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VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The synod of bishops meeting in Rome appears to be moving toward recommending the ordination of married men in the Amazon region.While no one can predict what the bishops will do, one Brazilian bishop recently estimated that two-thirds of the bishops at the synod will support ordaining “viri probati” — a church phrase meaning “married men of proven virtue.”Another participant told Religion News Service that only a couple of the 185 bishops spoke against the idea during the first week of the synod.The three-week synod, which began Oct. 6, is composed mostly of bishops from the Amazon...

Married priests? ‘John Henry Newman wouldn’t understand the reasons’ VATICAN CITY, October 12, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) ― Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman would not have understood the reasons behind the contemporary push for married priests.  Fr. Ignatius Harrison of Newman’s own Birmingham Oratory is the Actor, that is, the petitioner, for the Cause of the great English cardinal’s canonization. Newman, a leading English religious and literary figure in his lifetime, will be raised to the altars this Sunday.  Even before he became a Roman Catholic, the Anglican John Henry Newman was a firm proponent of clerical celibacy. Fr. Harrison indicated...

Let the Amazon Learn From China, Where the Church Flourished With Very Few Missionaries. Celibate The mantra with which the proponents of married priests justify their demand is the irreversible shortage of celibate priests in regions with small communities scattered over remote places, like the Amazon or the islands of the Pacific. It must be guaranteed - they say - that the celebration of the Mass is offered to all on a regular basis, and not just a few times a year.Curiously, the same ones who display such generosity in wanting to bestow the Eucharist are also the stingiest in...

Being a celibate gay Christian means being an object of suspicion. The wider LGBTQ community sees you as shockingly conservative (“You think gay sex is wrong?”), while the wider evangelical community sees you as worryingly liberal (“You call yourself gay?”). One day, someone will be expressing disgust toward your “fundamentalist” beliefs. On the next, someone else is targeting your “perverted” sexual orientation. Disparate groups see you as an existential threat, and their attacks can be fierce, as recent online responses to conferences like Revoice and ministries like Spiritual Friendship and Living Out would attest. Researchers Mark Yarhouse and Olya Zaporozhets...

Priestly Celibacy: Apostolic Tradition, not a ‘Mere Discipline’ There are numerous indicators that the October 6-27 Synod on the Amazon will have as one of its effects the dismantling or mitigating of the Latin Church’s ancient discipline of priestly celibacy. At least that is what is being claimed in numerous quarters. Proposed as an ad hoc remedy to the pastoral situation in the Amazon — so the thinking goes — the camel’s nose of a married priesthood will securely place itself under the tent and eventually undo the bi-millennial tradition of priestly celibacy in the Church.Exceptions, whatever their reasons, have...

[Catholic Caucus] Vatican religious life chief: Pope wants priestly celibacy questioned at Amazon Synod ASUNCION, Paraguay, July 19, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said it was Pope Francis who directed that bishops at the upcoming Amazon Synod discuss ordaining married men to the priesthood.  In a July 10 interview with Paraguay’s ABC Color daily, Cardinal Braz referred to the drop in priestly vocations in Europe and elsewhere, despite growth in Africa and Asia. Regarding the disparity, he said it was Pope Francis...

[Catholic Caucus] EWTN’s “Papal Posse” blasts working doc for Amazon Synod WASHINGTON, D.C., June 21, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) ― The working document for the Amazon Synod has Catholics wondering if the bishops’ meeting isn’t just a sneaky way of introducing married priests and female ordination. Last night on EWTN’s “The World Over,” journalist Raymond Arroyo and canon lawyer Fr. Gerald Murray, who together form the “Papal Posse,” told host Raymond Arroyo that they have problems with the “Instrumentum Laboris” for these and other reasons. The working document for October’s Synod in the Vatican was released on Monday, June 17. Its English...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop who wrote Amazon working doc wants overhauled priesthood, ordained women une 19, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Erwin Kräutler, primary author of the June 17, 2019 instrumentum laboris (working document) for the upcoming October 2019 Amazon Synod, is a strong supporter of the ordination of married men and women to the priesthood. As The Tablet writes: “Bishop Erwin Kräutler, a proponent of married and female priests, is the author of the working document for the upcoming Synod.” While the bishop may have had other collaborators, Pope Francis himself entrusted Kräutler with this overall task. In June of...

Cdl. Burke: Relaxing priestly celibacy for Amazon region would affect universal Church ROME, June 20, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Raymond Burke is challenging recent assertions made by Amazon Synod organizers, saying “it is not honest” to suggest that the October meeting is “treating the question of clerical celibacy for that region alone.” “If [the synod] takes up the question, which I do not think it is right for it to do, it will be treating a discipline of the universal Church,” Cardinal Burke told LifeSiteNews on June 19. “In fact,” the cardinal added, “already a certain Bishop in Germany has...

[Catholic Caucus] The Amazon Train Has Pulled Out. Next Stop Germany As of Monday June 17 the synod for the Amazon scheduled for this October in Rome has its “Instrumentum laboris,” the base document for discussions.It runs to 59 dense pages, but these few lines from its paragraph 129 are enough to understand where Pope Francis wants to arrive:“Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is requested that, for the remoter zones of the region, the possibility be studied of the priestly ordination of mature men, preferably indigenous, respected and accepted by their communities, even though they...

The Internet has enabled the flourishing of countless subcultures, from the harmless to the less so. Lately, one of the latter groups has begun to break into the mainstream: the “incels.” “Incel” is short for “involuntary celibate,” and as their self-imposed name implies, these mostly young men have come to define themselves by their inability to find a sexual or romantic partner. Men who identify as being #ForeverAlone have gathered online in forums such as Reddit to trade stories of woe. These communities tend to be self-reinforcing. Members believe that their looks or personal traits have consigned them to lifelong...

[Catholic Caucus] German bishops’ vice president expects Amazon synod to propose married priests ‘with civil job’ May 8, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, the Vice-President of the German Bishops, states in a new interview that he can “very well imagine that there are also priests with family and [civil] job, similar to our deacons, some of whom are married and have a job.” This model of married “priests with a civil job,” he predicts, will “probably be presented to the Pope by the Latin American bishops at the Amazon Synod in October.” Speaking with the regional newspaper Osnabrücker...

The number of U.S. adults not having sex has reached a record high, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the General Social Survey. Twenty-three percent of respondents, or nearly 1 in 4, reported having no sex in the past year, according to the Post. More than 30 percent of adults reported having monthly sex and nearly 40 percent reported having sex weekly or more. Young men between 18 and 30 years of age saw one of the biggest declines in sexual activity, with 28 percent saying they had no sex over the last year. The same data...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal Marx: Issues of Celibacy & “Sexual Orientation” Will Receive “Synodal” Clarification LIGEN, Germany, March 14, 2019—Issues of celibacy and “sexual orientation” will receive clarification within a “binding synodal path” in Germany, says Cardinal Reinhard Marx in remarks to katholisch.de after the conclusion of the spring conference of German Bishops, Thursday.Emphasizing the need for more “theological discoveries while integrating modern humanities”, he added that the intimate personal significance of sexuality in modern day culture had yet to be fully understood by the Church.“We feel how often we are unable to speak in questions about today’s sexual behavior,” he...

[Catholic Caucus] Celibacy is the Answer, Not the Problem Many Catholics, even the most faithful, seem to have given up on priestly celibacy. In our post-sexual revolutionary age, many view celibacy as an unhealthy repression of sexual drives, fostering the epidemic of clergy abuse today. According to this line of thinking, if we want to get rid of clerical abuse, we must get rid of celibacy. It is a solution that, in the words of one literary critic, is “neat, plausible, and wrong.” Celibacy is not the problem. Clerical sexual abuse is no more caused by celibacy than adultery is...

Pope opposes making priestly celibacy optional, but is open to exceptions The Pope said the prospect of married priests could be considered in remote areas that lack clergy Pope Francis has said he opposes making priestly celibacy optional, however he may consider allowing married men to be ordained priests in remote areas.Speaking to journalists on the flight back from World Youth Day, the Pope said he would not allow optional celibacy in the Latin Church in a way similar to the practice of the Eastern Catholic churches.“In the Eastern rite, they can do it. They make the choice between...

Ted Haggard was once one of the most power evangelical leaders in America. New Life Church leader Ted Haggard was once one of America's most charismatic and powerful evangelical leaders, with an audience of more than 30 million people. Ted began counseling foreign dignitaries and consulting on a weekly basis with President George W. Bush. By 2005, Time magazine named him one of the most influential evangelicals in America. But no one—not even his devoted wife, five children and his Colorado Springs, Colorado-based congregation—suspected that Ted was paying an admitted male escort for crystal meth. In November 2006, Mike Jones...

An increasing number Catholic women are taking life-long chastity vows in order to “dedicate themselves” to God, according to the Vatican. Consecrated virgins are unmarried women who pledge to remain celibate for their entire lives, eschewing romantic or sexual relationships to devote themselves exclusively to being mystical “brides of Christ”. Unlike nuns, they take on no role within the church. Instead of joining a religious order, they continue to live in their own homes and work in conventional jobs. While rare and little-known even within the church, the lifestyle is considered to be Christianity’s oldest form of total devotion to...

BREAKING - Scandal: A Bishop "Married" with Children Will Be Created Cardinal by Francis (Exclusive in English) Scandalous news first broken by our Spanish-language partners at Adelante la Fe. The information has been appropriately and thoroughly checked from multiple sources on the ground. On May 2th, 2018, Pope Francis announced that in the consistory to be celebrated on June 29 this year, Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, he will raise to the cardinalship Bp. Toribio Ticona, titular bishop of Timici and prelate emeritus of Corocoro, Bolivia. The 81-year-old bishop was born on April 25, 1937. He was...

BREAKING – New Cardinal Elect Has Concubine And Children On June 29, Pope Francis will raise former Bishop Toribio Ticona Porco, 81, of Corocoro, Bolivia to the cardinalship. Adelante la Fe (May 28) reports after checking from multiple sources as “well known fact” that Ticona lived with a wife as if he were married and fathered children with her. The wife called the bishop “her husband”. #newsFtwxkqwtwd