Posted on 01/25/2005 5:56:05 AM PST by Catholic54321
Australian Catholic priests are urging Rome to overturn its ban on married clergy as the church grapples with a chronic shortage of ordained priests.
The unprecedented submission to the Vatican directly challenges the obligation of celibacy, a prerequisite of the Catholic priesthood, and has reignited a debate within the church that has been simmering since the Middle Ages.
The National Council of Priests wrote to the Vatican's Synod of Bishops last month arguing that marriage should be no bar to ordination and asking the church to consider readmitting priests who had left the clergy to marry.
It also asked the church to extend the right held by thousands of married clergy who converted to Catholicism from other faiths to practise as priests to other married men.
About half of Australia's 1649 Catholic clergy, including 42 bishops and three cardinals, are members of the National Council of Priests, including the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell
The council's chairman, Father Hal Ranger, said the changes were necessary to ensure Catholics had continued access to the sacraments. Vast distances and cultural or lifestyle factors, combined with decreasing priest numbers, meant the opportunity for some Catholics to celebrate the eucharist was "drastically limited". It was important to take decisive action so that Sunday mass and celebration of the sacraments was reasonably available.
"We request that ... the Synod Fathers examine honestly the appropriateness of insisting upon a priesthood that is, with very few exceptions, obliged to be celibate. Priesthood is a gift, celibacy is a gift: they are not the same gift," said the statement, which was written in response to a discussion paper on the place of the Eucharist in Catholic life.
Father Ranger said Australian priests were loyal to Catholic traditions and adverse to liturgical abuse but "we are scandalised when the gnat of abuse is so carefully strained out while the camel of dying communities is being swallowed".
Last month the Sydney Catholic Diocese announced plans to "twin" more than 50 local parishes to overcome falling priest numbers. It came as a survey of more than 300 Australian priests presented to Catholic bishops showed little support for mandatory celibacy and linked celibacy with thoughts of resignation.
A Melbourne priest and statistician has warned that the Catholic Church in NSW faces a dire shortage of priests in the next 20 years as its clergy ages, retires or dies. Father Eric Hodgens predicted the church would have fewer than one-sixth the number needed to conduct Sunday Mass.
Celibacy was the single biggest obstacle to the priesthood, he said, but while admitting married men would make a difference to recruitment numbers it was not the only answer. "The package at the moment is male, full-time, life-long and celibate and I would think that whole package is difficult for most people to embrace," Father Hodgens said.
Cardinal Pell yesterday declined to say where he stood on the issue of celibacy, only that he agreed with much of what had been written by the council, but not all.
"Reflections on the lineamenta [discussion paper] are offered by the executive of the NCP as 'indications of the thinking of many Australian Catholic priests'.
"As a member of the NCP, I would agree with much of what they have written, but not all of it. There are many rooms in the Father's house," he said.
"Orthodoxy follows the formulations of St. Ignatius of Antioch who wrote that the bishop stands in the place of Christ, the priests in the place of the apostles."
Ahem!!!!!
Check your texts again friend! According to St. Ignatius it is the DEACONS who stand in the place of Christ, the Bishop in the place of the Father, and the priests in the place of the apostles!
At least one saint had his priorities right!
;)
As usual I stand corrected and humbled in the presence of your nearly always superior knowledge! :) Odd you should suddenly show up here. I was just writing to a lurker on this thread... and took your name in vain at least twice!
"The point is the priest's presence in the Divine space is in conflict with the purpose of marriage, -- which is to restore a proximity to the Divine space of the Garden where the three-way communion between man, woman and God was intact."
Nonsense. Marriage is the first Covenantal union between man, woman and God which has been raised to the status of a Sacrament by Christ.
Adam was THE FIRST PRIEST and prior to the fall, the priest par excellence, and he was so at the same time as which he was married. There is no theological conflict between priesthood and marriage whatsoever. To suggest that there is a conflict is a heresy, as it is a denial of the inerrancy of both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition.
"So with all of your altar girls, what are you and your priests doing to foster vocations and a Catholic spirituality in young men?"
Good point. With all these girls and women now on the altar, this feminine atmosphere hardly encourages men to become priests.
Anti-Catholic Troll HUnter Ping!!!!!!!
In #74 and #76 you can see where the Church, from Leo the Great to John Paul II saw a deep contradiction between priesthood and marriage.
What sacrifice did Adam offer? Understand that priesthood is meaningless before the Fall.
Well, how could priestly celibacy last for so many years and the number of priests not go into a dangerous level, until the latter half of the 20th century. All the other years are proof that celibacy worked.
stop pinging me.
And what of the keys given to St. Peter (yes, hes a saint)?
"I was just writing to a lurker on this thread... and took your name in vain at least twice!"
I know - your angel told mine all about it!!!
Your morally relative argument may make sense to your feelings - does the Church also require adulturer clergy, divorced clergy, homosexual clergy, pedophile clergy, etcetera -all to administer different flavors of Truth that are not defined and require temporal revelation?
Yet, in other christian religions their church leaders do marry but still serve God as members of their community.
Again, morally relative argument... Partial Truth held by pagan or dissenting "christian religions" can not contravene Church teaching. Truth can not contravene Truth -if other "christian religions" contradict Church teaching they are false -they are not new innovative models of Truth...
stop your incessant need to spam this discussion with material not on topic.
HO, HO!; Mine speaks Gaelic; does yours?
The Church disagrees.
Another example is the freedom enjoyed by priests of the Oriental and Greek church to remain married to their wives after their ordination (see can. Aliter, dist. 31 and chap. Cum olim, de Clericis Conjugatis). Considering that this practice was at variance neither with divine nor natural law, but only with Church discipline, the popes judged it right to tolerate this custom, which flourished among Greeks and Orientals, rather than to forbid it by their apostolic authority, to avoid giving them a pretext to abandon unity. So does Arcudius assess the matter (Concordia bk. 7, chap. 33). (Benedict XIV, Allatae Sunt)Notwithstanding all this, We do not wish that what We said in commendation of clerical celibacy should be interpreted as though it were Our mind in any way to blame, or, as it were, disapprove the different discipline legitimately prevailing in the Oriental Church. What We have said has been meant solely to exalt in the Lord something We consider one of the purest glories of the Catholic priesthood; something which seems to us to correspond better to the desires of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to His purposes in regard to priestly souls. (Pius XI, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii)
Perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, commended by Christ the Lord ... is not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood, as is apparent from the practice of the early Church and from the traditions of the Eastern Churches. where, besides those who with all the bishops, by a gift of grace, choose to observe celibacy, there are also married priests of highest merit. This holy synod, while it commends ecclesiastical celibacy, in no way intends to alter that different discipline which legitimately flourishes in the Eastern Churches. (Second Vatican Council, Presbyerorum Ordinis, 16)
protestant preacher, Your purpose is self evident -your banning is imminent...
I would suggest you start your own dissenting gospel on it's head thread...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.