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.

[ninenot]

Surprise!!

[ninenot]

I left the sidebar in (it wound up at the top of the article) because the "source" is Fr. A Nelson, who is a very serious problem. He's "retired," all right. Was kicked out of Green Bay Diocese and Rembert Weakland took him right in.

[steplock]

Dump celibacy?

Isn't that called BAPTISTS??

;>)

.

[gcruse]

Back in the nineties, I remember reading about a group of cloistered nuns in Upstate New York(?) who were considering what sort of sacrifice they wanted to make in thanks for the Pope coming to the US for a visit.  They finally decided that they would give up the pleasure of going to see the Pope while he was in the US.
So they remained in their cloister the entire time the Pope was in the country, no doubt in glorious self-satisfaction.  The Pope never saw them and went back to the Vatican as if the nuns never existed.
Pointless exercises in self denial would be pleasing to only the pettiest of gods. 

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.  God's redemption isn't bought with deeds.  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

[nuconvert]

"The Council of Elvira,"

Hmmm......a photo opportunity??

[steplock]

Elvira on the LEFT - Gay-Pedophile Priests on RIGHT .

[ninenot]

..and certainly you would not dismiss an evangelical counsel as being "Pecksniffian," would you?

[nuconvert]

Oy.

Elvira alone would have been sufficient.

Thanks. (I think)

[Desdemona]

The word "no" just doesn't seem to sink in to these people.

[BlessedBeGod]

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

You mean like Jesus did?

[gcruse]

Where does it say in scriptures that Jesus died a virgin?

[BlessedBeGod]

Are you saying he sinned?

[BlackElk]

GC: Isn't it a good thing that the Roman Catholic Church drafts no one? That way you may continue to be a chronic malcontent and complainer OUTSIDE of the Church which you clearly fail to comprehend and we Catholics can recognize your irrelevancy. If you are not Catholic, why on earth do you care how we govern our own Church and whatever makes you think it is is any of your business?

Your first two paragraphs make no sense whatsoever. If the nuns are cloistered, they are not leaving cloister in any event except, for medical treatments or severe family emergencies. They would not be galavanting around the countryside even to see the pope any more than they would be leving cloister to take in a basketball game.

If, as is apparently the case, you imagine yorself Christian as suggested by the reformationist tone of your third paragraph, you are an embarassment to the genuine reformed Christians and you ought to take your ignorant revulsion for the freely chosen celibacy of Catholic priests and nuns to St. Paul or directly to God, the real author of Paul's epistles.

After you are gone, the RCC will still flourish and you will be forgotten soon enough. At least the first part of that is a guarantee on the Highest Authority. The second part is the logical corollary. Meanwhile, MYOB.

[Final Authority]

Because of the Priest shortage in NH, due in part because of the 20% or so of offending Priests leaving in handcuffs or being shipped off to parts unknown or in early retirement, our Parish has on occasion asked a Priest from an Eastern Rite church to preside. The first time he took the time to introduce his family and got an ovation for this. He had a wonderful and warm Homily and he has been asked back several times and has Baptised many of the children brought forth.

This isn't a Baptist nor is it a Baptist Church. I suspect if our congregation had a choice in the matter this Eastern Rite Priest would be the man and the husband and the father to lead us.

[gcruse]

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

[verity]

Someone has been breathing in second-hand Episcopalian smoke.

[sailor4321]

You're right. They don't have to be celibate --- and they don't have to be Catholic, either....

[Snuffington]

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

Taken a poll among the gods to determine that? Or are you claiming the divine wisdom for yourself? ;-)

Seriously, self-denial has a rich history in virtually all religious traditions, from basic animism through today's major faiths. Before dismissing it as "pointless," you ought to learn what others have personally gotten from it. It's not as pointless as you seem to assume.

[LizardQueen]

I'm not Catholic so have no stake in this, but wouldn't getting rid of the celibacy requirement (or somehow doing it partially, lay priests or something) help with the pedophile issue and the numbers of gay priests?

I know that it's the tradition, but seems to me you may get more quality priests, or at least one that aren't dragging along some sort of weird sexual baggage, if the recruiting pool were opened up.

Just random musings on my part,
LQ

[BlackElk]

Where in Scripture does it say that Jesus:

Never robbed a bank?

Did not mug little old ladies?

Did not run a feed and grain business in Iowa?

Never served on board a nuclear submarine?

Was not the proprietor of a Sea of Galilee Bed and Breakfast?

Was not Matthew's partner in a tax preparation firm?

Never played the saxophone in a New Orleans Dixieland band? Or in a Jerusalem Dixieland band?

Never served as governor of Judea? Or as a Roman Centurion? Or as a researcher for Flavius Josephus?

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.

It may well even have been that, having two natures, one fully human and one fully divine, Jesus Christ was Himself a "sign of contradiction" in that He avoided sexual involvements (as most humans do not) and embraced death by crucifixion (as few humans would) in atonement for each and every sin of mankind (as no mere human could).