Posted on 11/14/2006 7:57:12 AM PST by NYer
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has called a meeting Thursday with top Vatican officials to discuss lifting the celibacy requirement for priests seeking to marry or who have already married.
Benedict called the summit to examine the implications of the "disobedience" of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian prelate excommunicated in September for installing four married American men as bishops, the Vatican said Monday.
The Vatican stressed the meeting would not open a general discussion of the celibacy requirement but would only examine requests for dispensation made by priests wishing to marry and requests for readmission made by clergy who had married in recent years.
Milingo first angered the Holy See in 2001, when he married a South Korean acupuncturist chosen for him by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church. He renounced that union — at a group wedding in New York — on an appeal from Pope John Paul II a few months later.
Milingo disappeared from his residence outside Rome in June, resurfacing a month later in Washington, D.C., to announce he was back with his wife and was championing the cause of married priests through his new advocacy group "Married Priests Now."
Milingo said the Catholic Church should embrace more than 150,000 married priests worldwide in part to ease the ongoing clergy shortage and to elevate the sanctity of marriage.
The Vatican said in September that Milingo and the four men he ordained as bishops were "automatically excommunicated" under church law. The Vatican added that it did not recognize the ordination of the four — the Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington; Peter Paul Brennan of New York; Patrick Trujillo of Newark, N.J.; and Joseph Gouthro of Las Vegas — and would not recognize any ordinations by those men in the future.
Under Vatican teaching, the authority to name bishops rests with the pope. The church also requires celibacy of its priests ordained under the Latin rite.
The Synod of Bishops in October 2005 rejected suggestions that the mandatory celibacy requirement for priests be dropped. But Milingo's excommunication has brought the issue back into the spotlight.
.... before the questions surface on this thread :-)
More gay marriage talk.
How so? Milingo married a Korean woman connected with Rev. Moon. Milingo has been excommunicated, but he is going around this country drumming up support for a married priesthood. So please tell me where you came to the conclusion that this is about gay marriage?
It was just a gay priest joke. They've been in the news alot in recent years, including my own parish.
Sigh. How is " disobedience " different from disobedience, unless AP thinks it's not really disobedience to disobey?
"...the Catholic Church should embrace more than 150,000 married priests ...to elevate the sanctity of marriage."
Oh yeah. Vow-breakers are going to "elevate the sanctity of marriage" by eliminating the quaint, archaic notion of the sanctity of "vows."
BTW, the Korean woman Milingo is pretending to be married to, is a divorcee. Like he really respected the "sanctity" of her marriage.
Milingo may get a merciful judgment because he's apparently non compos mentis. The AP writer has no such excuse.
Note to self: never trust religious articles in the secular press.
Unfortunately true. The ones that come out and announce it during a homily especially burn me.
The quotation marks are really odd, because the Vatican Daily Bulleting says exactly that: ...per esaminare la situazione creatasi in seguito alla disobbedienza di Mons. Emmanuel Milingo... [to examine the situation that has arisen following the disobedience of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo].
One left the priesthood to live (still in town) with his boyfriend.
One went onto become a Monsignor, who recently had to resign. Three adult men (I know every one of them) have come forward to announce that they were molested by him back in the day.
The third priest (the normal one, comparatively) carried on an affair with a woman, which was a sort of open secret until he died.
I guess it left me a little cynical. I hope the current Pope can find ways to straighten out the ranks, so to speak.
Don't priests have a tough enough life?
(ducking)
I hope the current Pope can find ways to straighten out the ranks, so to speak.
Me, too.
Yeah, I know what you mean--- although the prevalence of sin all over including here (points to self) is a pretty discouraging thing.
I iwsh there were an "order of penitents" -- people whho would weak sackcloth, or some such symbolic garb, and stand outside at the door of the church every Sunday to ask those going to Mass to pray for them. Anyone acknowledging a habitual or serious sin could join them for a certain period of time (or be required by their confessor to join them.)
It would do us all some good: the repentant scandalous sinners, and those of us who were scandalized.
(Check out mine at 14)
Milingo has more baggage than the marriage issue.
His association with the moonies and trying to appoint bishops with no authority to do so.
I suppose it could be justified if it can be shown that originally when becoming an apostle it did not necessarily interfere with fulfilling marriage vows.
But what of those who take priestly vows, having never taken marriage vows? Would they be justified taking marriage vows afterwards in violation of their priestly vows?
What did Peter do after he become an apostle? Maybe that could point the way.
Yes, public penance. Brings to mind Henry II's penance after Becket's murder....public flogging, erm, naked before the cathedral door.
correction: become=became
Commentary. Huh. Interesting, particularly the drive to "examine...requests for readmission made by clergy who had married in recent years." I don't want to start a rumor, but, could it be that His Holiness is thinking on expanding the Pastoral Provision issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on July 22, 1980 Prot. N. 66/77, admitting willing Anglican and Episcopal ministers to the Catholic priesthood? Could this now be expanded to include laicized married priests in good standing with the Church? If so, I have to say that Pope Benedict is really full of surprises.
Fascinating.
I explored this very issue over a year ago, in my post entitled Is it time to ordain married men to the Catholic priesthood? You bet I am going to be watching developments on this issue -- none of which affects me personally, btw.
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