Posted on 01/25/2005 5:56:05 AM PST by Catholic54321
Australian Catholic priests are urging Rome to overturn its ban on married clergy as the church grapples with a chronic shortage of ordained priests.
The unprecedented submission to the Vatican directly challenges the obligation of celibacy, a prerequisite of the Catholic priesthood, and has reignited a debate within the church that has been simmering since the Middle Ages.
The National Council of Priests wrote to the Vatican's Synod of Bishops last month arguing that marriage should be no bar to ordination and asking the church to consider readmitting priests who had left the clergy to marry.
It also asked the church to extend the right held by thousands of married clergy who converted to Catholicism from other faiths to practise as priests to other married men.
About half of Australia's 1649 Catholic clergy, including 42 bishops and three cardinals, are members of the National Council of Priests, including the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell
The council's chairman, Father Hal Ranger, said the changes were necessary to ensure Catholics had continued access to the sacraments. Vast distances and cultural or lifestyle factors, combined with decreasing priest numbers, meant the opportunity for some Catholics to celebrate the eucharist was "drastically limited". It was important to take decisive action so that Sunday mass and celebration of the sacraments was reasonably available.
"We request that ... the Synod Fathers examine honestly the appropriateness of insisting upon a priesthood that is, with very few exceptions, obliged to be celibate. Priesthood is a gift, celibacy is a gift: they are not the same gift," said the statement, which was written in response to a discussion paper on the place of the Eucharist in Catholic life.
Father Ranger said Australian priests were loyal to Catholic traditions and adverse to liturgical abuse but "we are scandalised when the gnat of abuse is so carefully strained out while the camel of dying communities is being swallowed".
Last month the Sydney Catholic Diocese announced plans to "twin" more than 50 local parishes to overcome falling priest numbers. It came as a survey of more than 300 Australian priests presented to Catholic bishops showed little support for mandatory celibacy and linked celibacy with thoughts of resignation.
A Melbourne priest and statistician has warned that the Catholic Church in NSW faces a dire shortage of priests in the next 20 years as its clergy ages, retires or dies. Father Eric Hodgens predicted the church would have fewer than one-sixth the number needed to conduct Sunday Mass.
Celibacy was the single biggest obstacle to the priesthood, he said, but while admitting married men would make a difference to recruitment numbers it was not the only answer. "The package at the moment is male, full-time, life-long and celibate and I would think that whole package is difficult for most people to embrace," Father Hodgens said.
Cardinal Pell yesterday declined to say where he stood on the issue of celibacy, only that he agreed with much of what had been written by the council, but not all.
"Reflections on the lineamenta [discussion paper] are offered by the executive of the NCP as 'indications of the thinking of many Australian Catholic priests'.
"As a member of the NCP, I would agree with much of what they have written, but not all of it. There are many rooms in the Father's house," he said.
It tells me that he didn't make a rash response. The very Catholic Cardinal Pell will never go for axing the celibacy rule.
I never understood why women want to be equal when they are already superior.
I'm working on my 15th year. Maybe we could get together and trade tips on couching. Or better yet, write a book. We'd make millions.
Not so.
None of these was a dogmatic pronouncement. I'm sorry to seem disloyal, but they simply weren't. As such, I believe, they have equal force to the Council of Nicea's (completely contradictory) canon regarding the conjugal rights of clerics.
Look, I would be delighted to toss celibacy out of the window, in light of the number of warped perverts (not all of them gay by any means) that I have encountered in the priesthood. But my thoughts on this matter are of no more importance than yours. The true question is what is God's Will for his Church. And very few people seem to be concerned with that when these discussions arise.
Ah Poop!
I missed him!
God must be split on the matter.
He favors mandatory celibacy for one Rite, and optional celibacy for all the others.
"None of these was a dogmatic pronouncement. I'm sorry to seem disloyal, but they simply weren't. As such, I believe, they have equal force to the Council of Nicea's (completely contradictory) canon regarding the conjugal rights of clerics."
This is true enough, however, the Pope generally talks as though Vatican II were an infallible cut-an-dried done-deal - when it suits him!
"The true question is what is God's Will for his Church."
Yes, that is the important point - and personally I agree with you that the Church should retain the discipline of mandatory celibacy for her priests in the West - IT IS OUR TRADITION!
However, I also detest heresy from whichever quarter it comes, and to make the spurious claim that a law of the Church - albeit arrived at under the guidance of the Holy Spirit - is some kind of superdogma when all around us, heresiarchs go unpunished for spouting their blasphemous rejections of REAL DOGMA is just so "Alice in Wonderland" that its's not true!
Of course this is the reasonable and compassionate solution.
No one ever said they were either reasonable or compassionate at the Vatican.
Christ set ip His church to be His bride. No one before him did that. Hence, it is irrelevant from the Christian theological standpoint what Jewish priests did. I only commented about Adam because he plainly is no priest of any kind, -- contrary to your previous rash comment.
I know that married priests are tolerated in the Latin Rite. The Pope's statement means nothing more than an expression of such tolerance. For theological reasons one needs to look deeper than that and, with Leo the Great, realize that priest is married to the Church in a very real way. My thesis is not that every married priest commits a form of adultery, - clearly not, -- but that while circumstances may permit an exception, -- somethign the East recognized early in the case of parish priests, and the West in the case of converted priests, -- married priesthood may not be the norm.
If we can be sure that all claims of Apostolicity are indeed spurious, then by all means we should jettison celibacy -- which is an extraordinary burden to ask of any normal man in our days.
I suspect that you mean CUSTOM rather than TRADITION, in light of which I find your support for celibacy hard to understand.
But I am not convinced that it is merely custom. That is why I feel we must be more circumspect in getting rid of it.
I don't think the Pope is in on this "push".
CCC 1580 In the Eastern Churches a different discipline has been in force for many centuries: while bishops are chosen solely from among celibates, married men can be ordained as deacons and priests. This practice has long been considered legitimate; these priests exercise a fruitful ministry within their communities.73 Moreover, priestly celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches and many priests have freely chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the East as in the West a man who has already received the sacrament of Holy Orders can no longer marry.
"Christ set ip His church to be His bride. No one before him did that."
On the contrary, bridal imagery is used throughout the OT to describe Israel's relationship with Yahweh - try reading the Song of Songs or some of the Psalms. However, I would be the first to agree that the spousal relationship of Christ and His Church is taken to a much higher degree than the OT "typos".
"I only commented about Adam because he plainly is no priest of any kind."
Then I would question your knowledge of Sacred Scripture. Read Gen 1 and compare with the account of the construction of the Temple under Solomon. The Creation account is written in the same architectonic language as the acount of the building of the Temple - the Cosmos is a Macro-Temple, just as the Temple is a Micro-Cosmos. God's instructions to Adam to "keep" the garden (Holy of Holies)incorporate the same words given to the Levites in their duties to "keep" the Temple.
Quite apart from which you miss the point that in the Judaeo-Christian revelation, Priesthood and Fatherhood are synonymous terms - Adam is the Father of all humanity - and is the fundamental reason why women can never be priests.
"married priesthood may not be the norm."
You will see from my other posts that I do not believe it should be. What I contest is your assertion that marriage and priesthood are theologically incompatible - this is just not supported by the Scriptural data, neither is it supported by Tradition.
"On other threads in the past, some Catholics have said that it would be a good thing to force Catholics to do without the Mass for three out of four Sundays in order to shock them into ponying up enough priests to resolve the shortage."
What makes you think that allowing married men to become priests will solve the priest shortage.
Working with young men and boys when they are young and encouraging them to consider the priesthood, and having altar boy guilds, and having special weekends just for them without the girls, and having orthodox priests who love their vocation--this will lead more to become priests. Fidelity to the Gospel and the discipline of the Church. Besides, we don't need more priests. We need more HOLY priests... and deacons...
Mershon, why don't you and murphE keep on baiting sinkspur, and when he finally loses his temper and comes back at you, I can boot all three of you? KNOCK IT OFF!
Did I miss something here?
New religion moderator... Who knows? Very subjective in his "bans..."
Christ is the bridegroom of the Church and not the father. A priest in his relation to the Church is then a bridegroom, as a vicar of Christ. His role is, definitionally, offering the sacrifice of the Eucharist as Christ offered his incarnate body, to the Father. This is in accordance with the definitional sacerdotal role of priests in the Old Testament.
A priest is an authority figure and is addressed as father in relation to the individual parishioners, -- who also might address the Chruch as mother. No theology stems from this form of address.
I understand that these relationships do not map with precision into the Old Testament structures that prefigured them. They cannot because the Holy Trinity is not an Old Testament concept.
If you have a problem with the notion that a priest marries the Church you have a problem with all the popes at least starting with Leo the Great. They all viewed marriage of priests (to women in the flesh) as an oxymoron. That includes the current Pope, despite his confusing remark that you posted. For theological background please see #74 and #76 on this thread, which are not naked opinions of mine, yours, or others' but extended quotes from unimpeachable sources directly addressing the issue from the theological standpoint.
Now, clearly exceptions are made (and you, interestingly, agree that they should remain exceptions) so the theological incompatibility I speak of does not preclude accomodating a personal circumstance, when rigid application of the celibacy rule be uncharitable in the extreme.
That brings us to another question. Why would I want to become a priest in the first place? Today most priests are functioning primarily as parish managers and fund raisers (something a less apathetic laity could easily do) or as social workers of some degree (a role not in need of ordination). I see the primary role of the priest as the agent who confers (maybe not the right word) the sacraments to the laity..and in confession/or spiritual counseling, the priest should be there to help one with whatever spiritual struggle that is going on in one's life. How much of a priest's time is really spent in these capacities? I can't speak for any priest, not being one myself, but I really wonder how priests perceive themselves and their special role in the Church? I have a feeling that many do not really want to get down and dirty (I use that as an expression) in the confessional or in spritual counseling. It's safer (psychologically) being a manager or social worker. This is just my opinions and observations.
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