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.
BTTT
On the point of the Diaconate: Those in the Diaconate cannot say Mass or hear confessions. One could have 8 million members in the Diaconate, but it wouldnt change the fact that they cannot say Mass or hear confessions.
"To me, the issue is, do those outweigh the declining availability of the Eucharist to Latin Rite Catholics?"
This is a legitimate question to ask. Our approaches, of course, and therefore our answers, may vary; but in principle, if this is truly your motivating factor, then discussing it is not outside the bounds of orthodoxy, necessarily--not any more than discussing the orthodox applications of ecumenism or the Roman rite of the liturgy.
True. But deacons can do everything else. EVERYTHING ELSE!!
In terms of hours spent during the course of a week, celebrating nine Masses and two hours of confession amount to ten percent of a priest's waking hours. I thought we were also talking about workload.
Have you noticed how many activities formerly done by priests are now done by laymen? Counseling, business administration, liturgy planning, sacramental preparation, RCIA, marriage cases, hospital and nursing home visitation...all these are done by laymen and deacons in our parish.
We had a married Episcopalian priest convert here for three years, and he certainly wasn't breaking his back in terms of his workload.
"However, if a priest wants to be considered for a bishop, doesn't he have to remain celebate? Why have married priests then?"
For many centuries now all Orthodox bishops have come from the ranks of the celibate priest monks. If you want to be a bishop, you don't get married before you get ordained. It is that simple. I guess I don't quite get your point. But as usual, I'm willing to be enlightened.
Believe it or not, not every priest harbors dreams of the episcopacy. Some, in fact, don't even want to be pastors. We have a 32 year old associate in our parish who pastored a rural church for a year, and told the bishop he never wants to be a pastor, ever again.
Instead, he's working on a doctorate in Scripture studies, and wants to spend the bulk of his time teaching scripture.
Of course not. But there are problems with everything. It's just a matter of which set of problems the Church can live with.
In theory, and I suspect in practice, in Orthodoxy certain deacons could hear confessions. For us the office (offikion) of confessor is not automatically one held by reason of ordination. It is conferred by a bishop separate from Holy Orders. Thus it is quite common in Greece for non-ordained monks to hold that offikion and hear confessions.
Wow. I didn't know that. Lay confessors.
it comes down to the question: "what is the most important thing a priest does?"
If the answer is counseling the married, then you might have a point.
If the answer is acting in person of Christ and leading the celebration of the Eucharist and Liturgy, then you have no point.
C'mon, you know that the stance on celibacy is just Church law not a doctrinal issue. It is truly an issue that has to be looked at with some seriousness, not with a knee-jerk reactionary attitude. The fact that some traditional orders are doing better than many liberal ones probably is due to other factors as well.....they don't want to put up with wacked out liturgies.
" I have to worry about lay confessions though, the seal of confession is pretty important to a jerk like me! (thats a joke...)"
No joke for me! :)
The seal of course applies to lay confessors too. I should add, by the way, that when confession is over, we don't get a "penance" to do as such, but rater instruction in how to avoid sin again and perhaps directions to make things right if we have wronged another person. Traditionally, before we go to communion, we are supposed to approach anyone to whom we have given offnse wrongly and ask for forgivness. That can be a hard one. No three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers! Orthodoxy isn't for wussies! :)
He certainly does have a point.
If "acting in the person of Christ" means celibacy is integral to the priesthood, then no priest anywhere would be married.
We know that that is not the case. So "acting in the person of Christ" does not require that the priest himself must be celibate, as Christ was.
A married priest is a theological impossibility. A priest is a vicar of Christ who is the Bridegroom of the Christian church. A priest is already married in a spiritual sense.
When a married man becomes priest, his wife whould ordinarily enter a convent. As an act of charity, she is not required to do that under certain circumstances; yet the mariage undergoes a profound tranformation nonetheless. Through ordination the priest achieves a deeper union with God than a married couple does throught he sacrament of marriage, and the priest's previously consummated marriage becomes moot.
Protestant ministers, of course, should not be compared to priests; in their role as teachers being married is, perhaps, an advantage when ministering to married people, - as someone on this thread suggested.
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