Posted on 08/13/2006 7:31:18 AM PDT by Gamecock
Who are we? CITI is a lay organization that locates, recruits, and promotes the availability of married and other resigned Roman Catholic priests to fill the spiritual needs of God's people. According to church law (canon law), "Once a priest, always a priest." Therefore, married priests are not "ex" or "former" priests, they are still priests. In fact, Canon Law says they cannot refuse to ministry to someone who asks (Canon 843). Other canons
Whom do we serve? With a growing number of Catholics no longer attending church, more than 70 percent by a recent survey (CARA, 1996), and the growing shortage of un-married parish priests, married Roman Catholic priests are available for spiritual and sacramental ministry to anyone who asks for their help. They respond positively and non-judgmentally to Roman Catholics who have not attended a parish for some time or feel uncomfortable approaching their local parish priest at a time of need. Jesus always acted quickly to help people. Jesus never turned anyone away, and neither will married priests. Our ministry is ecumenical and open to Christians of all traditions.
Our ministries? Married priests provide spiritual guidance, counseling, home Masses, first or second marriages, funerals, confession, and other spiritual services. Like the early church that was closest to Jesus, the ministry is home-based. Married priests make "house calls". We are working towards the day when church authorities will welcome married Roman Catholic priests back to their local parishes. Many bishops clandestinely support the peacemaking efforts of Celibacy Is The Issue and look forward to the day when the officials at the Vatican will allow them to welcome married priests back into full parish ministry.
All contributions are tax deductible CITI Ministries is a tax-deductible (501.c3) charity. Your contributions fund our toll-free number (1-800-PRIEST 9), this web site, an interactive Internet and other discussion forums for married priests, and many opportunities to resolve issues affecting the Catholic Church as well as healing services to be scheduled throughout the country. Never before in the history of the church or in the history of Catholic church reform has there been such an opportunity to effect optional celibacy and restore integrity in the Church. Catholics are sitting in the driver's seat. All they need to do is invite married priests to celebrate Mass in priest-less parishes. Recently a canon lawyer at Leuven University chose CITI and Rentapriest for her dissertation study. Her conclusion is that the people have the right to call upon married priests for ministry. (A copy is available in our online Bookstore). Canon Law says they can and that married priests cannot refuse the request (Canon 843). Let's work together and make this happen. Your financial assistance will help us make more people aware through various efforts.
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from the "Quick facts" secton of the web page:
One out of every three Roman Catholic priests in the United States has transitioned from celibacy to the married priesthood. The total is over 20,000 - that's an average of over 400 married priests per state who are available to serve in their local parishes. There are over 110,000 married priests world-wide. In recent polls, more than seventy percent of American Catholics favor a married priesthood.
It is important to make some distinctions in order to fully understand the significance of the married priesthood in today's Church:
Priest / Cleric - Priesthood is a vocation, a spiritual calling from God to serve. The status of Cleric is a political position of authority in the institutional church. Because we have married, we have been dismissed from the clerical state. We are no longer clerics (office-holders) in the Church's hierarchy, but we retain the fullness of the priesthood. We are often referred to as "ex-priests". That term is inaccurate. We are really "ex-clerics". Ordination to the priesthood is permanent. One is ordained to be a priest, not a cleric. Holy Orders is a sacrament which confers priesthood. Priesthood is about spirituality and treating people as Jesus did in the Gospels. Being a Cleric is about having a special position in the church. Although we do not have clerical status, privilege, and support, we are still priests in good standing by virtue of Church law Canon 290, our education and ordination as priests, and twelve centuries of Roman Catholic tradition. The sacraments we provide are valid sacraments. For these reasons, we are now "married Roman Catholic priests". Once a priest, always a priest!
Priesthood / Mandatory Celibacy - The two are usually equated, but they are not the same. Good physicians are still good physicians - whether they are single or married. For the first fourteen centuries of our Church's history, priests, bishops, and 39 popes were married. Married priests and celibate priests worked side by side in service to the people of God. The majority of the celibate priests were monks. A string of worldly medieval popes worked to impose mandatory celibacy on the priesthood in order to centralize political power in Rome and seize the land of the married priest families throughout Europe. They succeeded at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Married priests were forced to choose between their families and the priesthood they so loved. It has almost been forgotten that the married priesthood is the original and traditional priesthood of our Roman Catholic Church.
Today, God seems to be reviving the married priesthood, one priest at a time. Each married priest describes his departure from the professed-celibate clerical state as the following of a spiritual journey - one that has led him to marriage and family life - and back to the original and traditional priesthood of our Roman Catholic tradition. With thirty percent of priests now married, we feel that God is calling us back to our original balance and sending a clear message about the role of women in the Church. We believe that women have equal rights and the same potential as men for spiritual service in our Church. Married priests honor the feminine.
Most Catholics are unaware that Rome is ordaining married Protestant ministers into the priesthood and assigning them to parishes here in the United States. Rome is allowing them to remain married and providing support for their families. In ordaining to the priesthood over one hundred married Protestant ministers, the Vatican has, in effect, re-established the married priesthood in today's Roman Catholic Church. They have acted upon Pope John Paul II’s public statement that celibacy is not necessary for priesthood. By ordaining married Protestant ministers to the priesthood, the Vatican has changed the rules. In doing so, it has set a precedent that Catholics can now use to call upon their own married priests for Mass and the sacraments. By its own example, Rome has clearly announced to the world a new public acceptance of married Roman Catholic priests.
We married priests have added the sacrament of Marriage to the sacrament of Holy Orders. We now have experience in raising families and surviving in the real world. These experiences have given us insights and competencies that we would not have achieved if we had remained celibate clerics. People who know us believe that marriage has enriched our priesthood. They admire our integrity and our readiness to serve as priests when we are asked. Many bishops secretly support us and hope that the next Pope will reinstate all married priests so that the parish closures will end.
In response to a growing pastoral need and requests from individual Catholics, we married priests are offering our priesthood, not as clerics (office-holders in the institutional church), but as your equals, your spiritual friends, to help those in need through the Rent A Priest program.
Rent A Priest, 1-800-PRIEST-9, is a referral program that was started by Louise Haggett. Louise is a traditional Catholic grandmother who loves the Church and works to animate married priests and put them in contact with Catholics in need of spiritual or sacramental help. Please read Louise's letter to learn about the beginnings of CITI and the Rent A Priest program.
Our motto: Jesus never turned anyone away, and neither will married Roman Catholic priests.
As God wills.
I think I made some decent points in my post. If you think there are parts of it or the whole thing that I can be taken to task on, then by all means let me know. But I don't think a fair reading of it could lead anyone to the conclusion you've drawn. And for whatever it's worth, which is probably nothing, I admire single people (such as myself) who do their best to remain chaste.
A Priestly Vocation is a call from God. The God/man Jesus established His Church upon Peter and gave hin the Keys. The Keys include the authority to regulate Discipline. Clerical Celibacy is a Discipline of Apostolic Origins.
That being said, I thought I asked you a long time ago not to post to me, and I thought you said you would honor that. Are you a man of your word, or not?
*I can't say I recall that. However, now that you bring it to my atgtention, I am happy to say I am a man. A man who does not let go unchallenged criticisms of my Church.
If you were under the false impression I would sit idly by while you launch what I consider unfair criticism of my Church, then you are mistaken.
Please go away, and stay away.
Correction to last post. My post wasn't called an attack on the Church, but unfair criticism instead.
Canon Law regulates the priest's ability to function as a priest. No priest may set up shop wherever he pleases.
The first statement seems to be a divine right granted by God. The second statement seems to be bureacracy. Didn't God know that these priests would choose to leave the priesthood 15 years later? It would seem to me that if a man is ordained by God, then transubstantiation of the Eucharist would still occur with or without regulations.
I believe that is the claim of the Rent-A-Priest. They may have given up their cleric position, but they still can function as priests since they've been ordained by God.
*Read more carefully. I did not say it was an atack.
In case you didn't know, one of the rules of the forum is you must honor one's request that he or she not be posted to.
*I did not know that. Please provide me a link to that rule
Again, bornacatholic, do not post to me. The next time you do, I'll report it as abuse, which is something I've never done.
*I have a natural right to respond to anyone who posts to me. If the rule you say exists, and I am made aware of it, I'll follow it. I am not an advocate of antinomianism
Please go away, and stay away.
*Continuing to post to me and thinking I won't respond makes sense to you?
*Is the only rule I could find applicable to our exchange this morning.
Sister, if you find any "rule" you claim exists...In case you didn't know, one of the rules of the forum is you must honor one's request that he or she not be posted to please send it to me.
I have been reading the forum rules threads from the religion mod and I find no such rule in existence.
Have a pleasant day
18 "Thou art Peter"... As St. Peter, by divine revelation, here made a solemn profession of his faith of the divinity of Christ; so in recompense of this faith and profession, our Lord here declares to him the dignity to which he is pleased to raise him: viz., that he to whom he had already given the name of Peter, signifying a rock, St. John 1. 42, should be a rock indeed, of invincible strength, for the support of the building of the church; in which building he should be, next to Christ himself, the chief foundation stone, in quality of chief pastor, ruler, and governor; and should have accordingly all fulness of ecclesiastical power, signified by the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
18 "Upon this rock"... The words of Christ to Peter, spoken in the vulgar language of the Jews which our Lord made use of, were the same as if he had said in English, Thou art a Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church. So that, by the plain course of the words, Peter is here declared to be the rock, upon which the church was to be built: Christ himself being both the principal foundation and founder of the same. Where also note, that Christ, by building his house, that is, his church, upon a rock, has thereby secured it against all storms and floods, like the wise builder, St. Matt. 7. 24, 25.
18 "The gates of hell"... That is, the powers of darkness, and whatever Satan can do, either by himself, or his agents. For as the church is here likened to a house, or fortress, built on a rock; so the adverse powers are likened to a contrary house or fortress, the gates of which, that is, the whole strength, and all the efforts it can make, will never be able to prevail over the city or church of Christ. By this promise we are fully assured, that neither idolatry, heresy, nor any pernicious error whatsoever shall at any time prevail over the church of Christ.
19 "Loose upon earth"... The loosing the bands of temporal punishments due to sins, is called an indulgence; the power of which is here granted.
*Brother, Harley. We Catholics understand the words of Our Lord and Saviour to mean the Christian Hierarchy has Divinely-Constitued Authority to establish order,rules,discipline, punishments for delicts, heresies, apostasy etc etc etc to serve His Church on Earth
I believe this is the point of the Rent-A-Priests. They see their authority coming from Roman Catholic theology-not Roman Catholic bureaucracy.
Well, "The Keys" include the authority to regulate who will and won't be priests, who can and can't offer Mass in a particular Diocese, who is and isn't a priest in good standing. Anything else is antinomianism, imo.
The rent-priests used to subscribe to such Divinely-Constituted authority and they used to be obedient to it. Recall the Evangelical council to obedience ?
One characteristic of a man stricken by Pride is his refusal to be obedient to legitimate authority. Many reasons can be advanced to rationalise one's refusal to obey, but one favorite one is to link one's will with God.
In disobeying Divinely-Constituted authority, I am really obeying God.
Luther-lite is unattractive. I wish they's just say "I stand outside the church." However, it takes a man to say that.
915 Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple. The perfection of charity, to which all the faithful are called, entails for those who freely follow the call to consecrated life the obligation of practicing chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, poverty and obedience. It is the profession of these counsels, within a permanent state of life recognized by the Church, that characterizes the life consecrated to God.454
916 The state of consecrated life is thus one way of experiencing a "more intimate" consecration, rooted in Baptism and dedicated totally to God.455 In the consecrated life, Christ's faithful, moved by the Holy Spirit, propose to follow Christ more nearly, to give themselves to God who is loved above all and, pursuing the perfection of charity in the service of the Kingdom, to signify and proclaim in the Church the glory of the world to come.
Besides the excellent points you have already raised Bornacatholic, I would also add that these men have broken their vows before God that they swore they would uphold to serve God and the Church.
Unfortunately, many of the American Catholic seminaries were taken over by homosexuals from the 1960s on. So right here is where the problem is most acute, not in the Third World. If allowing married men to become priests would help to keep this cancer from propagating within the Church by allowing far more men who love the Church and God to become priests, then on balance I think it would be...frankly, I see no harm to the Catholic Church of doing what the Orthodox Church does on this issue (one area where it is the Orthodox, not the Catholic, Church that is closer to the tradition of the early church....)
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