Posted on 05/25/2005 10:35:49 PM PDT by sinkspur
THE leader of Scotland's Catholics has risked reigniting a row over married priests by predicting the Vatican will eventually relent and allow the practice.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, said the success of married deacons in the church means the change is likely.
The church leader has upset traditional Catholics in the past with his views on celibacy, homosexuality and the priesthood.
His latest comments were made in an interview with the Catholic Times, which will be published on Sunday,
Asked if he believed married priests will become a reality, he said: "Having seen something of the apostolate of married deacons, I can foresee the day when there will be married priests."
The Cardinal has angered conservative Catholics in the past with his acceptance of gay priests, as long as they remained celibate.
However, since being elevated to the College of Cardinals he has espoused views more in line with Vatican teachings. Cardinal O'Brien's latest comments drew criticism from the right-wing Catholic Truth movement.
A spokesman for the group said: "He is trying to say that he is not necessarily personally in favour of this but we can debate it. It's a sleekit way of trying to have his cake and eat it."
However, a poll of 80 Catholic priests in Scotland conducted only last month suggested 40 per cent believed they should be allowed to marry, but the issue remains thorny to many conservative Catholics.
Cardinal O'Brien gained a reputation as a liberal after he said in 2002, before he became a cardinal, that he saw no end to theological argument against celibacy within the priesthood.
A day later he issued a joint statement with Mario Conti, the archbishop of Glasgow, in which the pair said: "While no-one would suggest clerical celibacy is an unchangeable discipline, we believe it has an enormous value."
The following year he risked angering conservatives again when he broached the subject of married priests.
He said in a thanksgiving mass that the church should have "at every level" a discussion about clerical celibacy.
He said the argument for married priests was supported by the case of married Anglican priests who have converted to Catholicism and been allowed to continue their ministries.
However, at the ecclesiastical senate in Rome in October 2003, he made a statement at the end of the Nicene Creed in which he affirmed support of the church's teachings on celibacy, contraception and homosexuality.
It was claimed at the time, but denied, that the added words were said under pressure from the Vatican.
Since then the Cardinal has been careful not to speak out on any of the issues that caused so much controversy.
A spokesman for the Church said today that the Cardinal's comments were not incompatible with his profession of faith in 2003.
He said: "It is a neutral comment on the issue, it is neither a ringing endorsement of the concept, neither is it an outright denunciation."
The Church is not a democracy.
Do you suggest we take votes on other issues? Of course you do. Whatever facilitates your ambitions is just fine.
He's desperately, pathetically having posts about him pulled from this thread. It was sad before, but now it's downright pitiful.
You've got him figured out now. Expect him to start getting your posts pulled if you mention him.
That's not surprising at all, given the state of most Parishes in the last 20 years or so. Religious education has been run all this time by those enamored of "The Spirit of Vatican II". They put forth information that wasn't part of Vatican II at all, but convinced their students and the parents that it was, so folks are confused right now as to exactly what the Church DOES teach! I even had to correct our Associate Pastor in a meeting for parents of kids who were studying for First Penance when he said that, according to Catholic teaching, that Hitler may not have committed a mortal sin when he ordered that Jews and others be exterminated, because he didn't believe, in his conscience, that he was doing anything wrong. He was spouting the idea of 'subsidiarity' that he'd been taught in the Seminary. That was all I could stand and I stood up and flat out told him that he was WRONG! Most folks looked at me like I was some sort of freak because I was 'questioning Father', but I'd had enough of his ignorance, and didn't want him infecting the parents of these young kids with it. Several people came up to me later and thanked me for having the guts to do it.
Given the ignorance of someone who supposedly has the knowledge of what the Church teaches, I'm not surprised that the majority of Catholics don't understand either the charism of celibacy, or the fact that there were men who were willing to join the priesthood and take on that charism, but, in some areas of the country, they were not being allowed to enter the Seminaries. Folks who had taken over the 'discernment committees' of some Seminaries were making sure that men who were 'overly orthodox' didn't make it in. They didn't want men who might be 'immature' to be allowed into the priesthood, but they didn't seem to mind that some of the men they DID allow were openly homosexual, and got their jollies out of propositioning other Seminarians who didn't share their lifestyle. Several young men who went to the Seminary under the sponsorship of my brother in law encountered this situation until he raised hell with the Bishop and they put someone else in charge of the place. It has changed for the better since that happened, and there have been many more young men willing to accept the sacrifice of celibacy since they saw, during the reign of John Paul II, that the Church was becoming more serious about the teachings of Jesus, and that service in her was worthy of their sacrifice.
Good for your brother-in-law! (Is he a FReeper? Even part-time?)
You're off topic and making personal attacks. Perhaps you have a comment about Cardinal O'Brien?
I think Catholics understand the value of celibacy. They just don't see that it's a necessity to require it of priests.
"Let him accept it who can."
LOL! Not yet. Sir SuziQ bought him a new computer, but b-i-l is waiting for the Seminarian who is coming to the Parish for the summer to help him set it up and get it going. B-i-l is sort of computer phobic, as this point. He's afraid he's gonna break the thing, but SSQ bought him an extended warranty and computer help if he needs it as part of the purchase package, so we hope he'll give it a try. He's an avid reader, and there will be LOTS available for him online.
That's a dead cert.
O'Brien should be kicked out or forced into retirement. I'm not off topic at all. You're taking refuge in the rhetorical shadow of a heterodox scoundrel. Catholics on this forum already know about O'Brien, but your choice to post this crap here speaks volumes about you.
Let him who cannot accept it leave the Church, get married, and celebrate "mass" with seperated "Old Catholic" churches while conducting a propaganda campaign online to change the Church to fit his own personal ambition.
Crap? It's news. You can certainly disagree with what O'Brien says. But let's leave it to the Moderators to decide what can and cannot be posted.
You're off topic again.
It's all on topic in the great sense of what the heterodox AmChurchers want to do to the Church and what motivates them.
Of course you want to call it "off topic." You don't want anyone to think of these issues in such terms. It impinges on your PR program.
That's a fine strawman you've got there, but I will point out I never said this cannot be posted.
Au contraire, I'm glad you posted it. It reveals your motives.
If a married clergy is heterodox, does that make the Eastern Rites heterodox?
Of course they don't because it's never been explained to them. That's the problem with a lot of priests who were in the Seminary from the early 70's on. They were actually told, by their professors and others, that they didn't have to worry about celibacy, since the Church would likely change the rule in the near future. As far as I'm concerned, any man who received the Sacrament of Holy Orders depending on that should be released of his vows because he went into his vocation under false pretenses. The profs were WRONG, and they knew it. They were projecting their own ideas and hopes, and probably ruined some good men's lives in the process. Men in my b-i-l's class tried to tell the younger men that their teachers were wrong, but they didn't want to listen, they wanted to believe that they'd be able to marry. I don't believe any of the men in my b-i-l's class later left the priesthood to marry. A couple left from the Seminary before becoming priests, and are now good men still involved with the Church in their own Parishes and Dioceses.
It would seem that instead of pushing a change in the rule of celibacy, there should instead be a push for the married diaconate, along with a change in the way Parishes are run. More lay people need to take on responsibilities from the priest with which he shouldn't be burdened, leaving him the time to do that for which he was ordained; celebrate Mass, provide Pastoring to people, and instruct Parishoners in the teachings of Jesus through his homilies at Mass, and by the life he leads. This is what Vatican II was really pushing for; lay people to be active in the running of their Parishes, not trying to fiddle with the teachings of the Church.
The "Old Catholic" angle was the original assumption of Fr. Schumacher, the Vicar General. He has since stated that is not the case. But he is adamant that no active deacon of the state of Texas, who is canonically permitted to present themselves publicly as such, posts on this Forum as a deacon.
Well, thanks for the update.
The mystery lives on, I guess.
Where did you get the idea I want to play your silly games?
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