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.
Fr Richard John Neuhaus, a noted conservative Roman Catholic priest, was accepted into the priesthood after having a distinguished career in the Lutheran Church, and yes he has been married for many years. Like this Episcopalian, he left the ELCA as a matter of conscience, and responded to what he discerned to be a call.
I guess the RC Church has been getting complicated for some time while you weren't looking.
Very true. Even the Orthodox require that unmarried priests remain celibate after ordination. That is certainly a constant tradition.
But, let's face facts. The vast majority of young men eventually seek out marriage. Realizing that he would have to marry before seeking out ordination, perhaps a young man would seek a level of maturity before making the decision to marry or remain celibate. Of the 22 seminarians for our diocese, 15 are over 30. If all of these guys are ordained, few will leave.
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.
Orthodox priests never get married. Many married Orthodox men eventually receive ordination, but no one ever gets married after they have become an Orthodox priest.
and they perform a good service to their parishioners.
They have their own problems too. People are always watching to see how much of the congregation's donations the priest's wife is spending on her wardrobe and household, how the priest's kids are behaving, etc. They have their own scandals as well, even married priests, in the same ways as celibate ones.
The orthodox church did not deviate from the teaching of Jesus one inch,
That's an arguable point. Christ had some significant things to say about Peter, for example.
and it has more deeply religious followers than the Catholic church has now.
That is either an ignorant or malicious statement, and unworthy of any serious person.
Hence, celibacy did not do the Roman Catholic church any favor.
For one thing, it greatly enhanced the effectiveness of the Church's mission activity, which may be one reason why five times as many people today call themselves Catholic instead of Orthodox. 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.
I didn't make myself clear. I was referring to the permanent diaconate. Granted, it's not exactly like the priesthood, but its growth gives ample evidence that there is no shortage of Catholic men who are willing to serve the Church.
There is, however, a shortage of men who are willing to commit to celibacy as a prerequisite for service.
You are correct 100%
Given modern life expectancies, that's not an unreasonable proposal.
Man, you nailed it good.
Neuhaus has never been married. I suspect that's the ONLY reason he was accepted into the priesthood, as he was a Lutheran.
You are correct. I agree 100%.
With each succeeding post you make progressively sillier and more ignorant comments.
The classic qualification for the priesthood is a man who, while attracted to women, is willing to forgo the pleasures of married life in order to dedicate himself entirely to the service of God.
Would you contend that every Orthodox monk or bishop is a homosexual, because every Orthodox monk or bishop is unmarried?
Apparently you think that it is impossible for a man to resist temptation. Christ didn't think so.
Then I guess you think that St. Paul was just an unnatural God-hater. And Jesus too, apparently.
I know several men who are willing to make that commitment, but have been blackballed from the seminaries because the required psychological profile they had marked them as "rigid" or "intolerant" etc. in their attitudes and therefore unfit for pastoral service.
A strictly orthodox Catholic has to be a very deft conversationalist to get into most seminaries nowadays.
Oh stop it. There wouldn't be such a shortage of candidates for the priesthood if the faith was being properly taught at the parish level. The problem is that at the average Liberal Novus Ordo parish the faith is not being transmitted at all. Until this situation is changed, there will continue to be a shortage of men willing to enter into the average Diocesan seminary.
Could those parishioners been of the female variety, those who perphaps sought out preachers, not for spiritual purposes but to seek a potential husband. Woe to these women who prey upon the clergy. !
Don't be silly, sinkspur! They can be near them, they just can't have sex with them! ;o) Men have female friends all the time, without having the desire to bed them! Besides, most men I've known recently who have become priests are making that decision in their thirties! They certainly are not dewey eyed young men in the throes of some holy vision locking themselves into a life they don't understand. They've made the decision that serving God in the capacity of the priesthood is more important to them than marrying and having children.
It's good that older men are being ordained today, but that still limits the priesthood to celibates.
My reference was a bit over the top, but I happen to believe that the vast majority of 24 year old men are too immature to commit to celibacy, and the attrition rate of men who are ordained at that age proves my contention.
If you'll notice, most seminaries are not ordaining men in their early and mid twenties anymore. Most of them are nearer 30.
I believe the 80's and early 90's saw a lot of men leaving the priesthood because they were sold a lie at the Seminary. They were given to understand that they didn't have to worry about the rule of celibacy because it was going to be changed. The young men WANTED to believe that, so they went ahead and were ordained. When it became clear 5 or 10 years down the road that they'd been lied to, they realized that the priesthood wasn't for them after all. In my opinion, their ordinations were not 'regular' as a marriage wouldn't be 'regular' if one of the parties was deliberately lied to about a vital area of the relationship in order to get them into the marriage.
This is exactly what happened to a young priest in our Parish after we arrived here. Sir SuziQ's brother is a priest in the South, and he was visiting here. We had the Associate over for dinner and the discussion turned to priest formation. George mentioned that as far back as when HE was in the Seminary, in the mid 60's, there were liberals trying to push the envelope and were saying that time was running out for such an antiquated idea as celibacy, and that the men becoming priests now would not have to be worried about being stuck with that all their lives. I saw a look come across the young priest's face that told me he was told the same thing, and only then was he realizing that he was lied to. He left the priesthood within two years, and last I heard, was married.
I believe that Seminaries these days are being more realistic with candidates for the priesthood, and are stressing the teachings of the Church as they are, not as the folks running the Seminary might wish them to be.
Oh, that's true, for sure. My best friend in the seminary is now the Vice-Rector at the seminary I attended in Dallas. He says that they teach the upsides, and downsides, of celibacy, which is more than he and I got back in the early 70s.
But, even he admits that the caliber of men at Holy Trinity is nowhere near the guys who were in seminary with us. They were smarter, worked harder, and were just psychologically more balanced.
Many of us tried the seminary because we thought God was calling us. It turns out that He was calling me to marriage, but also to ministry, though the permanent diaconate wasn't even in existence then.
You and I will not agree on this, likely, but I believe that mandatory celibacy is depriving the Church of some fantastic men who would be outstanding and dedicated priests.
Let him accept it who can, the words of our Lord, should be the guiding principle here.
Ping
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