Call To Action: Dump Celibacy

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ^ | 11/8/03 | Tom Heinen

[ninenot]

Optional celibacy backed at Catholic conference

By TOM HEINEN
theinen@journalsentinel.com

Last Updated: Nov. 7, 2003

About 2,800 reform-minded Catholics from around the nation gave a standing ovation Friday to a few of the 169 Milwaukee-area priests who took the rare step of supporting optional celibacy in letters this year to the president of the U.S. bishops conference.Celibacy's History

A short history of celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church:

300: The Council of Elvira, a local synod in Spain, mandates celibacy for clergy under its jurisdiction.
366: A growing body of papal teachings favors celibacy, but the observance of celibacy is not uniform.
1073-1085: Pope Gregory VII declares that celibacy be universally observed as part of an overall reform of the church.
1522: Martin Luther condemns celibacy.
1545-1563: The Council of Trent upholds universal celibacy in direct response to Martin Luther's statements.
1967: Pope Paul VI reiterates the tradition.
1971: The World Synod of Bishops reaffirms celibacy.
1978-2003: Pope John Paul II consistently reaffirms his belief in celibacy. However, in 1980, he authorizes an exception for married Episcopal priests who want to join the Roman Catholic Church.

Source: Father Andrew Nelson, retired rector of St. Francis Seminary.

The reaction came at the annual Call to Action conference, where reformers launched a national letter-writing and education campaign to sustain and intensify the ripples of outspokenness that have spread from here to a number of dioceses across the country.

Dan Daley, co-director of the Chicago-based group, kicked off the 18-month campaign by calling attention to the Milwaukee priests in the Midwest Airlines Center on the opening night of the three-day conference.

At least three of the priests who signed the letter were seated at the front of the ballroom - Father Richard Aiken, pastor of St. Alphonsus Church in Greendale; Father Carl Diederichs, associate pastor of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist; and Father Kenneth Mich, pastor of Good Shepherd Church in Menomonee Falls.

Last weekend, a sample letter in support of optional celibacy was inserted into the bulletins at Aiken's church, one of the archdiocese's largest congregations. It included instructions for mailing the letter or any other comments about the issue to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"I think that we just have to open ordained ministry up to everyone, both men and women, married and single," Aiken said in an interview at the convention center. "I think it's time we start looking at it now, probably a little late."

Both Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and Gregory have spoken out on the issue in response to the Milwaukee priests' letter, saying, among other things, that the celibacy issue had already been discussed at length by bishops in past years and would not be reopened.

But that has not deterred reformers, some of whom hope the Vatican's opposition to optional celibacy might change under the successor to the aging Pope John Paul II.

The new Corpus Christi Campaign for Optional Celibacy is being launched by Call to Action and a Cleveland-based reform group, FutureChurch.

Letters to Gregory in support of optional celibacy were handed out and collected Friday night. Education packets also were handed out that included, among other things, information about how to start discussion groups and spark parish-based campaigns.

There also were petitions for people to sign and send to the U.S. delegates who will participate in an International Synod on the Eucharist that the Vatican is expected to hold in late 2004 or early 2005.

At the heart of the effort are demographic data from the Official Catholic Directory that have been posted on a Web site - www.futurechurch.org - for Catholics to see how the number of priests in their dioceses is dwindling as more of the aging corps of priests reaches retirement age or die.

The campaign is building on the work of three Milwaukee-area women who earlier this year started a grass-roots campaign with a post office box and the name People in Support of Optional Celibacy - Terry Ryan of New Berlin; Roberta Manley of Greenfield; and Nancy Pritchard of Milwaukee.

Ryan wrote a rough draft of a petition and letter supporting the Milwaukee priests and shared it with David Gawlik, editor of Corpus Reports, a newsletter for married priests. Gawlik surprised Ryan by posting the letter on the Corpus Web site without further consultation with her, and the effort was quickly endorsed by Call to Action Wisconsin as the electronics documents began circulating around the country and abroad.

As of Friday, 4,485 petition letters had been returned to the post office box. Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, planned to combine them with the petitions that were signed at the convention Friday and submit more than 6,000 petitions to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops when it meets next week in Washington, D.C.

The celibacy issue is not new for groups such as Call to Action, which called for optional celibacy when it was founded in the 1970s. But the National Federation of Priest Councils - and groups of priests in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and some other dioceses - are joining in open appeals for the hierarchy to consider optional celibacy as one solution for the worsening priest shortage and its impact on the availability of the Eucharist.

[ShadowDancer]

I would be thrilled to see priests allowed to marry. I wouldn't turn to my hairdresser for advice on my carburetor, why would I turn to a priest for advice in marriage? Not everything can be fixed spirtually and by quoting scripture. Sometimes common sense derived from experience is the best there is.

[Catholicguy]

Envy?

Maybe they see in others who are celibate, men who are able to control their sensual appetites and that serves as a rebuke to their own inability to exercise chastity.

[gcruse]

Thank you !! :)

[Campion]

The Gospels provide no basis for that assumption.

St. Paul says that the love of man for his wife images that of Christ for the Church. Doesn't sound like there's room for a "Mrs. Christ" in there, does it?

And we know from the Gospels that St. Peter was married, at least at one point. Do you seriously think they would have mentioned Peter's marital status and neatly avoided mentioning Jesus'?

As near as I can tell, you aren't a Christian. At least I haven't observed you self-identify as one. If I am correct, why is any aspect of this issue any of your business?

[Catholicguy]

It doesn't tell me that. It merely tells me the penalty was codified.

If you are interrested, there is a book that Documents the "Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy," and it was writen by Christian Cochini.

Or, you can continue to ignorantly rant that your desires/opinions are Ecclesiastical History.

[Catholicguy]

Man oh man, you again? What is your obsession with the Jesus had sex issue? Why is it that more and more this issue arises?

Is Howard Stern writing a book on Theology or something?

[Catholicguy]

Lisen, Ace; most pedophiles are married men.

[RobbyS]

God's redemption isn't bought with deeds. Amen! One of the main points of the whole Protestant Reformation. Luther nor any of the other Reformers ever said anything this simplistic, beause this Pelagaian doctrine was always rejected by the Catholic Church.

[gcruse]

It tells me Jesus surrounded himself with married disciples, and that the first pope, Peter, was also married. That tells me celibacy was on nobody's mind. Seeing that priests were advised to not sleep with their wives before Mass as late as AD 300 tells me celibacy is just something created for its own ends hundreds of years later. There is no benefit to it in God's eyes, inasmuch as it is not commanded nor even preferred by Jesus for his followers. I don't need to read apologetic treatises to see what is before my very eyes, as Martin Luther also came to realize.

[RobbyS]

You missed the point. The Catholic Church has never taught that redemption can be bought with deeds.

[Petronski]

...why would I turn to a priest for advice in marriage?

I'm guessing then that you would never have a cancerous tumor removed by a surgeon who has never himself had cancer? You would never accept psychological counseling from a psychologist who had not himself been disturbed? You would not accept financial advice from a broker who was not fabulously wealthy?

[ShadowDancer]

You can't be serious. Either that or you're single.

[Petronski]

You don't understand the difference between expertise and experience.

[Petronski]

Must these things be done in order to be saved? How is that not making salvation conditional upon the doing of certain deeds?

If you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, but thereafter lead a life filled with sins of omission and commission, are you still saved? Is this kind if 'saving' sealed and guaranteed, no matter how heinous the sin you might commit thereafter?

I suspect the answer must be know, which must in turn mean salvation is at some level 'conditional.'

[invoman]

Spritually, Jesus is engaged to be married. The Church is his bride.

[Kenny Bunk]

We need to slow the heck down and give our predecesors the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they were not complete idiots for a change.

Actually, Snuff, this is my position. Ya gotta know when to do do nuthin'. The RCs have one major flaw, IMHO, and that is they think they are the only Catholics on the planet. Of course, they're not. If some churches want to keep celibacy of the clergy as a church rule, they certainly are entitled to do so.

If those born to Roman Catholicism wish to join one of the Eastern Churches, the Copts, The Syriacs,the Abyssinians, The Armenians, or whatever, what exactly is to stop them? It would in no way undermine their allegiance to the Bishop of Rome.