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.
I'm glad these guys are keeping busy.
"In fact, Canon Law says they cannot refuse to ministry to someone who asks (Canon 843)."
That's a distortion. A priest must have faculties to minister to a flock. Someone stripped of those faculties by his bishop CANNOT minister to anyone as a priest unless someone is dying.
I never really cared one way or the other about the issue of celibacy, but I don't think it has a bright future.
The problem for the Catholic hierarchy is that the only experience they have, institutionally speaking, with human sexuality is of the illicit kind.
A priest does take a voluntary vow, but that young man is being asked to give up something that is deeply imbedded, and that really is a gift from God. They're asking him to writhe, and deal with it. Some people can handle the celibacy vow without it producing tumult, as their libidinal drive is marginal, but I think they are indeed in the minority.
I don't see how celibacy is a superior position or produces superior men, I think it produces just the opposite in a lot of cases.
Let men who want to become priests know the joy of human sexuality between man and wife, know the joy, sorrow and suffering of bringing little ones into the world. It can only make them bigger and better men and priests.
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.
I think priests who are allowed to marry and experience bringing a life into the world are at an enormous pastoral advantage. Looking into the face of their child, loving his chubby little hands and feet, noting that he has no neck :), and noting that he is totally defenseless, and totally dependent on his father's (and mother's, of course) love and ability to put him first, will make a better man and better priest out of him.
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. The quote by Augustine gives me the impression that he was not quite the 'jack the lad' that he is popularly portrayed as, and that in fact he didn't understand what passes between a man and a woman in union.
I read that right after the pederast scandal broke, the Church, I guess that means the bishops here in the U.S., but I'm not sure, commissioned some Kansas City firm to put together an anonymous questionairre to see what the percentage of homosexuals in the church was, and IIRC, the result was 20% which puts the percentage 20 times higher than that of the population at large. The celibacy rule, IMO, makes it very difficult to recruit healthy, well-adjusted men.
I wonder - what kind of damage deposit do they ask you to put down?
And let's not forget the late fees.
I wonder if there are penalties for returning him to a different location?
What's interesting is that there must be a business in renting a priest rather than going through the traditional Catholic Church. One has to wonder why?
I have a cousin-in-law who was married by a defrocked Catholic priest. It wouldn't surprise me if he acquired said priest through this service.
IMO the reason "why" there is a market for this is that you have "customers" who are heathen/pagan & want to stay that way, but they're superstitious enough to want a "real" priest to marry them, "just in case".
A "real" church priest/pastor probably wouldn't sanction such a marriage due to their (im)moral lifestyle, hence the market for Rent-A-Priest.
Your premise is false. All of these men knew going in that celbacy was part of the deal.
To bad they can't be rewound.
I work for a juvenile correctional facility and we have a religious contract with our local Catholic diocese (sp?) to provide Catholic religious services.
However, real (whatever that means) Catholic priests won't come cuz we can't get 20 kids to attend services, so we use volunteers who aren't sanctioned by the Pope.
Why would the Church put up with that? They are, in essence, cuz they know services by voluteers are still being performed.
Would a "real" church sanction an annulment because they've gotten tons and tons of money in donations? ie, Kennedys?
***However, real (whatever that means) Catholic priests won't come cuz we can't get 20 kids to attend services***
One soul isn't worth the effort?
Nope. And they get $200 a service. The Catholic Church diocese says its just not worth the 200 dollars if 20 kids aren't there.
With them, its about getting their money's worth, not the soul saving.
oops local diocese who has the contract
For $100 per day, and a case of really good Cabernet, I will come to your State,County, City, Town, Municipality, and I will not sign legislation and I will execute any Presidential Directive that seems strange
And this week there is a 10% discount on Rent-A-Rabbi.
I've read this allegation repeatedly on FR threads, and never with even a molecule of evidence.
So maybe you're the one who can help me out. Can you give me a figure of how much money (if any) Ted Kennedy (or any other divorced/remarried Kennedy) has given to the Catholic Church?
Are you alleging that a canon lawyer or a judge in a Diocesan Marriage Tribunal has accepted a bribe in order to make a false finding of nullity? Care to name names?
I admit to having a trivial, gossipy interest in the grounds on which Ted Kennedy's annulment was granted. I always imagined that it was because he was a lying son of a $#&%^$ whose vows were judged frauduent because he never intended to have a lifelong, faithful marriage. But I could be wrong. Since you have all the info, could you tell us all about it?
###"The celibacy rule, IMO, makes it very difficult to recruit healthy, well-adjusted men."###
Wrong!
A study this past year of the North American College in Rome. (A Catholic College for new priests) showed that the young priests would not have it any other way than celibacy. Also, compared to 10 years ago, many of the seminaries now have waiting lists.
Another study showed that the instance of alcoholism among wives of Protestant clergy is higher than average.
Are you a Catholic? Have you asked your own pastor?Where's your Diocese? My pastor, Fr. Akata, would go in a heartbeat; he's gone to our county juvenile detention center for just one kid.
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