Posted on 01/04/2005 2:34:33 PM PST by churchillbuff
ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF SCRANTON TO RECEIVE FIRST ECUSA PRIEST
By David W. Virtue
SCRANTON, PA (1/4/2005)--For the first time in the 137-year history of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton, Bishop Joseph F. Martino will receive a married former Scranton Episcopal priest and father into the priesthood from the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem.
The Rev. Eric Bergman, an Anglo-Catholic priest at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Scranton's Green Ridge section in the liberal ECUSA diocese, renounced his orders effective December 31st and left the Episcopal Church over the church's acceptance of homosexuality and the consecration of an avowed homoerotic bishop to the episcopacy in the person of V. Gene Robinson.
In a phone call to VirtueOnline Fr. Bergman, 34, and the father of three children said, "I think that the ordination of Robinson is the logical conclusion of the contraceptive mentality. When Lambeth approved contraception for married couples in 1930 they set the stage for the Robinson consecration in 2003. You remove the marital act from its purpose and we bless sterile intercourse. It is not a big jump to bless then sterile homosexual intercourse."
Some 60 parishioners at Good Shepherd will follow the priest and become Roman Catholics. About 275 will remain in the Episcopal parish. The group leaving the Episcopal parish also includes a small group from St. Stephen's parish in Whitehall, the former parish of Fr. William Ilgenfritz, who recently left that parish for a parish in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
In an open letter to the congregation Fr. Bergman wrote, "The events that have unfolded within the Episcopal Church USA and across the worldwide Anglican Communion can certainly be understood to be a catalyst that precipitated action on my part. That is, the election of an unmarried and unchaste man to the office of bishop demands a response from the faithful, particularly when the institutional response on the part of the Anglican Communion to this innovation has been so feeble. Nevertheless, I now view the incidents of General Convention 2003 as the logical outcome of a flawed orientation that betrays the Anglican Communion’s ability to proclaim the Good News, especially that truth that life comes to us through sacrifice. It is this orientation, ensconced in the teachings of the Anglican Communion for the past 74 years that finally led me to renounce my orders."
Episcopal Bishop Paul Marshall knew I was going to Rome and asked me to write this letter to the congregation on why I was leaving and renouncing my orders, Bergman told VirtueOnline.
Fr. Bergman, a Bethlehem native, will be received into the Roman Catholic Church through a process known as the "Pastoral Provision Decision," and will result in the conversion, priestly formation and potential ordination of Mr. Eric Bergman, a former priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, as a member of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton, said a press statement from the Roman Catholic diocese. Bergman and his wife, Kristina, are the parents of three children, Clara, Eric and Julia, all of whom who will become Catholic.
The Pastoral Provision Decision, rendered in 1980 by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, came in response to a request from the North American Province of the Society of the Holy Cross, a secular institute of Anglican priests, whose married members wished to offer themselves for priestly ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as lay Episcopalians who wished to enter the Catholic Church with a common spiritual and liturgical identity.
In its acceptance of former married Episcopalian clergy as clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pastoral Provision Decision grants a special exception to the Roman Catholic Church's rule of mandatory priestly celibacy. However, the Decision stressed that this particular exclusion "should not be understood as implying any change in the Church's conviction of the value of priestly celibacy, which will remain the rule for future candidates for the priesthood from this group."
"I warmly welcome Mr. Bergman, his family and members of his former lay community on their new faith journey to become Roman Catholic," said Bishop Martino. "We assure them all of our prayers and complete cooperation as they take the initial steps toward full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in the Diocese of Scranton," the bishop stated.
Bishop Martino said that the Diocese of Scranton and Mr. Bergman have taken initial steps to begin the conversion/ordination process established through the Pastoral Provision Decision. The steps include preparation and submission of a dossier, or report, containing required documents which will accompany Mr. Bergman's petition to the Holy See for priesthood and incardination, or service to the Diocese of Scranton.
Fr. Bergman told VirtueOnline that his new congregation will use the Book of Divine Worship published in 2003 in which elements of the Book of Common Prayer are revised and adapted according to the Roman Rite for use by Roman Catholics coming from the Anglican tradition.
On January 2, Bishop Martino announced that Mr. Bergman will become Executive Director of the newly-formed St. Thomas More Society of St. Clare's Church in the Green Ridge section of Scranton. Members of the St. Thomas More Society of St. Clare's Church will provide for the temporal needs of Mr. Bergman and study with him in preparation to enter the Catholic Church. Mr. Bergman said that membership in the St. Thomas More Society is open to all former Anglicans or Episcopalians.
To date, the Holy See has permitted the ordination of a number of former Anglican or Episcopal priests who have become Catholic in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain.
Episcopal Bishop Paul Marshall was in Africa and could not be reached for comment.
This would be a MAJOR MSM story.
Not because the priest is married, but because he left the ECUSA order and he is taking 60 parishoners with him. This is a PUBLIC act, I would suggest that each of those 60 represents much more in private acts.
Eastern Rite Priests, if they are ordained in North America are technically not allowed to be married at the time of their ordination. This is the result of a Papal decree dating from the early 20th or late 19th century.
This rule has been broken a couple of times in the past few years by Eastern Rite Bishops, but it is still in place.
Unless I'm mistaken, the decree was issued at the request of the U.S. Bishops, through the premier diocese of Baltimore. If the pope would revoke the decree, it would go a long way to resolving the problem. JMO.
At a small parish in Maine the priest left because he wanted to get married. His replacement?, a married episcopal priest! What an insult to the priest who left. I know several men, who would become priests tomorrow, if the church would allow it.
Jesus is God, so it doesn't apply to him.
St. Paul was one of the greatest ascetic saints of all time. Unfortunately, men like him are hard to come by in the modernist Church.
is the news here that the Episcopal Church allowed a homosexual into clergy or that the Catholic Church ordained a married man as a priest. Just don't get it.
Great anecdote! But.........psst......Cardinal Spellman died in 1967!
Jesus was as truly a man as he was truly God Almighty, and He told us that we should take up our cross and follow Him, even admonishing the Apostles to be as perfect as His heavenly Father.
Celibacy as an imitation of Christ is hardly "unnatural" -it is supernatural.
Thanks..it was a typo..see my #29....I've already been called on it...
It is true historically that there have always been at least some gays in the priesthood. But they knew that if they acted upon their temptation and were found out that they would be expelled. So, they were kept to a minimum, and under control.
That is not the case now, where by even the most conservative estimates, at least 50% of priests are gay. This is a contrived situation, which has occurred due to recruiting of gays by gays, and seminary systems which make it very difficult for one to practice celeibacy, much less to be straight, as the predominantly gay faculties either screen out strait candidates, or make their lives a living hell.
That reality is well documented. And it is a primary reason for the drying up of vaocations to the priesthood. That and the example of liberal, effeminate priests whose lives and manner show no holiness or spirit of scrifice and prayer.
So the young men who might be inclined to become priests are effectively discouraged by the bad examples before them. Some of them manage to persue their vocation through traditional orders or monasticism. But most simply give up.
The permenant diaconate is not a replacement for the priesthood - it is not a model for the priesthood, nor a rallying point fo those who wish to eliminate clerical celibacy.
So, despite your perssonal agenda to promote the abandonment of mandatory clerical celibacy, it remains a very important element to the preisthood.
The case of this Anglican convert is an exception, which the church allows - under an extraordninary circumstance.
You obviously want a married priesthood, as it suits your agenda. It ius something which you consistantly root for, in thread after thread.
Council of Trent:
"If any one saith, that clerics constituted in sacred orders, or Regulars, who have solemnly professed chastity, are able to contract marriage, and that being contracted it is valid, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law, or vow; and that the contrary is no thing else than to condemn marriage; and, that all who do not feel that they have the gift of chastity, even though they have made a vow thereof, may contract marriage; let him be anathema: seeing that God refuses not that gift to those who ask for it rightly, neither does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able."
You are living in an alternate universe.
"He was like us in all things but sin".
Are you saying Jesus was subject to the lusts of the flesh --that he was sizing up Martha and Mary-- but he restrained himself?
Uhhh...they are molesting people of the same sex. Marrying women won't help that.
No, of course not. Telling a homopedophile that he's now free to marry an adult woman, achieves nothing. However, IN THE LONG RUN, it is conceivable that allowing married priests would allow many sexually normal individuals to be recruited for the priesthood, who now would never consider it solely because a vow of celibacy is out of the question for them.
The Orthodox have always allowed priests to marry, and have had no sodomy scandals that I know of. On the other hand, Anglicans also allow priests to marry, and they seem to be overrun with homosexuals. So marriage isn't necessarily a cure-all. But it might help.
Are you saying Jesus was subject to the lusts of the flesh --that he was sizing up Martha and Mary-- but he restrained himself?
Yes. He was tempted in ALL POINTS as we are - including that one -- yet remained without sin. I doubt that he conciously "sized them up" but as a physically normal man, he MUST have experienced sexual attraction at some point. But, since he remained unmarried (and was on a mission that precluded marriage), there was never a right context for him to act on those desires.
"You would be wrong. Married clergy have just as high of an abuse rate as do celibate clergy."
You're probably right - only problem is that most of our clergy are neither married nor celibate. I think you'll find that the abuse rate among married clergy is significantly less than that among homosexual clergy.
"A married convert from the Episcopal or Lutheran Church can be a priest, but not a married man who's been a lifelong Catholic."
And not a married man who converted to Catholicism before he became a Protestant minister either!
It is quite stupid rule-bending by the Vatican really. They should either stick to the celibate-only priesthood, or they should make it optional. They should never have allowed this silly scenario where the rules don't apply for one particular brand of convert.
In some respects cradle Catholics have become second-class citizens in the Catholic Church.
"I'd be in favor of making 30 the minimum age for ordination, or even 35, if the Church is going to continue to insist on mandatory celibacy."
That would be very sensible - the facets of a man's character have come out by that age, and if he has any serious problems they would probably be easier to pick up.
"It may also be a factor as to why no Catholic prelate ever betrayed his entire country's church to the Communists in exchange for a pension."
They might not have betrayed it to communists, but all bar one of the English prelates betrayed their Church to Henry VIII for the sake of a pension.
Interestingly, though, St. John Fisher was the only one who did not betray his Church, and, as it happens, he was also the only English bishop who did not have a concubine!
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