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]

You're right. Celibacy is not pointless. It has consequences. What would be the effect if everybody did it? Hmm. Not good. So it's good as long as not everyone does it. It's okay to eat something vile so long as you only eat a little of it? Hmm. It's just a matter of degree.

[gcruse]

But we can rest assured that He did not do these things.

How so? 

[gcruse]

Is sex sin?

[Final Authority]

If I may trouble you, I do not understand your comment. Who may not be celibate and who may not be RC? If you are refering to Baptists, that goes without saying, if you imply that it is RCC Priests, that is against doctrine. If you are saying that because of the situation some dioceses find themselves in, where there is a shortage of Priests and a glut of offending Priests, that the Priests may have entered the Priesthood under false pretenses, then you may have a point.

[Snuffington]

Celibacy is not pointless. It has consequences. What would be the effect if everybody did it? Hmm.

Of course, in our Church, we have faith that God calls some to celibacy, but not all.

[gcruse]

It's a good thing! LOL

[Snuffington]

It's a good thing! LOL

Very much so! And thanks for your concern. People used to worry that us Catholics were having too many children. Refreshing to find someone worried we're about to make ourselves extinct.

[Scenic Sounds]

Giving up a great part of what it means to be human by forgoing sex for a lifetime thinking God will be pleased runs afoul of the nature of grace, for one thing.

I'm pretty sympathetic with those who stumble in this area. ;-)

[gcruse]

Heh. Some folks shouldn't breed?

[BlackElk]

LQ: If the priesthood were opened to marriage there would be several negative consequences.

First and foremost, in the Roman Catholic Church, it would open the floodgates to allow into the Roman rite priesthood, a raft of men with no real vocation who have been impertinently banging on the door and demanding admission to the priesthood on their own terms rather than those of the Church. The National "Catholic" Register is filled with the whining of these chronic malcontents. So are such cesspools of collectve dissent as Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful and their many counerparts.

Just as they do not wish to obey the pope in respect to the traditional vows of the Roman rite, many, many, many do not wish to be in doctrinal submission either. We have ostensibly celibate priests who are rank dissenters now. Their numbers would be substantially increased if there were a general allowance of a married priesthood in the Roman rite and the Church would sustain yet more long-term damage.

The RCC allows married priests in its much smaller Eastern Rites and admits to the priesthood in the Roman Rite married men who have served as clergy of the Episcopalian and/or Lutheran Churches (who must be ordained anew). These are not permitted to marry again after ordination and the apparent reason for the exceptions is one of charity and recognition of pre-existing obligations to wife and children.

A pedophile is a pedophile is a pedophjile. A homosexual exploiter is a homosexual exploiter is a homosexual exploiter. Some of each are married and some are not. Our basic rule is that homosexuality is an INHERENTLY disordered condition (always Catholic belief) and that no one inclined to homosexuality be admitted to the priesthood (according to orders of the very liberal Pope John XXIII).

Our secular newspapers reveal regularly the failure, particularly in English-speaking countries, and most particularly in the whacko liberal precincts of the leftist AmChurch (American liberal "Catholic" "Church") of Church authorities to successfully prevent the ordination of homosexuals and other perverts just as they gleefully thumb their collective noses at Vatican orthodoxy generally.

Normal men are normal men and do not seek out other men as objects of their sexual desires, must less the newspaper boy or the altar boy. For most of us, we can remember fathers who were not casting a fond glance at the hindquarters of the neighborhood 12-year-old boy or of his twenty-something brother when mom was out of town or otherwise unavailable. Dad married mom because he loved and wanted mom. BARF ALERT: No 12-year-old boy will serve as an adequate substitute. Adultery is not a norm much less so is lavender adultery and even less so is lavender child-molesting adultery.

Whatever Hugh Hefner may imagine himself to think, men who vow lifelong celibacy are neither unrealistic nor warped. Their worship is reserved to God rather than to their body parts or those of others. Somewhere in America is a college student who plays football very well but has decided not to play so that he can concentrate on his engineering studies.

The priesthood is also consistent with an ethic of sacrifice (an important part of the priestly vocation is offering Mass) and Catholics generally see moral merit in individual sacrifice of immediate pleasures. We are famous for not eating meat on Fridays, fasting and abstaining from nourishment to some degree during Lent, et al. That is not a way of life that is encouraged by the Reformation but it IS the Catholic way of life.

[BlackElk]

1,970 years of Catholic tradition tells us so. If that is not good enough for you, see ya!

[Romulus]

no doubt in glorious self-satisfaction.

Considering the evident pleasure it gives you to say this, I suspect the self-satisfaction lies elsewhere.

The Pope never saw them and went back to the Vatican as if the nuns never existed.

Fortunately both Pope and nuns posess the spiritual maturity to understand that the Church isn't all about them. They realise, in a way you comprehend not at all, that seeing the pope in the flesh while a nice thing is no substitute for their eternal communion with each other, and with millions more, in Christ. Their decision not to travel to see him is a gift to the whole Church because it's an affirmation that needs to be made an given witness, of our bond in the Mystical Body. Facts like these may be of no interest to you, but they exist nevertheless.

Pointless exercises in self denial would be pleasing to only the pettiest of gods.

God is already perfect. He has no need for anything, much less our feeble gestures of self-denial. God favors self-denial not because he gets something from it, but because it's good for us. It's a vital spiritual tool in the service of conversion.

God's redemption isn't bought with deeds.

Quite right. And too many Christians are led astray by transactional models of man's dealings with God. God's call to man is not to appease him or take advantage of something he bought for us; it's to become like him, holy -- not enjoying our juridically justified selves, but enjoying a share in his very life.

Giving up a great part of what it means to be human by forgoing sex for a lifetime

To say that we're incapable of giving up sex is to make us less than human. The decision to answer a call to chastity is a function of reason -- an eminently human faculty. Far from condemning sex, the Church celebrates it by proclaiming its role to be within marriage. In its proper use, the Church declares, the marital act is sacramental -- which is to say, it serves to reveal God and his ways to man.

[BlackElk]

Yes. Mother Theresa, Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, and hundreds of thousands of others who were fully human and Jesus Christ, fully divine as well as fully human.

[BlackElk]

You noticed!

Now step slowly back from the mirror and no one will get hurt.

[gcruse]

The decision to answer a call to chastity

A call based on nothing but the fact it was decided on long ago.

is a function of reason -- an eminently human faculty.

Cute.  Can something be good  as long as very few people do it?
If everyone were chaste, there'd be no more babies. That is bad.
Is it okay to eat something vile as long as you only eat a little?

[BlackElk]

Thanks for the heroism of maintaining the patience that I can no longer muster! God bless you and yours.

[independentmind]

The Catholic understanding of marriage seems to generate a visceral reaction from some of the more outspoken libertarains who post on FR. I wonder why.

[gcruse]

Well, there's the rub. I don't think a person can live a fully human life while excluding entirely sex. Sex and the loving bond accompanying it are integral to the human experience. To give it up because a bunch of guys who died 1970 years said so is very sad.

[BlessedBeGod]

It is if it's not within marriage. And I think there's no doubt that if our Lord had married it would have been mentioned in the Bible.

[rogator]

"Where in Scripture does it say that Jesus:
Never robbed a bank? ........... Did not run a feed and grain business in Iowa? ..... Never played the saxophone in a New Orleans Dixieland band? Or in a Jerusalem Dixieland band?.... But we can rest assured that He did not do these things. I thought the usual Biblicist track was to say that unless the Bible clearly says that thus and such occurred, it must not have occurred or must have been irrelevant. "

But Scripture does say that He was born in east Texas.

(Palestine)