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.

[gcruse]

What it boils down to for me is that Jesus didn't feel it necesary to surround himself with celibates, nor did the church for the first three hundred years. We have all been treading very lightly around the actual reason, ie real estate, for celibacy in an attempt to find scriptural justification for a very pragmatic rule that just happened to ensure that church officers, who might be expected to produce dynasties of leaders, could do no more than have illegimate offspring. What a wasted potential. What wonderful children some of these Popes might have produced.

[RobbyS]

We have got so used to the idea of the Bible as a single book that we have forgot the facts of publication in the ancient world. To have read the whole Scriptures or even a substantial part of them. would have required the Christian to acquire a virtual library, so we may be sure that few actually did. IF they wished to hear Scripture, they had to go to Church.

[RobbyS]

The Reformation traditions can all be traced to particular individuals, so don't use the "manmade" thing so freely. Calvinism is as much a tradition as Phariseeism.

[gcruse]

The Reformation actually overturned the manmade accretions such as indulgences and the need for priestly mediation. More of a return to basics than a departure.

[narses]

If, and it could be, celibacy is lifted as a requirement, what then? The left wing liberals would flood the clergy and then demand women's ordination, a theological impossibility. That would tear apart the Western Church.

[gcruse]

"Kicking and screaming..."

[RobbyS]

"Basics" as determined by a relatively few individuals who set themselves up as authoritative interpreters of Scripture. The people traded one set of mediators for another.

[gcruse]

Aside from the words as they came out the mouth of Jesus, what else is there but one interpreter of pieces written long after the fact claiming authority over another just as remote?

[Antoninus]

The underlying assumption is that there is something wicked in the reproduction of the species that earns favor by being left aside.  Surely Jesus wasn't the Pecksniffian centuries of navel-gazers have dumped onto his followers

I guess Jesus himself being celibate gives lie to your idiotic statement. Back under your rock. Let us know when you become a Catholic so we can start caring about your opinion.

[Antoninus]

Come to think of it, Jesus was supposed to have been fully human. Willingly giving up procreation for life...is that living fully human?

Hey, that's the same criterion that was used to exterminate "undesireables" in past centuries. "Not fully human." Is that what you folks have in mind for our clergy? Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me. It's been tried before by your type.

[gcruse]

I guess Jesus himself being celibate gives lie to your idiotic statement.

Absence if evidence is not evidence of absence.  That may be
overly logical for you, but there it is.

[gcruse]

It's been tried before by your type.

This thread has gone over 200 posts, amazingly,
without flames and personal attacks.  Thanks for
bringing us back to normal.

[Cultural Jihad]

"Call to Action: Dump the counsel of the Holy Spirit!"

[Antoninus]

Well, there's the rub. I don't think a person can live a fully human life while excluding entirely sex.

Just becuase you're an acolyte of Aphrodite doesn't mean that those of us who aren't somehow are less than human. The fact that you don't understand the supreme nobility of self-sacrifice and self-denial for the sake of something greater speaks volumes. If everyone had your level of understanding, the world truly would be a grotesque place.

[gcruse]

The fact that you don't understand the supreme nobility of self-sacrifice and self-denial for the sake of something greater...

Something greater?   Might as well beat yourself with a bat, instead. You'll recover and then can go on to have a home, family, and normal life. One sacrifice is the same as the other in order to achieve redemption.  That is, zilch.

[battousai]

It never fails to amaze me why these people just don't go join some other church, there are plenty of other Christian denominations that allow marriage or even gay relationships, if you don't like the rules of the church no one is forcing you to stay.

Its like being on a baseball team and complaining having only three strikes and your out is unfair... go make you own game with rules to your liking.

[DallasMike]

"Sorry, against scripture. I already have [a son]."

Oh. But if you're wealthy you can adopt me.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

It never fails to amaze me why these people just don't go join some other church, there are plenty of other Christian denominations that allow marriage or even gay relationships, if you don't like the rules of the church no one is forcing you to stay.

It's not that people don't like the rules of the church, it's that people don't like gay priests.

Most heterosexual religious boys avoid going into the priesthood because they like girls, want to have a girlfriend, and eventually a wife and family.

Many religious boys going into the priesthood prefer being with other boys and men. They may be internally fighting the fact that they're gay, but sooner or later it will turn into a compulsion, as we have witnessed over and over.

IMO, most priests will eventually be from a third-world country, or a gay American. In my area, there is an increasing amount of foreign priests.

[ninenot]

Please demonstrate where in this passage Peter's wife is ALIVE. We know with certainty only that his MOTHER-IN-LAW was alive, but sick.

And you've ignored the other entirely valid thesis: that Peter, of his own volition and with the consent of his wife (if she was still alive) gave up the use of marriage for the sake of the Kingdom.

It's been done by others, too...

[ninenot]

Indulgences still exist. There was exactly ONE documented case of a priest selling indulgences. THere may have been more than only one. So what?

Have you NOT heard of SIN? Do you think that Ordination makes one sinless?