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.
These are not priests. They remain Catholic but do not practise according to their following Web site:
"With a growing number of Catholics no longer attending church, more than 70 percent by a recent survey, and the growing shortage of un-married parish priests, we married Roman Catholic priests are offering spiritual and sacramental ministry to people who ask for our help. We 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."
I'm not sure of your point. It seems that one could leave the cleric but still remain a priest. I do know there are a bunch of women who would claim themselves to be priest, and these claim are illegitimate. However, I can't seem to find any holes in the argument that priests who have left the cleric are no longer priests; albeit I'm not verse in Canon law.
Let me give some facts.
Before I fully retired I spent several years teaching federally incarcerated inmates at Lewisburg Penitentiary and the Allenwood Complex. These locations consisted of 6 facilities.
The one Catholic Church within the geographic had two priests. These two priests had to handle the 6 facilities and also two hospitals in the area.
The allotted time for a priest or other clergy and social service organisations was about 1 hour per day or night. 20 minutes of that one hour was spent on entering and leaving the facility, This left 40 minutes.
A priest would take at least 1 hour to have a Mass including preparation. To hear confessions would be another 1 hour, etc. etc. I could go on with the time frame but I hope you see what I am saying.
Right now we have a local county prison and it is the same. Hospitals and 2 churches with 2 priests. Again, there are limited visit times as it is with all enforcement localities/facilities.
To make an accusation without substantial support is short sighted. Give me your diocese and I will get a priest for you.
There has been several posting on the religious threads regarding the recent "ordination" in Pittsburgh. Women can claim anything but according to the Magisterium, these women are ex-communicated and cannot practise or participate in Roman Catholic Liturgy/
"To make an accusation without substantial support is short sighted. Give me your diocese and I will get a priest for you."
According to state contract we pay them 200 an hour. They are not limited to a specific time frame. If they sign in at 10a and leave at 12p they are paid 400 per contract.
I'm telling the truth, because I was the one who was monitoring the contract and paying the invoices was told specifically this was the case by both our facility chaplain and the Catholic diocese monetary Catholic priests myself.
I resent the fact that you are accusing me of making such an allegation and lying about something like this.
"Marjade is just a bitter, angry woman who has an axe to grind with the Catholic Church."
That is a lie.
BTW, that is also a personal attack. Something you've been admonished before on other threads against me on FR.
You deny being bitter, angry, female and carrying an axe to grind with the Catholic church?
Bitter? Maybe.
Angry? Without a doubt.
Female? An assumption, to be sure - but it's a fair guess.
Axe? You show up on nearly every Catholic thread and make the same obnoxious comments.
I've saved you the trouble and reported my own comments as abuse.
"I've saved you the trouble and reported my own comments as abuse."
It may surprise you to know because of what you think of me as "bitter" or having "an axe to grind", but I didn't report you the last time.
BTW, as you know, as a Protestant I sympathize with the desire for married priests BUT there's something about this movement that isn't quite right. That bit about "second marriages", perhaps...
Celibacy is a matter of self-restraint. That does indeed put one in a superior position than those who cannot practice it. Marriage is no gaurantee of maturity.
I think when people don't have kids they don't make a certain maturation leap, because they've never had the charge of feeding, nuturing, and loving a precious child, all the while putting their own needs and desires last.
People in America get divorced and leave their kids behind to deal with the mess all the time. Your view of marriage seems to be a bit rosy, considering the culture...
Celibacy, as a requirement has a tendency to produce depravity. It dates way back. Both Jerome and Augustine have some quotes out there that suggest they didn't have a clue about human sexuality.
St. Augustine is widely known for his extramarital exploits. He had a good working knowledge about human sexuality and said that his maturity really began when he left his concubine. His views may not be quite 21st century enough for you, but then St. Paul's probably aren't either.
"That does indeed put one in a superior position than those who cannot practice it."
That comes across as being rather arrogant and self righteous attitude to me.
I understand about the nuns. What I don't understand is the claim of what these priests are stating is correct. Is it true, once a priest, always a priest? What does the Canon law state?
The "helpful" heretics at Rent-a-Priest need to study their history. Although married men were ordained as priests and bishops during classical times and the early Middle Ages, these men were not allowed to have conjugal relations after ordination. They were required to make a vow of perfect and perpetual continence after ordination even though they were permitted to live with their wives. Moreover, no priest was allowed to marry after ordination [For example, see the canons of the Councils of Elvira (305), of Nicea (325), of Arles (314), and of Neoceasarea (314-25)].
The problem, of course, was that some married priests did not honor their vow of continence. Moreover, during the early Middle Ages, the Holy See could not exercise much control over disobedient married clerics. However, from the fourth century through the tenth century, popes continued to issue decrees mandating perfect clerical continence after ordination. It wasn't until Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-85) became pope that the papacy had become powerful enough to enforce its discipline. The First Lateran Synod of 1074 required all priests to take a vow of celibacy upon ordination and it forbade laypeople from receiving the sacraments from "unchaste priests." In 1123 the First Lateran Council declared the marriages of all higher clerics (deacons, priests, and bishops) to be invalid. The Second Lateran Counil (1139) prohibited married men from receiving Holy Orders.
The history of clerical celibacy in the Western Church is not well known or understood by most Catholics. Rent-a-priest wants to exploit the ignorance of the average Catholic to advance its own agenda.
Marajade, I'm curious. Is this in recent years with our newest Bishop Thomas Olmstead? Or was it with the previous (and I'll ad disgraced) bishop O'Brien and his supporting staff?
What you are saying should concern all Catholics in the diocese of Phoenix.
Good question - I'm confused on this point as well. I assume there's such a thing as "defrocking" a priest, but does that ever happen where the (ex-)priest isn't excommunicated at the same time?
Yes - it can happen if a priest resigns his vows and enters non consecrated life.
I apologize. That is why it is always better to present facts with a post. Too much hearsay especially when it comes to the Catholic Church.
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