Posted on 01/31/2004 5:52:33 AM PST by ninenot
Lay volunteers are surveying diocesan and religious order priests in at least 52 of the country's 195 Roman Catholic dioceses to document how many think the requirement of mandatory celibacy for diocesan priests should be openly discussed by church leaders.
The effort is being coordinated by two national reform groups that advocate the ordination of married men and of women - the Chicago-based Call to Action and the Cleveland-based FutureChurch.
It is another in a series of ripples that were set in motion last year when 169 priests in the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese sent signed letters to the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops advocating optional celibacy for diocesan priests as one way of keeping the sacraments available amid a worsening shortage of priests.
"Look what Milwaukee started," said Linda Pieczynski, a past president of Call to Action. "All we can hope at this point is to have some ongoing dialogue, because we recognize that none of the bishops is probably going to speak out against what Rome has said, not under this current pope."
Priest associations in several parts of the country echoed the Milwaukee priests' call or voiced support for open discussion without taking a position. However, they represented a minority of priests in their areas.
The National Federation of Priests' Councils, recognizing priests are divided, also urged the hierarchy to have open discussions.
Meanwhile, 90 diocesan priests, representing 60% of the priests in the Diocese of Arlington, Va., supported mandatory celibacy.
Organizers of the survey effort hope to provide better documentation - and thereby help keep the issue alive - by ensuring anonymity.
"Priests are fearful of negative responses from their boss, so they would be more apt to respond anonymously," said Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch.
Results from five dioceses produced high enough return rates to show generally strong support for the question, "Do you favor an open discussion of the mandatory celibacy rule for diocesan priests?"
Those results, excluding respondents who were unsure:
Dean Hoge, a sociologist at Catholic University of America who has written about and studied the priesthood extensively, said those results and return rates could be considered representative of all priests, with a margin of error of plus or minus 10%, even though response rates vary.
"You can say that a majority of the priests already favor the idea and an even higher percentage favor discussion of the idea," Hoge said. "This is not surprising, because past studies, even the best studies, have shown that priests are ready for discussing."
The most recent survey Hoge is aware of - one he worked on in 2001 - showed that 56% of all priests and 53% of diocesan priests thought celibacy should be a matter of personal choice for diocesan priests.
Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. bishops conference, has opposed reopening discussion of the issue, saying celibacy had been reaffirmed over the years by popes, the Second Vatican Council, subsequent synods of bishops, and national conferences of bishops.
Proponents were heartened last year when Chicago's Cardinal Francis George supported having some type of discussions and said he would bring the matter up with Gregory.
Chicago archdiocesan spokesman Jim Dwyer said Friday that no decisions had been made about such discussions.
FUTURECHURCH / Truth Behind the Mask
FutureChurch Position on the Eucharist: No cry from FutureChurch has been made louder or longer than over the alleged lack of availability of the Eucharist because of the "shortage of priests." Christine Schenk, head of FutureChurch, however, does not believe the priest's consecration creates the Eucharist, the "Real Presence." To her it is the spirit and attitude in the person and/or group that brings the "Real Presence." Since this is entirely a spiritual reality as it is in a Protestant communion service, that "Real Presence" will thus be in degrees, depending on one's spiritual condition. At her talk, "The Future of Priestly Ministry," at the Call to Action National Conference in Detroit, November 15-17, 1996 she stated, "Eucharist is not really fully Eucharist if women are not able to be included as presiders . . . . we're coming with a different model of the Eucharist." This same position is highlighted by Schenk in the Winter, 2001 FutureChurch publication Focus in the article: "E(e)Eucharist: Do this and Remember."
Actually, it is not.
There is no proof that the "sample" was a true random sample. The "lay group" doing the sampling is notoriously anti Catholic -- they want to make Catholicism more PC than the episcopal church. And, of course, as andrew Greeley's survey in the latest Atlantic magazine points out, the younger priests are "clerical" and support holiness, prayer and celibacy instead of social action and social work...and despite Greeley being a notorious liberal, he does tend to be honest in his sociology.
But don't pretend that the Pope doesn't listen to his bishops.
The outcry, just last summer, over a preliminary document on the liturgy, showed that the Vatican WILL listen to a strong voice from the world's bishops.
If celibacy is so strong, would it not survive a vigorous discussion?
Celibacy is not hereditary.
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And that right there is WHY the Church became celibate.
The early Church was NOT celibate. Priests had wives and families.
However, if the religeous are celibate, any property that they may own or inherit goes to the Church, NOT to surviving family.
The Church wanted the money and the land, (especially as many who went for the priest-hood came from the merchant or noble classes and were therefore endowed) so the Church instituted celibacy.
Tia
Sadly, the FutureChurch heretics operate with a free hand in Cleveland.
FutureChurch Backs Pilla on Scandal [Group Fears Possible Replacement]
4. The last reason is admittedly self serving: Were Bishop Pilla to be forced out, we would be leaving ourselves open to a new bishop who would most likely be much more conservative and legalistic given the Bishop appointments that have been made in this papacy. The well-known litmus test for being appointed a bishop under John Paul II is that the person must be opposed to birth control, optional celibacy and women priests. I have this information directly from several bishops who are in positions to know. Bishop Pilla is one of the few remaining "pastoral" bishops who were appointed under Archbishop Jean Jadot. If he doesn't outlast the Pope we can expect to have our next Bishop be less open to lay participation in decision making than Bishop Pilla. It will be a given...and something we need to prepare for, IMHO. In any case, why rush things, I say?
I really do not think celibacy is healthy , especially for any one who does marriage counselling.
Tia
| Would it kill 'em to include a couple points from JPII in this article? By not doing so, the author reveals himself to be no more than a purveyor of FutureChurch(?!) PRnewswire, imo. |
"Today's clergy must be careful not to adopt the secular view of the priesthood as a profession, a career and a means of earning a living," the Holy Father said. "Rather, the clergy must see the priesthood as a vocation to selfless, loving service, embracing wholeheartedly the esteemed gift of celibacy and all that this involves." He explained that for this reason, "celibacy is to be regarded as an integral part of the priest's exterior and interior life, and not just as a long-standing ideal which is to be respected." |
Celibacy was a discipline practiced in the Church almost from it's outset. The split on celibacy was NOT over who got to inherit property, but what the culture and politics of a region were.
In the East, where the Bishops were more closely attuned to the politics and culture of Constantinople (and where Arianism and Iconoclasm were far more common and hung on far longer), celibecy was never very popular, and the Eastern Orthodox churches today do not follow that discipline.
In the West, celibecy was tought (if not always required) and followed (if somewhat irregularly) from the early Church. It caught on at a time being a priest or a bishop was a good way to become impoverished and a martyr, so suggesting it was about who inherited money and property is really sort of silly.
The Roman Catholic Church did abandon the requirement of celibecy for about 100 years (10th or 11th century, I can't remember which off the top of my head), but reinstated it when it saw a substantial falling away of the piety and disipline of the priesthood. In a sense, the experiance with dropping that requirement has been similiar to what has happened in the Church since Vatican II, when an awful lot of bishops began turning a blind eye to the issue of homosexuality in the seminaries.
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