don't think so. Cardinal Hummes is not an ignorant man. He knew perfectly well what he was saying. He was reading the priest crisis from a Latin American perspective. Rome is slapping him on the wrist and saying: "If you're going to Europe, brother, it's time to start using European analysis and language" -- hence the reference to "modern secularized culture." This term is much less a part of Latin American ecclesial discourse.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Portuguese newspaper article from Correio da Manhã contains some interesting speculation in addition to the survey results which I reported in an earlier post on this blog. The bishop of the Portuguese Armed Forces, Dom Januário Torgal Ferreira, after a bit of bluster about how it's hard for people to understand priestly disciplines such as the vows of poverty and celibacy and how the Church can't change to reflect the prevailing winds, nonetheless adds: "é muito provável que haja mudanças a esse nível, talvez mais cedo do que o que se pensa” ("It is very probable that there will be movement at this level, perhaps more than one would think"). While stating that allowing those already in the priesthood to marry is a long way off, Dom Januário opines "a Igreja não vai demorar a aceitar a ordenação de homens casados" ("the Church is not going to delay [long] in accepting the ordination of married men"). The article then goes on to quote from the presiding bishop of the Portuguese Bishops' Conference who reaffirms the status quo on celibacy.

Bottom line: If you are feeling called to be a married Catholic priest, make sure you receive your sacraments in the proper order: 1. Matrimony, 2. Holy Orders.

Curial cardinal says celibacy 'not a dogma,' can be discussed

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
Published on National Catholic Reporter Conversation Cafe (http://ncrcafe.org)
By John L Allen Jr Daily
Created Dec 4 2006 - 01:44
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

Pope Benedict XVI's choice as the church's top official for priests has said that celibacy “is not a dogma,” and that the Catholic church can reflect on the subject.

The explosive character of the issue, however, was reflected in a "clarification" issued in the name of the cardinal by the Vatican Press Office on Dec. 4.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes, 72, of São Paulo, Brazil, was nominated Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy on Oct. 31. He made the comments as he left for Rome in an interview with the Brazilian publication Estado de São Paulo.

“Even if celibates are part of our history and of Catholic culture, the church can reflect on the question of celibacy, because it's not a dogma but a disciplinary norm,” Hummes said.

Hummes, a Franciscan, recalled that several apostles were married, and that the discipline of priestly celibacy in the Western church developed several centuries after the institution of the priesthood itself.

"The church is not stationary, but an institution that changes when it has to change,” Hummes said. "The church must first discuss if it's necessary to reconsider the norm of celibacy.”

Hummes acknowledged that the priest shortage in Europe and other parts of the world has created new pressure for a reexamination of the discipline of celibacy.

Ultimately, any decision to reevaluate the question of priestly celibacy would be made by Benedict XVI himself, not Hummes. Nevertheless, the fact that the pope's choice for the top job on the priesthood would raise the question reflects a growing openness to discussion at senior levels of the church.

Hummes also discussed the scandals of sexual abuse by priests which have rocked parts of the Catholic world in recent years.

“Even if we were talking about just one case, it would be a great source of concern, above all as regards the victims,” he said. “But it's unjust and hypocritical to generalize the scandals of pedophilia, because 99 percent of priests have nothing to do with it.”

"Pedophilia is not just a problem for priests, but of the entire society,” stating that “there are cases of sexual abuse of children even within families.”

Hummes said it's the responsibility of bishops to take ever greater care with the “rigorous selection and demanding formation” of candidates for the priesthood.

"Priests are a strategic group for the church,” he said. “They are the ones who give life to the church, and for that reason, they deserve the support and affection of Catholics.”

On Monday, the Vatican issued a declaration offering clarifications from Hummes on his comments in the interview.

"With regard to the echoes created by my words reported by the newspaper Estado de Sâo Paulo, I'd like to clarify the following," it said.

"In the church, it has always been clear that the obligation of celibacy for priests is not a dogma, but a disciplinary norm. It is also clear that this is true for the Latin church, but not for the Oriental rites, where it is normal that priests are married in the communities in union with the Catholic church.

"However, it is nevertheless clear that the norm of celibacy for the priests of the Latin church is very ancient, and is based on a consolidated tradition and on strong motivations, both of a theological-spiritual character and also practical-pastoral, confirmed by recent popes.

"Also in the recent Synod of Bishops, the most common opinion among the fathers was that a change in the rule of celibacy would not be a solution for the problem of the priest shortage, which results from other factors, beginning with the secularized modern culture, as the experience of other Christian confessions demonstrates, which have married priests or pastors.

"This question is therefore not actually under discussion by the ecclesiastical authorities, as was recently confirmed after the last meeting of the heads of dicasteries with the Holy Father."

Hummes' comments on celibacy come at a moment of growing tension on the question. On Nov. 16, Benedict XVI convened a meeting of top Vatican officials in the wake of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo's illicit ordination of four bishops as part of his campaign to relax the celibacy requirement.

After that meeting, the Vatican issued a statement indicating that “the value of the choice of priestly celibacy according to Catholic tradition was reaffirmed,” but it did not address if the pope might be open to reconsidering mandatory celibacy.
Currently, priestly celibacy is mandatory in the Western church, with the exception of a handful of priests who converted to Catholicism from another Christian denomination where they were already married. In the 21 Eastern rite churches in communion with Rome, however, married priests are common.

During the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist in October 2005, there was a vigorous debate on the celibacy question. In the end, the synod upheld existing discipline, adopting a proposition that read: "The Synod Fathers have affirmed the importance of the inestimable gift of ecclesiastical celibacy in the practice of the Latin Church. With reference to the magisterium, in particular Vatican II and the recent popes, the Fathers have asked that the reasons for the relationship between celibacy and priestly ordination be illustrated adequately to the faithful, in full respect for the traditions of the Eastern churches. Some made reference to the viri probati, but this hypothesis was evaluated as a path not to follow.

Milingo, meanwhile, plans to lead a "convocation in Parsippany, New Jersey, Dec. 8-10, where he intends to ordain three married priests, further deepening his rift with the Vatican.

Vatican Said Not Revising Celibacy Rule

Today: December 04, 2006 at 7:10:10 PST
By Frances D'Emilo
Vatican City (AP)

A Brazilian cardinal who appeared to suggest the Vatican was open to revising its celibacy requirement for priests stressed Monday the question was not on the Holy See's agenda and contended that allowing them to marry wouldn't solve the clergy shortage.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes issued a statement on the day he arrived in Italy to take up a senior Vatican post in charge of priests worldwide.

On Friday, in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, Fohla de S. Paulo, Hummes noted that celibacy was not church dogma but a rule, sparking some speculation, including in the Italian media which the Vatican closely follows, that the Holy See might relax its requirement that Latin rite priests be celibate.

The Vatican press office's release of the statement as Hummes was heading to the his new post indicated that the Holy See wanted to dampen any more such speculation.

Revising the requirement of celibacy "is not currently on the agenda of church authorities, as recently restated after the last reunion of (Vatican) department heads with the Holy Father," Hummes said in his statement.

He was referring to a summit, led by Pope Benedict XVI two weeks earlier, which reiterated the value of the requirement of celibacy for priests and made clear the policy wasn't about to be changed.

The Vatican summit was a response to former Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, a renegade married clergymen from Zambia who is leading a high-profile crusade in the United States for the Roman Catholic Church to allow priests to wed.

Men in the Eastern rite of the Catholic church who are married can become priests, and the Vatican has accepted into the priesthood some married Anglican priests who converted to Catholicism.

In the statement issued by the Vatican, Hummes that it was "clear that the rule of celibacy for priests in the Latin church is very ancient and is based on a consolidated tradition and strong motivations ... reiterated by popes as well."

The cardinal described the motivations as theological, spiritual, pastoral and practical.

Hummes said that among a recent gathering of bishops, "the most widely held opinion was that loosening the rule on celibacy would not be a solution, not even to the problem of the scarcity of vocations, which is to be linked, rather, to other causes, starting with the modern secularized culture."

In the newspaper interview, Hummes said: "Certainly, the majority of the apostles were married. In this modern age, the church must observe these things, it has to advance with history."

Married priests were permitted in the church in its early centuries.

Let priests marry, say Portuguese

LISBON, Dec 3, 2006 (AFP)

Four in five people, or 80.3 percent, in predominantly Roman Catholic Portugal feel the Vatican should allow priests to get married, a poll published Sunday showed.

Only 15.5 percent oppose the measure while the remaining 4.2 had no opinion, according to the survey published in daily newspaper Correio da Manha.

Support was widespread among practicing Catholics, 74.6 percent of whom came out in favor of allowing priests to marry.

"The official position of the Church on this issue does not coincide with what the vast majority of people, including practicing Catholics, think," sociologist Jorge Sa told the newspaper.

Last month the Vatican rejected calls for the Roman Catholic Church to allow priests to marry after Pope Benedict XVI called a rare meeting with the top leaders of the Holy See administration to discuss the issue.

Advocates of allowing priests to marry say it would help reverse a global shortage of priests but the Church argues priestly celibacy is an important symbol of a person's commitment to a higher reality.

The telephone survey of 550 people was carried out by the Aximage polling firm for the newspaper between November 15 and 17.

A blog visitor's thoghts about Archbishop Milingo

This is a comment written in reply to removed post and Fr. Paul Mayer's comment to it.:

Fr. Paul Mayer – thank you for your comment,

Your link to the NGO article did not work for me so let me try it here …as it is a very important article. Sheds some light on how Moon operates.

The deceptive Moon organization will tell you that the article is written by communists. That is BS. It is funny how Moon gets away with selling himself as an anti communist until he decides he wants to build businesses in N Korea and then he funds NK with billions. Fact is, Moon says he is anti communist when he is also anti democracy, capitalism and anything which is not Godism, his form of theocracy in which God rules the world directly through believers. When his group of spinners tell people anything about that they don't mention that Moon believes he is God incarnate and as such his every utterance is that of God's. Moon even says he is better than God.

Fr. Paul Mayer, I think there is a Biblical sized blindness taking hold here and I am afraid your words will fall upon closed ears. Moon will have his witting and unwitting tools. As far co-opting the Married Priests movement goes, HE ALREADY HAS. Look at this blog's postings and news reports on the subject Milingo, Milingo, Milingo. Moon is not a clown, he knows exactly what he is doing.

I have studied the Moon organization for years. Anyone who remotely thinks that Milingo isn't Moon's tool by design is uninformed or lying to themselves to make their support of him IN ANY MANNER ok to their consciences. Moon only needs your acceptance and your credibility; he does not need you to say you are an open follower. He'll use your likeness and credibility to open other doors.

Everything, let me repeat, EVERYTHING Moon does, funds, pushes, supports is done for the purposes of promoting his ideology and to mesh the world's religions under his influence. That is ALL he does. Working to push Moon's goals is ALL his followers do, all they do. They have one mindset, one goal, to put Moon and his organization into control of the direction of world events. That is all they do.

For instance, Moon has created his own personal United Nations, the Universal Peace Federation(UPF), because the current UN would not go along with his plan to theocratize the UN. Moon proposed that the UN add an entire theocratic body to the UN structure. This body, in Moon's vision, was to be run by the religious and be superior to the current body. Of course Moon just happened to have a front group to serve as the "senate" for this body which has now morphed into Moon's own UN, the UPF. If you think I am nuts because only a member nation can make such a proposal to the UN, note that the Philippines makes these proposals and the Speaker of the House for the Philippines openly admits Moon is "leading" their efforts.

Moon outspent anyone, including Richard Mellon Scaife, promoting right wing, theocratic politics in America; Moon has had an inordinate amount of influence on our nation's politics and he will do the same to the Catholic Church. Moon openly brags that he has "influenced America" through his multi billion dollar losing propaganda paper, the Washington Times. That's just one effort.

He's funded many players on the right - the Bush family, Falwell, LahHaye, Viguerie – key players. A Moon funded and created political front, The American Freedom Coalition, was considered one of the two most powerful conservative organizations in the country when fully active in the 80s and 90s. US News and World Report stated that by 1989 virtually every conservative organization in DC had ties to Moon's "church". Now that Moon has added "Peace" to one of his front group's names, liberals are even opening up to him. How sick is that? Moon has spent billions in overseas cash promoting right wing, theocratic, homophobic, anti union, authoritarian politics in America and now some liberal politicians send his front groups greetings.

I point this out so you will know how he is using Milingo and the Married Priests movement is nothing new, he has been using people and groups for decades.

This is an organization which has been found responsible for swindling hundreds of millions, in not billions, of dollars from the Japanese, literally targeting widows with their scams. This is a "peace" organization of which 700 members recently busted up a newspaper's offices in Korea and threatened the life of reporter who had the audacity to be critical of this deceptive organization.

I was told by one observer Moon was picking a fight with the Catholic Church, he is. He is also loving every minute of it. IMO, anyone who works with Moon and claims to be religious is a fraud or a blind fool. If you are old enough, think back 30 years and tell yourself that back then you would openly work with Moon to achieve his goals one day and be proud of it.

Milingo under Moon's spell? Well when Milingo said he was not about creating a schism and now he says he just wants a "church within a church" – that is Moon rationalization going on there folks. I am still not convinced that the Pope and the RCC realizes what they are up against.

THIS IS SUN MYUNG MOON WE ARE TALKING ABOUT, PEOPLE… WAKE UP!!

This will not go away. All you folks who have spent years working to have the RCC allow married priests - you HAVE just had your whole movement absorbed by Moon whether you like it or not. Milingo will always be the one associated with pushing this agenda now. He will suck up all the press, he will back the Pope further and further into a corner. You haven't seen anything yet. Moon will not stop and you have yourselves to thank for this. America has allowed Moon to play his games and use his laundered money to influence our nation and gain face the world over for decades now, and ministers never spoke up in force. No, in fact, many ministers greeted Moon when he got out prison, fed his delusion that he was persecuted. Now you are reaping what you ignored for thirty years.

One thing is for sure,

From the removed post--

It is time to stand with Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and time for him to stand with his married priest colleagues in CORPUS, FCM Roman Catholic Faith Community Council, CITI, the various International Regional Federations of Married Catholic Priests, the Women's Ordination Conference, Women's Ordination Worldwide, and the youngest prophetic community, Roman Catholic Womenpriests.I for one am grateful to the Reverend Moon for his support of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and his mission on behalf of the renewing of the Roman Catholic priesthood.

That is one of the most nauseating statements I have ever read. Truly sickening. Kiss your "religion" goodbye as you knew it.

Do you even own a Bible?

John 5:43 and the 2nd chapter of 2nd Thess, might be a good place for you to start.

Milingo's mind must have been jumping through some big uninformed hoops when he said he shared a view of Jesus with Moon. Moon says Jesus failed, that He is Moon's dead son's servant in the spi8ritworld and that Jesus couldn't get into heaven without Moon marrying Him to an old Korean woman.

Part of Moon's support system for Milingo is Moon's ACLC ministers; I have seen pictures of ACLC members lying prostrate before a huge picture of Moon and his wife in Korea. Another thing the post didn't mention when Mrs. Moon made her contacts with Milingo - obviously he was targeted when they saw he would work with them - anyway, Mrs. Moon is considered a "co-messiah" with Moon.

I have to run, please read my comment Sun Myung Moon's little toy bishops. for more on how Milingo and ALL WHO HELP MILINGO are Moon's tools.

Of that, there is no doubt. You can rationalize all you wish, you can tell yourself any damned uninformed lie you want, you can want to believe whatever you wish...but make no mistake, if you stand with Milingo, YOU STAND WITH MOON. You might as well be lying prostrate before him yourself.

Lets be candid about the candidates

by Rev. Paul Stanosz

To shed some light on the crisis in seminary formation today (see “Tomorrow’s Priests,” November 3), let me describe a priest I know, a man I will refer to as Fr. Bo. Ordained after barely scraping by in the seminary academically, Fr. Bo identifies strongly with John Paul II. The first in his class to own a cassock, he has a strong devotion to Mary, never misses a papal youth rally, and prides himself on his theological orthodoxy.

He also recently began cruising gay bars.

Bo did not realize he was sexually attracted to males until his mid-thirties. Not sufficiently challenged to face this issue in the seminary, he has remained in many respects an adolescent. He was once a strong proponent of mandatory celibacy and continues to oppose the ordination of women, but he now supports optional celibacy-because “priests need fun too.” Besides the sense of spirituality that drew him to the priesthood, Bo found the role appealing because it meant he would never have to look for another job, worry about money, clean house, or otherwise fend for himself. And because he was compliant and did little to draw attention to himself, he managed to be ordained.

Intellectually unformed, personally immature, Fr. Bo is by no means a rare exception at seminaries today. Indeed, his is a personality one encounters often among the newly ordained. And that’s the problem.

Few organizations take the training of their personnel as seriously as the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Council of Trent, the formation of priests in the Catholic Church has included lengthy periods of seminary training attending to nearly every detail of a candidate’s life. The duration and scope of this formation process have traditionally aimed at assessing the candidate’s ability and developing his commitment to the church’s mission. Yet despite this rigorous process-and increased Vatican scrutiny following the clergy sexual-abuse scandal-my recent doctoral research in several East Coast and Midwest seminaries has made me seriously question our ability to produce mature, intelligent leaders for tomorrow’s church. I reluctantly concluded that we are seeing a decline in the quality of applicants, which, when combined with other dilemmas facing the church, may forecast long-range and deleterious effects on the U.S. Catholic Church.

To be sure, many fine candidates continue to enter seminaries, and not a few seem certain to become holy, caring priests who will serve with devotion and even distinction. Still, growing numbers of seminary faculty are frustrated and alarmed by the declining intellectual ability of the applicant pool. (This is something they would say to me only behind closed doors.) Statistics support their concern. In Educating Leaders for Ministry (The Liturgical Press, 2005), Victor J. Klimoski, Kevin J. O’Neil, and Katerina M. Schuth reported that only 10 percent of today’s seminarians are highly qualified, while 50 percent are adequately qualified, and the remaining 40 percent are impeded in their ability to do successful academic work. Catholicism is not alone in its struggle to attract top candidates to the ministry; unlike Protestant and Jewish denominations, however, it has not benefited from the inclusion of women candidates, who substantially outperform their male counterparts on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). And so, as average GRE scores for all U.S. test takers rose during the 1980s, the scores of prospective seminary students fell, and today, are significantly lower than the national average on the verbal portion of the test. In recent years, some seminaries have been forced to institute pre-theology programs to address the significant shortcomings of their entrants’ theological background.

Seminaries, moreover, are called not only to help students master theology, but to help them grow in maturity. John Paul II’s influential 1993 exhortation, I Will Give Them Shepherds, wisely added human formation to the seminary’s traditional concerns about spiritual, academic, and pastoral development. Indeed, formation on the personal level was to serve as the foundation for all other areas of priestly training. John Paul II noted that a priest’s personality had to act as a bridge, rather than an obstacle, if others were to encounter Christ through his ministry. And so, psychosexual development and affective maturity came to be seen as central to effective seminary formation.

How well are our seminaries succeeding in promoting this maturity? The example of Fr. Bo does not augur well. Though he was ordained in the 1980s, Fr. Bo is representative of what I found in seminaries today. Many of the men in my study entered the seminary in their thirties and forties, yet-like many younger candidates-they frequently seemed to lack well-developed social and relational skills. Many had been away from the church for years before having a conversion experience, and some reported being moved to seek priesthood by the charisma of Pope John Paul II. Faculty members I interviewed noted that today’s seminarians are frequently drawn to theologies that exalt the status and distinctiveness of the clerical role, and are more interested in consulting the Catechism of the Catholic Church for clear answers than in exploring the wide breadth of Catholicism’s theological heritage. My sense from my research visits is that a significant number of seminarians are looking for a religiously saturated environment that will bestow a special sense of sacred identity. Their rooms often have the appearance of shrines, and their days are spent in study and prayer among peers who share their worldview.

My hope is that Fr. Bo resolves the issues related to his arrested development before he gets himself into other kinds of trouble. I am not sure this is likely. While he complains that it is the media’s fault that the clergy sexual-abuse scandal has created the “depressing picture” of the church for people, Fr. Bo seems unaware of the extent of the problems and of his own inconsistencies. What I find depressing is the church’s own lack of candor. Desperately needed are priests who are forthright, not only in terms of their own sexuality, but of their personal integrity.

Are today’s seminaries fostering such an ethos? I have my doubts. Many of the seminarians I conversed with seemed like impressionable, religiously disposed men who were seeking regimentation, self-abnegation, and an institutionally prescribed identity. Such authority-dependent men are likely to frustrate bishops and vicars-not because they will sexually abuse minors or fail to honor their vows, but because they will take little initiative on their own. Followers rather than leaders, they are not likely to show the creativity required for effective parish work. In the past, they might have gotten by serving as associates at larger parishes, but now they will be called on to pastor parishes after only a few years of experience as associate pastors.

The well-being of any organization relies on its ability to attract the best and brightest to its leadership ranks. This clearly isn’t happening in the U.S. Catholic Church. The admission of women into the clergy by other denominations has raised the overall aptitude of their seminarians, but Rome has ruled out this possibility for Catholics. While one wonders what effect optional celibacy would have on the number and quality of men entering the Catholic priesthood, Rome has been intransigent on that option too. The Vatican appears to prefer modestly gifted celibate men over brighter, more capable women or men who want to marry.

While Catholics know that the number of newly ordained priests is down, not enough has been said about the characteristics and abilities of those who are entering the seminary. With fewer well-prepared, gifted, mature men seeking ordination, why aren’t seminary administrators and faculty members publicly calling for a discussion of the quality of applicants to their schools? What will become of a church that settles for mediocre leaders and excludes many who feel called to priesthood simply because of their gender, sexual preference, or desire to marry?

Choruses of bishops, vocation directors, and Serra Clubs calling for priests and laity to promote vocations have not addressed the quality of seminary applicants. Given how acute the priest shortage is and the unwillingness of the Vatican to discuss solutions to the problem, the U.S. Catholic Church is likely to face a continuing crisis of ordained leadership, long after the sexual-abuse crisis abates.

Rev. Paul Stanosz is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the author of The Struggle for Celibacy (Herder and Herder/Crossroad).Also by this author: Gay Seminarians

MOCEOP's Press Statement on the Pope's Decision to Continue Obligatory Celibacy

This is the press statement from MOCEOP -- the celibacy optional movement in Spain -- in response to the outcome of the Vatican celibacy "summit." I have provided a translation below. It should be noted that MOCEOP's perspective on this issue is a little different from CITI's and from some of the other American groups working on this issue but I think it helps to hear a variety of voices all speaking to the same end: freeing our brothers in the priesthood to have real choices and lead more fulfilling lives.

En la ultima reunión periódica que el Papa tuvo el día 16 de noviembre con los cardenales de los distintos Departamentos de la Curia Vaticana se hizo "una reflexión común"...sobre las solicitudes de dispensa de la obligación del celibato presentadas en los últimos años y sobre la posibilidad de readmitir al ejercicio del ministerio a los sacerdotes que actualmente se encuentran en las condiciones previstas por la Iglesia", según el comunicado que hizo público la Oficina de Prensa de la Santa Sede.

La "gerontocrática reflexión común" terminó sin novedad alguna: se sigue anteniendo la actual disciplina del celibato obligatorio y "se ha reafirmado el valor de la elección del celibato sacerdotal, según la tradición cristiana", concluye el comunicado.

Pocos cambios se podía esperar de tal reunión que terminó en poco más de dos horas y que ha supuesto una demostración más del inmovilismo y el enrocamiento en las posiciones tradicionalistas de los últimos años.

Y es que en la iglesia jerárquica hay poca misericordia, poca compasión. En la jerarquía hay mucho miedo a decidir y a avanzar. Desde el Concilio Vaticano II nos hemos quedado sólo con una cosa: el miedo. Importa más conservar los parámetros de la más rancia tradición que los creyentes y sus situaciones, como sucede con los sacerdotes secularizados.

El tema del celibato obligatorio para los sacerdotes se ha tratado en muchas reflexiones de los Papas y en muchas reuniones eclesiásticas (Sínodos, Conferencias Episcopales...), lo que hace suponer que es un tema que la jerarquía no tiene claro ni resuelto. Lo lamentable es que no se resuelve por que no hay voluntad, porque no interesa por razones inconfensables de poder. Y, aunque no sea un asunto nuclear de la Iglesia, no por eso hay que dejarlo de lado, pues en medio hay muchas personas, sacerdotes, mujeres, fieles, comunidades que sufren las consecuencias de una ley injusta y antisocial.

Una vez más hay que recordar que el sacerdocio no es propiedad del Papa y la Curia Vaticana; ni siquiera es propiedad de la Iglesia. Es un carisma libre que Dios libremente lo da para el bien de la comunidad y, por lo tanto, no se puede reglamentar.

El celibato es un valor como opción, igual que otras opciones; pero el celibato impuesto ni es opción ni es valor.

Insistentemente, oportuna e inoportunamente hay que preguntar a la jerarquía, para que respondan en conciencia:

¿Por qué no se quiere ver la riqueza que supondría unir sacerdocio y matrimonio?

¿En qué daña el matrimonio al sacerdocio?

¿Qué mal hace el sexo al sacerdocio?

¿En qué corrompe la feminidad al sacerdocio?

Ahí está la práctica de los sacerdotes católicos casados en Oriente.

En Moceop, con esto, no pedimos que se nos deje volver a subir al altar ni queremos decir que sintamos nostalgia del presbiterio. Hace tiempo que dijimos que nos considerábamos "felizmente retornados al estado laical"

Lo que queremos es lanzar, de nuevo, un grito de libertad en la Iglesia, libertad que llevamos buscando hace más de veinticinco años, como signo y como buena noticia y que incluye vivir la fe desde comunidades de iguales; colaborar en el replanteamiento de los ministerios en las comunidades, desclericalizarlas; transmitir una ilusión real, un motivo serio de esperanza de una sociedad más humana y una iglesia más cercana, respetuosa, contagiadora de optimismo; lucha por el reconocimiento de los derechos humanos dentro de las comunidades de creyentes en Jesús; ser creyentes y personas que luchan por alcanzar su plenitud humana, sintiendo que la libertad para elegir estado y hogar y la transmisión de la vida, como dones de Dios, son para nosotros derechos no sometidos a ninguna imposición de ley.

Madrid, 22 de Noviembre de 2006

EQUIPO DE PRENSA DE MOCEOP:

Andrés Muñoz.-Madrid
Teresa Cortés.-Madrid
Juan Cejudo.-Cádiz
Ramón Alario.-Guadalajara

English translation by Rebel Girl:

In the most recent occasional meeting that the Pope had on November 16th with the cardinals of the different departments of the Vatican Curia a "common reflection" was held on the requests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy which have been presented in the last few years and on the possibility of readmitting into ministry priests who find themselves in conditions predicted by the Church, according to the communiqué published by the Press Office of the Holy See.

This "gerontocratic common reflection" ended without anything new whatsoever: the current discipline of obligatory celibacy will remain in force and "the value of the choice of priestly celibacy, according to Catholic tradition, has been reaffirmed", the communiqué concludes.

Little change could be hoped for from such a meeting which ended in slightly over 2 hours and involved one more show of defense of the status quo and entrenchment of the traditionalist positions of recent years.

And there is little mercy, little compassion in the hierarchical church. In the hierarchy, there is much fear of making decisions and advancing. Since the Second Vatican Council only one thing has remained with us — fear. Protecting the boundaries of the most rancid tradition matters more than the believers and their circumstances, as has happened with the laicized priests.

The theme of mandatory celibacy for priests has been discussed in many reflections of the popes and in many ecclesial meetings (synods, bishops' conferences, etc.) which makes one assume that it is a theme that is unclear and unresolved for the hierarchy. Unfortunately it is not resolved because there is no will, because it is not of interest due to shameful reasons of power. And, even though it is not a central task of the Church, that is no reason to leave it aside since in the middle there are many people, priests, women, faithful, and communities who are suffering from this unjust and antisocial law.

Once again it must be recalled that the priesthood is not the property of the Pope and the Vatican Curia; it is not even the property of the Church. It is a free charism that God freely gives for the good of the community and, as such, it cannot be regulated.

Celibacy is valuable as a choice, equal to other choices; but imposed celibacy is neither a choice nor a value.

Insistently, conveniently or inconveniently, we have to ask the hierarchy so that they can answer in conscience:

Why do you not want to see the richness that a union of priesthood and matrimony could produce?

How does matrimony hurt the priesthood

What harm does sexuality do to the priesthood?

How does femininity corrupt the priesthood?

And there is the custom of married Catholic priests in the East {Eastern rite churches].

In MOCEOP, with this, we are not asking to be allowed to go up again to the altar nor do we want to say that we are nostalgic for the presbytery. For a long time we have said that we deem ourselves "happily returned to lay status."

What we want to do is to renew our call for freedom in the Church, a freedom we have been seeking for over 25 years, as a sign and good news and which includes living faith within communities of equals, collaborating in the reconsideration of ministries in the communities, declericalized; transmitting a real dream, a serious reason for hope for a more human society and a church that is closer, more respectful, and more contagiously optimistic; fighting for the recognition of human rights within the communities of believers in Jesus; being believers and people who fight to achieve their human fulfillment, believing that the freedom to choose one's status, home, and the transmission of life, as gifts of God, are rights that cannot be subjected to the imposition of any law.

Madrid, November 22, 2006

The failure of mandatory celibacy

by Fr. Neil Parado

The shining examples of the utter failure of mandatory celibacy, which Jesus never intended ( Mt. 19:11-12) and the New Testament never envisioned ( I Cor. 7:7; 9:5; I Tim. 4:1-4 ), are Pope Alexander VI who had a few mistresses and several children; Cardinal Hans Groer, former Archbishop of Vienna; Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan, Poland; Bishops Symons and O'Connell, former bishops of Palm Beach, Fl; and so on and on.

As Rev. Dr. Heinz Vogels contends, in his book Celibacy: Gift or Law ? :

"The ability to live as a celibate is not given to all, as Jesus says in Mt. 19:11-12. Therefore, celibacy is not good for all, because for those priests who have not received the gift of celibacy but who, nevertheless, face the demand of the law that they refrain from marriage, celibacy becomes a suppression of their God-given disposition to be completed by a partner, which often results in neurosis. And worse still, such suppression may even lead to aberrations such as promiscuity, rape, and pedophilia."

Robert Pledl, a Catholic attorney representing the St. Lawrence Seminary victims in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin, believes that "mandatory celibacy creates a clerical world where women and children are the enemy. The accumulating scandals signal the need for reform " ( Time, June 7 /02 ).

Does celibacy make sense

Ed Snowdon
Portland, ME

If celibacy has such value, why isn't it working so well in the Roman Catholic Church?

70% of Catholics do not attend church according to CARA, a RC sociology group. Family-based churches with married ministers have much better stats to offer.

One out of 3 priests has left the corporate priesthood to enter into the more normal lifestyle of marriage. What does this say about the sexual demographics of the priesthood? Are straight priests fleeing a gay culture?

Many parishioners have a hard time contacting their priests when they need them, despite the claim that celibacy frees a priest to be available to his people 24/7.

Thousands of RC parishes across the country are without a resident priest. How can celibacy fix this worsening situation?
Father Donald Cozzens says that the priesthood is becoming a gay profession and cites a 60% prevalence of gay priests. 25,000 straight priests have left to marry. How many gay priests have left the corporate priesthood to partner with another man?

Roman Catholicism has hosted the worst institutional child sex abuse atrocity in modern history. Isn't it counterintuitive to suggest that celibacy and homosexuality have nothing to do with this reality that continues to unfold on a weekly basis?

Richard Sipe, a psychologist who has studied the priesthood for close to 30 years, states that 1% of priests achieve the total continece required of celibacy. The other 99% go through cycles of breaking their vow, confessing to another priest, short term repentance, and re-offending. Is that a good and healthy celibate lifestyle?

Perhaps mandatory celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church serves other functions that are not readily visible to the donating Catholic.

Concepts can be fascinating. Results are what really count, and the numbers don't look good to me. Faith is a completely different issue.

Fighting the Church to Lift the Celibacy Rule

By CLARKE CANFIELD, AP

BRUNSWICK, Maine (Nov. 26) - The Vatican this month reaffirmed its position that priests should be celibate. But Louise Haggett remains faithful to her belief that the Roman Catholic Church's celibacy rules need changing now more than ever. The church could grow its shrinking ranks of priests and touch many more lives by lifting its celibacy requirements, said Haggett, a lifelong Catholic who runs a nonprofit referral service for married priests.

In the decade since Haggett launched her Rent-a-Priest Web site, more than 100,000 people have been married, buried, baptized or otherwise attended to by married priests who are listed on the site.

Perhaps some day, Haggett said, church leaders will share her opinion.

"The whole issue of celibacy in the church is nothing but a farce," she said.

Haggett, 65, founded CITI Ministries - the CITI stands for Celibacy is the Issue - in 1992 after she couldn't find a priest in Maine to visit her mother in a nursing home in the weeks before her death.

Following her mother's death, Haggett discovered there were countless priests who had left the church to marry but still felt a calling. So she launched Rent-A-Priest, which bills itself as "God's Yellow Pages" and lists more than 300 ordained priests, who happen to be married, in the U.S. and abroad.

The priests perform marriages, baptisms, funerals, confessions, home Masses and other Catholic rituals for people who can't find a parish priest or don't meet church requirements to receive the sacraments. They pay Haggett a $285 annual membership fee and generally provide many services for free while charging the going rate for things like marriage ceremonies.

Because the priests are married, the church doesn't authorize them to perform any sacraments. Some people call them impostors, and Haggett's service was once called "Rent-A-Nut."

Numerous reasons have been put forth on why priests are required to be celibate, including the time and devotion required for the job. From a spiritual sense, it's so priests more closely imitate Jesus Christ, who was not married, said Monsignor Marc Caron of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

Married men who perform priestly rituals, and the people who use them, are acting in disobedience to the church, Caron said. While marriages performed by married priests may be legally recognized by the state, they are invalid from the church's point of view.

"I think it's important for people to be aware of that," he said.

Even so, there appears to be a need, said Bob Scanlan, a married priest who has presided over 23 weddings and nine funerals in the past year, and is an on-call chaplain at a hospital. Scanlan, who lives in Aurora, Ill., was ordained as a priest in 1969 and left his parish when he married in 1973.

Scanlan, 63, thinks the Vatican might lift the celibacy rules in his lifetime if the shortage of priests becomes so dire that nobody is available to deliver the Eucharist.

"It's almost embarrassing because every other religion on Earth has figured this out, how to have clergy that are married," he said. "The idea that celibacy frees priests for the people 24/7 is a myth."

The issue drew international attention earlier this month.

Pope Benedict XVI recently convened a summit of Vatican officials to discuss the celibacy requirement for clergy. The meeting was spurred by African Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who was excommunicated in September for ordaining four married men as bishops.

After the meeting, the Vatican released this statement: "The value of the choice of priestly celibacy in accordance with Catholic tradition was reaffirmed, and the need for solid human and Christian formation was underlined, both for seminaries and for ordained priests."

Milingo already had drawn the ire of the Vatican after he married a South Korean woman in a 2001 mass wedding ceremony conducted by Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church. Milingo later renounced his marriage but not his cause, and he continues to champion for married priests in the church.

Haggett wishes Milingo well, but she is appealing for change through the church laity, not the church officialdom.

"I feel the movement has to come from the bottom up. There has to be a groundswell," she said. "It'll never happen from the top down."

Haggett thinks the celibacy rules could go the way of one-time Vatican rules forbidding the use of female altar servers. Despite the rules, parishes did as they wished and used altar girls until the Vatican changed its rules in 1992.

Ed Minderlein of Marlborough, Mass., thinks the celibacy requirement hurts the church, hurts its priests and hurts parishioners. Minderlein was ordained as a priest in 1969 and was active in the ministry until 1986. He married in 1990, and continues to perform marriages.

"For as virtuous as they want to cast it, celibacy is the clay foot of the Catholic institution because you're denying people of the God-given right that is essential to human nature, the right to companionship and the right to procreate," he said.

Over the years, thousands of men have left their priest positions to marry. But many still consider themselves priests because church law says once a priest, always a priest.

There are an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 married priests in the United States, Haggett says. At the same time, there are fewer than 29,000 parish priests in the Roman Catholic church, down 17 percent from 1985, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Haggett works out of a small office in Brunswick where she runs Rent-A-Priest and CITI.

On a wall behind her desk hangs a painting that depicts the Last Supper. But instead of just Jesus and the 12 disciples, the painting also includes the wives and children of the disciples.

Haggett says there was a long history of the Roman Catholic Church allowing its priests to be married before the celibacy requirement was enacted in 1139. It's time, she said, for the church to return to the past.

"If the church ever comes to its senses, that would be wonderful," she said. "I'd love to go out of business."

Celibacy is the source of priestly abuse

By CHANNING GREENE

Having lived in New Mexico and Vermont for 20 years, until moving to Delaware recently, I see the pattern of sexual immorality among Catholic priests repeating itself, to the detriment of the church spiritually and even financially, as insurance companies increasingly refuse to bail out dioceses.

The requirement for priestly celibacy is a major source of the problem. There is no biblical requirement, or even a suggestion, for celibacy within the "clergy." In fact, New Testament standards for elders assume a married state, and evaluates a candidate according to how well his marriage is going and how he manages his children.

As a candidate for eldership in a local church, with 10 years of pulpit experience, I was thoroughly grilled recently by the elders on this area of my life. One advantage of this particular group is their concern for mutual accountability.

Furthermore, the Catholic Encyclopedia states that celibacy, while at times encouraged, did not become a requirement until around the 10th century, although there were monasteries composed of married couples in England and Ireland for another two centuries.

Second, God has clearly decreed that marriage is normal; "it is not good that the man should be alone." To impose an unnatural requirement on candidates for priesthood goes against God's clear will, demonstrated by the pattern for Old Testament Jewish eldership.

Yes, conservative, evangelical leaders fall into sexual sin; usually it is in the area of adultery, rather than pedophilia. And it is quickly weeded out when discovered. I can't think of a situation where the situation becomes systemic, without public removal from ministry and hopefully, permanent disqualification.

Bishops from the New England area were sending pedophile priests to a treatment center in Jemez Springs, NM. In order to keep those being treated busy, the decision was made to assign them to help in local parishes.

The resulting scandal and chaos virtually bankrupted the Santa Fe diocese, and created a backlash against the New England bishops' decisions

A Vermont case was further aggravated by exposure of a number of complaints of child abuse in the mid-1900s on the part of nuns teaching in the parochial schools in the Burlington area. Those helped drain the budget and patience of the diocese.

The Catholic Church is very concerned about the increasing shortage of priests and candidates for the priesthood.

Celibacy honestly makes no sense as a requirement (I acknowledge that some will choose to remain single; God bless them).

But why impose an unscriptural tradition and eliminate possibly a large number who would be happy to serve in the married state?

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061127/OPINION07/611270325/-1/NEWS01

Compatibility Of Priesthood And Marriage - from the 1985 meeting of married priests and their wives in Europe

Statement on the Compatibility Of Priesthood And Marriage

From the 1985 Synod of married priests and their wives in Arricia, Italy

Compiled by Dr Heinz-J. Vogels

The married Catholic bishops and priests represented in this Synod and their wives, on the basis of the Church’s decisions of faith, give unanimous testimony of the following Catholic truths:

1. Since all the sacraments of the Church derive from the same source, from Christ, priesthood and marriage cannot be incompatible, but must be able to join each other in the same Christian receiving them, in the Western as well as in the Eastern Church.

2. The right of the apostles and of all those who proclaim the Gospel to take along with them into the communities a sister as wife, as formulated by Paul (1 Cor 9:5), is a complete power given to the apostles by Christ and therefore belongs to the unalterable ius divinum. It cannot be abrogated by the ecclesiastical legislator, because it is, moreover, a fundamental human right.

3. The so-called reduction of a priest to the lay state is impossible from the point of view of dogma, if it is done only because the priest wishes to receive the sacrament of marriage, it is an unjust measure.

4. Every community has the right to have the ministries necessary for itself and to present suitable candidates for these ministries. Furthermore the apostolic authority instituted by Christ has the duty to ordain by the laying on of hands those candidates whom the authority finds suitable.

5. Beside the theological reasons there are also pastoral ones for the abrogation of the law of celibacy.
I a) The priests in nearly all countries are old.
b) Seminaries remain empty, except in some few countries
c) Up to one third of Catholic parishes have no pastor of their own.
d) One In five Latin Catholic priests have married.
e) The papal dispensations for converted pastors to remain married as priests have created inequality and legal insecurity.
II a) The evidence of chosen celibacy on one hand and of matrimonial union on the other would be clearer and more striking.
b) The human maturity of priests who have no charismatical vocation to celibacy would be possible.
c) Married people would be represented in the leadership of the church, so that the interests of all might equally be respected.
d) Women could take part in the decisions of the church, as is widely accepted in secular society.
e) Priests could better take part in the life of the faithful.
f) The clandestine partnerships beetween priests and women, which are unworthy to human dignity and which do harm specially to the women, would cease.
g) The desired approachment to the other Christian confessions who all admit the married minister, would be greatly facilited.

Ariccia, 30 August 1985. Giustino Zampini, president, +Jerónimo Podestà, vice-president, Paolo Camellini, secretary, Heinz-J. Vogels, coordinator prep.comm.

Milingo nods Vatican reaffirmation of celibacy

I am passing this story on simply for information and without comment. It was e-mailed by Married Priests Now! to the Zambian News Agency and picked up by UPI. The choice to refer to themselves as a "prelature" is theirs. I would give the link to the Married Priests Now! Web site but at the moment, unfortunately, it appears to be closed to the general public:

Nov 21, ZANIS--Excommunicated former Lusaka Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and the Married Priests Now! Prelature have concurred with Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican finding that reaffirms celibacy. According to prelature spokesman, Archbishop Peter Paul Brennan, the married priests were however against the enforcement of celibacy as a job requirement for the priesthood. "Celibacy should be a freely chosen charism and not a job requirement. Not every priest has the charism to be celibate and this is the problem because the church forces it on him or he cannot be ordained. It is a requirement that violated human freedom," Archbishop Brennan said.

"We can hardly believe that a meeting of the Cardinals who head the Dicasteries was called to simply reaffirm celibacy. The report that was not released is the important one," he added. And Archbishop Milingo accused the Vatican of being in a state of denial that it could not see the need for a married priesthood. "The Vatican 's denial of the problem confirms and encourages our mission to recall married priests to full ministry," Archbishop Milingo said. "We are the only Catholic diocese calling for the ordination of married men, and for the return of married priests to full ministry."

The two archbishops said Marriage was a sacrament of the church and celibacy was not. ''Marriage is higher calling than celibacy. The marriage vow trumphs the celibacy promise. Our prelature believes that a married priest is a healthier priest, and that a married priesthood will give priests a healthy and proper outlet for their sexuality,'' they said. They said people including priests were created by God as sexual beings and the sexuality needed to be celebrated as a blessing for husbands and their wives. ''Marriage needs to be the normal option for priests," Archbishop Brennan stressed.

Married Priests Now! Prelature will hold a conference in Parsippany, New Jersey on December 8 to10 to celebrate marriage and the priesthood. The conference will be punctuated by a Catholic renewal of marriage vows during the celebration of the Eucharist for married priests and their wives.

And commenting on a cleric who was quoted in St. Peter's Square in Rome yesterday as saying that those priests who walked away from the priesthood to marry should not be received back as priests, Archbishops Brennan and Milingo said their prelature reminded them that the Gospel of Jesus was about forgiveness. ''We remind him that the church is dying for want of priests. Recalling the married priests is a wholesome remedy to help save the church,'' he said. He said the first priests called by Christ were married and the church has always had married priests and vowed that the priests were going back to the New Testament roots of the priesthood when St. Peter and the apostles were married," said Milingo.

On Thursday, the Pope made it clear that although a shortage of priests had called for a loosening of the traditional restrictions, he did not think that opening up the Church to a married priesthood was the cure.

"A priest breaks down barriers and opens paths"

Yesterday brought a lovely story in El Tiempo Latino titled "Un sacerdote que rompe barreras y abre caminos". For those who don't read Spanish, the priest is Fr. Vidal Rivas. He was incardinated in the diocese of Zacatecoluca, El Salvador and working in the Washington, DC diocese when he was removed from ministry -- in his words "because of my revolutionary way of thinking and for having brought the message of Msgr. Romero to DC." This priest had done outstanding and recognized work commemorating Archbishop Romero and raising funds for disaster relief in his homeland.

Now he is going to be a priest in the Episcopal Church (Congratulations, evangelicos! By our intransigence, we have given you one of our finest men.) And he has just gotten married to a lovely Nicaraguan lady. Fr. Rivas was always an opponent of the celibacy regulations, pointing out that they really contradict the Bible. In this article he cites 1 Timothy 3:1-15 which outlines the requirements for bishops and deacons -- among which that they should be "married only once" and keep their children under control. So, yes, in the early church the leaders could be married.

In preparing this blog and researching Fr. Rivas, I discovered a new resource. The Diocese of Marquette (God love 'em) publishes the "Monitus" from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in their monthly "Diocesan Communicator". This is the advisory that warns against certain individual priests and religious organizations. In the issues that mentioned Fr. Rivas, I was saddened to see how many other Hispanic priests were on the advisory list. Our priest shortage is far more acute than that of the US church in general. Sometimes the Monitus will actually tell you why someone was removed from ministry.

Getting back to the article, I will end with the loving words of Fr. Rivas' new bride, Maria de los Angeles Perez. She says "some religions forget that priests are human." And she adds: "I have always admired him [Rivas] a lot but now I admire him even more because in addition to being my husband he is at the same time my great pastor and priest."

Vatican statement following celibacy summit

Here is the Vatican's complete statement following the November 16 meeting of the Curia:

In the Apostolic Palace this morning, November 16, the Holy Father
presided at one of the regular meetings of the heads of dicasteries of the
Roman Curia, for a moment of shared reflection.

The participants in the meeting had at their disposal detailed information concerning requests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy presented during recent years, and concerning the possibility of readmission to the exercise of the ministry of priests who currently meet the conditions established by the Church.

The value of the choice of priestly celibacy in accordance with Catholic radition was reaffirmed, and the need for solid human and Christian formation was underlined, both for seminaries and for ordained priests.

There has been some discussion about the use of the term "value" rather than a
more stringent term such as "requirement" in the last paragraph -- whether this is another example of subtle ideological repositioning. Some argue that it is. Others argue that it is just Pope Benedict's way of softening a rather hard message.

Interestingly the most recent UCANews story offers even higher figures for the number of requests for dispensations granted annually than previous stories reported:

However, the Italian news agency ANSA, in a report based on Vatican sources, said the Vatican has figures only for dispensations granted, not for priests who left the ministry. Many priests who leave do not apply for dispensation.

ANSA said the Vatican has granted an average of 500 annual dispensations in recent years, but other sources say as many as 1,000 priests leave each year.

According to ANSA's information, the Vatican granted 587 dispensations in 1997, of which only 75 were to priests under 40. It granted 564 in 1998; 612 in 1999; 443 in 2000; 539 in 2001; 550 in 2002; 545 in 2003; and 406 in 2004.

Those of you who really like to look at this problem statistically should visit the Web site of the Congregation for the Clergy and click on "Statistics." They are revealing and more than a little scary -- such as they are. The problem is that they are not up-to-date and they are presented in a hodgepodge of languages so one really has to be multilingual as well as versed in oblique clerical terminology to make sense of them.

The site is also entertaining for lay people like myself who want to know exactly what the Vatican is telling the guys who stand in front of us every Sunday. The teleconferences are particularly "enlightening". Here, for example, is the teleconference on celibacy from April 2006.

The one on Women and the Church is also enlightening, if depressing. On my more mischievous days, I wonder what would happen if one of the newly-ordained women tried to sign up for the Congregation's e-mail alert service. I thought about doing it myself, but they ask for your date and place of ordination and I couldn't summon up the nerve to invent something.

The best thing that can be said about the Internet is that it has spelled an end to "Father Knows Best"!

Married Priests Summit (cont.)

Top-level Vatican consultation wrestles with issue of married priests
(By Gerard O'Connell, 11/16/2006, UCANews)

This article contains some interesting details about the substance of today's meeting at the Vatican. Inter alia (and aside from Archbishop Milingo who, as I said in earlier comments, was not really the main issue):

At the Vatican consultation, German-born Pope Benedict also wants to reflect with his senior collaborators on the seeming unending flow of requests from priests asking for a dispensation from the obligation of celibacy.

Vatican sources calculate that an average of 300 such requests have arrived annually in recent years, almost one a day. But the same sources reckon that the number of priests who actually leave the ministry each year is much higher than 300, as many do not bother to seek dispensation.

Such a dispensation means the person is released from celibacy and from the obligations of priesthood, and so can marry in the church. But unless his ordination also is annulled, he remains a priest, and canon law envisages that in an emergency situation he could still give sacramental absolution. A canon lawyer has confirmed that "the dispensation from celibacy does not imply any judgment on the validity of the ordination."

The late Pope John Paul II sought to contain the exodus of priests from the church by putting brakes on the process for granting dispensations. Some observers claim that this may explain in part why many priests no longer request dispensation.

Pope Benedict is well aware of the history and the actual procedure for the granting of such dispensations, because the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he headed as prefect for 24 years until his election as pope in April 2005, had responsibility for this up to February 1989.

After that, the task was handed over to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, until the responsibility was transferred again on Aug. 1 last year to the Congregation for the Clergy.

The consultation provides an opportunity for top Vatican officials to reflect together on the current situation regarding requests for dispensations from celibacy, and could lead to proposals for changing the procedure or even decentralizing it, as some bishops have suggested in recent years.

The third and final point on the agenda relates to requests for readmission of priests who left the ministry to marry. Vatican sources say the number of such requests for readmission has increased in recent times, and some suggest it has even reached an average of approximately 1,200 over the past few years.

It seems that while many seek permission to return to active ministry, some requests come from priests who are now old and would like at least to be allowed to celebrate Mass once again, even if they cannot return to public ministry.

The question is a very delicate one, and Pope Benedict wants to hear the views of his senior collaborators on the matter.

The issues surrounding married priests aside, there is no evidence that today's summit meeting will revisit the bigger question regarding the obligation of celibacy for priests of the Latin Rite, which was raised in October 2005 at the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist.

Even though the synod fathers heard a lot about the great shortage of priests in many countries, they still voted overwhelmingly (202 in favor, 28 against and 10 abstentions) to "affirm the importance of the inestimable gift of ecclesiastical celibacy" for priests in the Latin-rite church.

They also agreed that the proposal to have recourse to the ordination of mature married men "was considered a path not to be followed," a position Pope Benedict is expected to reaffirm in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist, which he will promulgate in the coming months.

All caveats aside, this blogger smells change in the air. Don't donate your vestments, guys!

Priest not afraid to advocate change

Priest not afraid to advocate change
St. Edward's Breen presses for all to be heard
By ANITA WADHWANI, Staff Writer
The Tennessean (Nashville, TN)
11/16/2006

At 71, Nashville priest Joseph Breen doggedly continues a years-long quest to challenge church teachings he says are driving more and more of the faithful away from the Catholic Church.

Officially "gagged" once for his outspoken advocacy for married priests, Breen has remained undaunted. He hand-delivered a letter to the Vatican last month asking the pope and top officials to revisit church teachings on married priests, artificial birth control, divorce and women deacons.

All are barred by the Roman Catholic Church and have been for centuries.

But Breen says he remains driven by his belief that the teachings are out of touch with ordinary Catholics, whom he has seen leave Midstate churches for years. Stretched thin as the only pastor for his 1,100-member congregation — once served by three priests — Breen said he is also acutely concerned that a shortage of priests threatens the ability of the church to pastor adequately to those who remain.

'Ordinary' Catholics' views

"There is a serious disconnect between the hierarchy and the people," said Breen, pastor of St. Edward Church in south Nashville. "And that is causing the church great harm. These are not my views. They're the views of ordinary Catholics. American bishops need to start listening to the people; otherwise they're going to lose them."

But just this week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to affirm church teachings that artificial birth control is against God's design and sternly counseled those who practice it to refrain from Communion.

And while Pope Benedict XVI is gathering his advisers in a meeting today to discuss the issue of celibate priests, Vatican experts call any change of policy a long shot.

Click here for the rest of this article.

The US Catholic Bishops' Fall 2006 Policy Statements

The outcome of the US Catholic Bishops' Fall meeting could be summarized as follows:

1. If you are a sexually-active homosexual, you cannot take communion.
2. If you are an unmarried sexually-active heterosexual (or someone who is remarried without annulment of your first marriage), you cannot take communion.
3. If you are a married heterosexual who uses artificial contraception, you cannot take communion.
4. If you are a generally faithful Catholic who disagrees with the Church in some areas of Catholic doctrine like the above-mentioned policies, or whether married men and/or women can be priests, you also should refrain from taking communion.

We know that the Bishops are just restating existing policy in these three documents (Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination, Married Love and the Gift of Life, and "Happy Are those Who Are Called to His Supper") but if you do the math, the Bishops are really reminding us that in their opinion very few of the faithful are welcome at the Lord's Table.

It's sad and self-defeating. Sad, because we learn in catechism that the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist was the Lord's Supper where Jesus offered the Bread of Life (His Body) and the Cup (His Blood) to all who were present, including the man who would betray Him (Judas) and the one who would initially deny him (Peter). The Communion Table was open to all -- sinners and saints. How far our shepherds have strayed from the Master's example!

I worship in a Latino community and there the self-defeating aspect of the policy is most apparent. Latino and Anglo Catholics differ significantly in their approach to the Eucharist. Most Anglo Catholics take Communion automatically, whether they are really prepared to receive it worthily or not (I'm thinking here of the low percentage of Catholics who comply even with the annual Confession guidelines). Most Latino Catholics assume that they are not entitled to take Communion but do not or cannot take steps to restore their status. In both cases, the end result is cynical indifference and loss of the centrality of the Eucharist in our faith. Once the centrality of the Eucharist is lost, it becomes very easy for evangelical churches to lure Latino Catholics away from the fold. Music and preaching become the center of the liturgical experience and your typical Latino evangelical pastor can outpreach your typical priest just about any day of the week!

So, what is the faithful response? Do we keep on taking Communion in spite of the guidelines because these guidelines do not reflect the spirit in which Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist? Do we simply dismiss the Bishops as irrelevant and grasp the Eucharist as our birthright?

Or do we stop taking Communion as a gesture of protest and/or solidarity with the millions of Catholics who are excluded from the Lord's table? Do we have to reach a point where only a handful of faithful commune every Sunday for the Church to wake up and realize it has sacrificed its Center on the altar of self-righteousness and intolerance?

With that, let the debate begin!

Pope to Hold Summit on Married Priests

The Associated Press
Monday, November 13, 2006; 11:23 PM

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI has called a meeting Thursday with top Vatican officials to discuss lifting the celibacy requirement for priests seeking to marry or who have already married.

Benedict called the summit to examine the implications of the "disobedience" of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian prelate excommunicated in September for installing four married American men as bishops, the Vatican said Monday.

The Vatican stressed the meeting would not open a general discussion of the celibacy requirement but would only examine requests for dispensation made by priests wishing to marry and requests for readmission made by clergy who had married in recent years.

Milingo first angered the Holy See in 2001, when he married a South Korean acupuncturist chosen for him by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church. He renounced that union _ at a group wedding in New York _ on an appeal from Pope John Paul II a few months later.

Milingo disappeared from his residence outside Rome in June, resurfacing a month later in Washington, D.C., to announce he was back with his wife and was championing the cause of married priests through his new advocacy group "Married Priests Now."

Milingo said the Catholic Church should embrace more than 150,000 married priests worldwide in part to ease the ongoing clergy shortage and to elevate the sanctity of marriage.

The Vatican said in September that Milingo and the four men he ordained as bishops were "automatically excommunicated" under church law. The Vatican added that it did not recognize the ordination of the four - the Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington; Peter Paul Brennan of New York; Patrick Trujillo of Newark, N.J.; and Joseph Gouthro of Las Vegas - and would not recognize any ordinations by those men in the future.

Under Vatican teaching, the authority to name bishops rests with the pope. The church also requires celibacy of its priests ordained under the Latin rite.

The Synod of Bishops in October 2005 rejected suggestions that the mandatory celibacy requirement for priests be dropped. But Milingo's excommunication has brought the issue back into the spotlight.

Come, Holy Spirit

Come Holy Spirit, breathe down upon our troubled world,
Shake the tired foundations of our crumbling institutions,
Break the rules that keep you out of all our sacred spaces.
And from the dust and rubble, gather up the seedlings of a new creation.

Come Holy Spirit, inflame once more the dying embers of our weariness,
Shake us out of our complacency,
Whisper our names once more,
And scatter your gifts of grace with wild abandon.

Break open the prisons of our inner being
And let your raging justice be our sign of liberty.

Come Holy Spirit, and lead us to places we would rather not go;
Expand the horizons of our limited imaginations.
Awaken in our souls dangerous dreams for a new tomorrow,
And rekindle in our hearts the fire of prophetic enthusiasm.

Come Holy Spirit, whose justice outwits international conspiracy;
Whose light outshines spiritual bigotry,
Whose peace can overcome the destructive potential of warfare,
Whose promise invigorates our every effort
To create a new heaven and a new earth,
Now and forever. Amen.

- Diarmuid O'Murchu

Reflections on true holy communion..

by Louise Haggett

An incredible happening took place at our home about a week ago. Our dear friends Donna and Bill Podobinski came for a visit and I scheduled a home Mass among a few of the people we know in Maine. As it turned out, the only couple who were able to come on short notice were two individuals who had attended the CITI Boston Forum in November, 2005.

When Brian called to confirm their being with us, he related to me the spiritual transformation he experienced listening to the talk by married priest Ron Ingalls at the Boston Forum. I have always found Ron's knowledge and insight on the cosmic Christ and "progressive spirituality" (almost post-denominational) profound and had hoped others would experience it as well, but this was the first I had heard from anyone attending the Forum in Boston. (Ron's talk is in the current Come As You Are newsletter being mailed in a few days.) After the call from Brian, I phoned Ron and he decided to join us for the Mass.

We have a very small living room in our new home and seating was in a circle with the bread and wine on a small coffee table. Since it wasn't near where Bill (presider) was sitting, I offered to move the table to be in front of him. He said, "No. Leave it where it is." There were 7 of us.

We had a shared homily based and not based on the readings that lasted over an hour.

No one touched the bread or wine during the Eucharistic Liturgy, and we all read the words of the consecration with outstretched hands towards the table. Communion was shared one to another rather than from Bill.

Something happened and we all felt it. Because people did not focus on the bread and wine, we automatically focused on one another. We each experienced Jesus in each other. The interconnectedness of our souls became the magic of the Liturgy.

We were all in awe after the Liturgy, unable to speak. It was so powerful that we (Ron and the Podobinskis and I) discussed the "Holy Spirit" happening for two hours the following morning, later on the phone with Brian and Celeste.

Ironically, Celeste (daily communicant) was attending a Mass at her parish the following night when no priest showed up. Unbeknownst to her as she went to check with the priest at the rectory (who said, "not available. I did it this morning"), the congregants set up the altar with bread and wine. When Celeste returned to the chapel, she was wildly tempted to repeat the previous night's Mass with no priest, but was uncomfortable because the others hadn't had the same experience.

I am sharing this story with you because 1) it is Advent and 2) I want to remind you that you are not just priests, presiders, but in today's times, you are also rabbis (teachers) who can teach by doing in assisting lay groups to celebrate with a presider who doesn't necessarily have the clerical credentials but is also a person of Jesus.

I applaud Father Bill Podobinski for his courage and avantgarde priesthood.

Saints That Weren’t

By JAMES MARTIN
Published: November 1, 2006

EVEN though today is All Saints’ Day, most Americans probably don’t know the name of the newest American saint. Or that, like several saints, she was mistreated by the church that she served so faithfully.

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI declared Mother Théodore Guérin, who lived and worked in rural Indiana in the mid-1800’s, a saint. She is therefore worthy of “public veneration” by Catholics worldwide. Mother Guérin founded the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods and started several schools and a college in the region.

You would think that this would have won her favor from the local bishop. You would be wrong.

At the time, the idea of an independent woman deciding where and when to open schools offended Célestine de la Hailandière, the Catholic bishop of Vincennes, Ind. In 1844, when Mother Guérin was away from her convent raising money, the bishop ordered her congregation to elect a new superior, in a bid to eject her from the very order of nuns that she had founded.

The independent-minded sisters simply re-elected Mother Guérin. Infuriated, Bishop Hailandière told the future saint that she was forbidden from setting foot in her own convent, since he, the bishop, considered himself its sole proprietor.

Three years later, Bishop Hailandière demanded that Mother Guérin resign. When she refused, the bishop told her congregation that she was no longer superior, that she was ordered to leave Indiana, and that she was forbidden from communicating with her sisters. Her sisters replied that they were not willing to obey a dictator. The situation worsened until, just a few weeks later, Bishop Hailandière was suddenly replaced by the Vatican. From then on, the Sisters of Providence flourished. Today its 465 members work in 10 states, the District of Columbia, China and Taiwan.

Many people think of the saints as docile, but Mother Guérin is not the only saint to have found herself at odds with local bishops, church officials or even the Vatican. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the behest of church officials. The writings of the great theologian Thomas Aquinas came under suspicion during his lifetime in the 13th century. And Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was jailed during the Spanish Inquisition over complaints about his ideas on prayer.

Somewhat more recently, in 1871, Mother Mary MacKillop was excommunicated — the church’s severest punishment — four years after founding a religious order for women in Australia. One biographer wrote that the bishops of the day were intimidated by Mary’s “independent spirit and steely character.” In 1995, Mary MacKillop was beatified, the final step before canonization, by Pope John Paul II.

The church’s long history of “faithful dissent” offers both hope and perspective to Catholics in our time. It echoes the call of the Second Vatican Council, which, in 1964, declared that expressing opinions “on matters concerning the good of the church” is sometimes an obligation for the faithful.

But, as some saints knew firsthand, a sincere intention is no guarantee that everybody in the church will listen — even today. Members of Voice of the Faithful, the lay organization founded in response to the sexual abuse scandals, are sometimes barred from meeting in Catholic parishes. Local chapters often gather in nearby Protestant church halls. Who knows which future saints are lurking there?

All Saints’ Day is a good time to remember that while most saints led lives of quiet service, some led the life of the noisy prophet, speaking the truth to power — even when that power was within the church.

Today the Catholic Church rightly honors all of its saints, even those it once mistreated, silenced or excommunicated. That includes Mother Théodore Guérin. It makes you wonder what Bishop Hailandière thinks from his post in heaven — or wherever he is today.

James Martin, a Jesuit priest, is the author of “My Life With the Saints.”