Posted on 09/30/2005 11:50:24 AM PDT by Antioch
A top Jesuit official has been contacting leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to protest a soon-to-be-released Vatican document that is expected to reinforce the teaching that gays are not welcome in the priesthood.
The Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, said in a letter to his priests that he was asking bishops to tell Vatican officials who are drafting the policy "of the great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic faithful."
Chojnacki wrote in the letter, dated Monday, that he had participated in the funerals of several gay Jesuit clergy over the last few years.
"I find it insulting to demean their memory and their years of service by even hinting that they were unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation," he wrote.
Chojnacki said he would be working with the Conference of Major Superiors, which represents leaders of religious orders in the United States including the Jesuits, Franciscans and others, and with bishops to fight "for the opportunity of a gay person to say yes to God's call in celibate service of priesthood and chaste religious life."
A priest who supports the protest provided the letter to The Associated Press. A spokesman for the New York province did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
A Vatican official said last week that the upcoming "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained.
In recent decades, Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" and makes them unsuitable for ministry. A Vatican-directed evaluation of all 229 U.S. seminaries is underway, and is looking for "evidence of homosexuality" in the schools among other issues, such as whether their instruction keeps with church teaching.
The evaluation was organized in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis.
Priests in religious orders throughout the country said in interviews that anger is building among their members about the prospect of a ban on gay seminarians.
Some have said clergy are considering staging a strike on a Sunday, to show how critical gay priests are to serving the church. Priests who had not disclosed their sexual orientation to parishioners are now thinking about coming out and denouncing the idea of a ban. Others have talked about signing their names to a protest letter to the Vatican.
Estimates of the numbers of gays in the priesthood vary from 25 percent to 50 percent. About one-third of the 42,500 U.S. priests are members of religious orders.
It would have been unlikely for this priest to have made such a call to "strike" if he did not consider his identity primarily as homosexual, secondarily as persecuted legal defendent, and peripherally as a Catholic priest. This is exactly what the apostolic visitations are about.
The Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, said in a letter to his priests that he was asking bishops to tell Vatican officials who are drafting the policy "of the great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic faithful."
Sorry Fr. Chojnacki. You are just plain WRONG on this one.
Sounds like this poor Jesuit "priest" needs a copy of the book; SO HiGH THE PRICE a book on the reality of HELL and the sins which can lead there !
Lord have mercy!
As a semi outsider, it appears that the Western Catholics are increasingly going against Rome. Similar in the Anglican church.
How long till a split?
That last paragraph surprises me. I have not heard that estimate before. Whose is it? Where did they get it? How was it surveyed or calculated? What is the source? Thank goodness for the careful research and rigorous honesty of the press, or I might have to doubt those percentages.
Hi, if you're not Catholic, or especially if you're in one of the Protestant sects, I can see how a "split" (schism) could appear as an inevitable thing based on ideologies and practices. However, the strange thing about Catholics, even if they don't believe all the dictates of their religion, or follow them, or even attend Mass, there is something unifying about being a member of "the universal church" and the feeling of being tied to the Holy Father is very strong. Even those who might be fallen away and argue against papal infallibility or things like that, when asked it they want to form a separate church, would probably say No, they just want the one they're in to modify some things.
Interestingly, the only significant split is the SPPX movement, and that is a rebound back to the past, more tradition, in their belief, more orthodoxy. It's not the liberals on the forefront who would cause a split, it's those who feel the Church has "progressed" too far.
Others may be able to enlighten us more on this subject.
But being Catholic is similar to being Jewish, even if you don't belief it, you still identify with it.
So, we shouldn't expect to see a Metropolitan Catholic Church in the near-term future?
We'll probably see more differentiation between liberal and conservative parishes. One intriguing scenario is that when the universal indult is granted, as expected, for the Tridentine Mass, some Novus Ordo parishes will either go Trindentine or part-time Tridentine, and others stay full time Novus Ordo. Then the former will take on the conservative outlook in general, -- not just in liturgical issues but in terms of obedience to Rome, political conservatism, and theological orthodoxy. The latter will absorb the cafeteria Catholics who tend to be liberal. The two rites will coexist, both will remain Catholic, and there will be less confusion. Note that in Catholicism tension between rites and between the bishops and the Pope is common and does not amount to a schism.
Those who genuinely are incomfortable with primacy of Rome can always join the Episcopalians one by one.
"Jesuit Official Rips Expected Ban on Gays"
"As Expected, Jesuit Official Rips Expected Ban on Gays"
Ages? Causes of death? I'm willing to bet we aren't talking about 80 y.o. priests who died due to traffic accidents.
My wife and I do the exact same thing. Every Sunday we pass our local parish one block away from our house to take a 45 minute car-ride to the Latin Mass.
Reverent liturgy is worth it.
Choosing one parish over another, or one rite over another, is no schism. Not even informal schism.
A church is Catholic if a licitly ordained priest consecrates a valid Eucharist in it and the rubrics of the appropriate rite are followed. That is all. Larger towns have several Eastern Catholic rites as well as the Latin rite. People drive to the mass of their chosen rite. If it is too far, they go to the mass they can get to, and go to the preferred rite on holidays, or when an occasion presents itself. Novus ordo is just one more rite. These are all normal Catholic behavior. No schism.
If a Catholic chooses a geographically remote parish of the same rite, it is a bit problematic, but it does not constitute a schism. It is a mild insubordination at the most, particularly if the reasons are better conformance at the farther parish. Remember, people belong to the Catholic Church as a whole, they do not belong to a rite. They register at a parish for reasons of fundraising mostly. Hermann may wish to correct me if I am wrong on this score.
The current situation is abnormal, because the indult is not universal. So SSPX ordained illicit priests and that is a schism. The universal indult will heal that, because Tridentine and Novus Ordo will coexist as equally accessible in principle rites, just like the situation with the Eastern rites. Of course, some schismatic SSPX members wil probably stay in schism for reasons other than the rite, e.g. sedevacantism or opposition to ecumenism. But these will be few.
That's in part why all the polls saying Catholics believe in abortion at the same rate as the population as a whole are so wrong: anyone baptized a Catholic thinks they are one, no matter what else they believe or do.
Fact is, about half the Catholics in the United States are "split" from the Church, primarily because of persistent mortal sin: they're gay, or divorced and remarried, practice birth control, advocate abortion, etc. But they still present themselves for communion... and they don't mind commenting on how big a tent the Church is...
Everyone I ever met from SSPX did none of the above at least.
Nope, it's the liberals who drive people out, who insist on them being "inclusive". They take over an institution, and purge, or at least silence, the opposition,which finally has to leave in self-defense.
I'm not a Catholic, and don't really care what happens to it as an institution, although I suspect it will be around long after the personalities and issues of today are forgotten by all but a few academics. But as a Baptist, I have always thought that Christians, or anybody for that matter, would be better off to live in amity or indifference apart, than in rancor together.
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