VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A leading liberal Roman Catholic group urged the Vatican on Tuesday to rethink its emphasis on vocation if it wanted to tackle the grave shortage of priests around the world.
But the call by the "We Are Church" movement for reforms is to place an emphasis on prayer and the personal call to holiness.
"We hope that all faithful Catholics might invest their time to help cure the vocation’s crisis by spending an hour of week before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration and to ‘Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest.’ We also hope that Catholics by leading of life of holiness and obedience to the faith will both provide good example to their families and neighbors and that they will not become stumbling blocks to those who are called. We must look at our own lives and determine if we are being generous to the Lord with children and that we encourage our own children to the priesthood or religious life if they have these vocations. Through the 2000 years of Mother Church God has always called forth sufficient numbers of men to the priesthood and can we doubt the that same thing is happening now? The decline in the acceptance of those with vocations to meet the call must have been stifled by externals. We must find ways to help those called to religious life to both recognize and accept the vocations God has already called them to."
Okay, I am sure you have caught on the above is a bogus news story. Here unfortunately is the all too predictable real one that is at least accurately titled "Dissident Catholics want married, female priesthood"
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A leading liberal Roman Catholic group urged the Vatican on Tuesday to rethink its rule on celibacy and allow women’s ordination if it wanted to tackle the grave shortage of priests around the world.
As a synod of Catholic bishops got underway, even a leader of a tiny Eastern Rite Catholic Church challenged his brothers in the Western Church, saying he believed there was no theological basis for the rule that priests cannot marry.
But the call by the "We Are Church" movement for reforms to jettison traditions almost one millennium old in celibacy’s case and two millennia old for the ban on women priests will likely fall on deaf ears.
"We Are Church," a dissident lay movement that began in Austria in 1995 and now has chapters in over 20 countries, made its appeal in an open letter to more than 250 Catholic bishops gathered for a synod on the theme of the Eucharist.
"We hope this great opportunity will not be lost," said the appeal issued at a news conference near the Vatican, where the meeting is being held over the next three weeks.
It said the Vatican, headquarters for the church of 1.1 billion people, was resting on "already prescribed nostrums" instead of innovations in order to deal with the shortage of priests.
The group said that the lack of priests was "caused by the law of celibacy presently in force" and urged the Vatican to drop clerical celibacy, to ordain women and allow so-called "viri probati" to become priests.
16 comments
You got me. I believed it for too many sentences. I thought I was dreaming, but you shook me awake.
Do those people actually think they sound logical, sincere and convincing? So shrill, so demanding!
Help me out–what’s “viri probati”? My fake Latin translates that as men on probation. There’s a couple of those working at the gas station nearby…not sure they’d be top-notch priests!
Yes, that’s not too far off; “viri probati” refers to married men of “proven character and holiness”, which some bishops have asked for as well. Perhaps this would entail an extension of the already-in-place pastoral provision, which gives permission to married clergy converts from certain denominations to become Catholic priests. Many of these clergy converts would be considered “viri probati” due to their previous roles as clergy prior to their conversion… their former lives, of course, are open to serious scrutiny by Rome.
Yay for truth in headlines.
Sadly, the “make a holy hour” part gave the story away as boguy. Just today, however, however, I picked up a “St. John Vianney Vocations Society” prayer book advocating prayer, adoration, morning offering, and the like on behalf of vocations. Amazingly enough, this was supported by our diocese! There are some good things out there, despite these VOTF and We Are Church dissidents.
I’m so gullible. You actually had me up until I hit the word “obedience” and then I said, “Wa-a-a-i-i-t a minute! That’s a mortal sin to utter the obey word to a liberal Catholic.”
We want “a married, female priesthood”? Check out the Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, or whatever that guy is on “7th Heaven” who spends all of about 3 minutes a week at his non-denominational church. They’ve all got clergy who can get married and be female, and they’ve all got problems getting young men & women to enter “the ministry”.
Check out the Byzantines and Orthodox in the United States, and you find a married clergy who make our vocation problems look small.
The problem is not the “evil, oppressive, patriarchal Church”, the problem is commitment. Young people today have been conditioned to believe nothing has to last forever. Add to that the cruddy example of some priests who live more like playboy bachelors than “other Christs”, and you see why we’re at where we’re at.
“We Are Church”? More like “We Used To Be Church Like 35 Years Ago”…
did you see Cardinal Mahoney’s recent item in the Tidings? About how the ‘vocation crisis’ is actually God’s gift to the church because we can now have female ‘parish administrators’?
We left Lost Angels in 1997. I can’t see us returning short of major divine intervention.
There is hope. There are many young people entering seminaries and they are excited about their potential vocation. There are archdioceses in which prayer for an increase in priestly and religious vocations is emphasized. We first need to get young people to understand what consecrated life consists of and why it is a unique and wonderful vocation, and then they will better be able to discern. I for one wasn’t even remotely open to the idea of discerning until I started studying the Theology of the Body and began to understand how each vocation fit into God’s plan for humanity, our relationship with the Church, and our relationships with each other. Anyways, be encouraged. There is hope for the future if we are steadfast to prayer and obedient to God’s teaching through Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.
I am constantly amazed at the silliness of the revisionists. Why don’t they just leave if they are so unhappy? I guess it’s they can’t stand any group not agreeing with them alone, so they can’t leave the Church alone either?
An aside, can someone point me to any church rules, writings, judgements, etc, that actually define the role of the “pastoral administrator?” Until I moved this summer to the Rochester, NY Dioseses I’d never heard of it before. I am especially interested what the limits of this role are supposed to be in the scense when and when not the role is isn’t supposed to be used.
I was a bit surprised that the Pastoral Administrator (a Nun) was giving the sermon, even though there was a priest at the service.
Thanks
Lay persons are not allowed to give homilies/sermons.
According to my understanding, parochial administrators are in charge of the legal/financial/etc. administration of the parish. It has nothing to do with leading the congregation in prayer/worship, which is the priest’s proper job (along with proclaiming the Gospel, etc.). As far as my memory goes, a priest who is not a pastor (at least in Montreal if you’re named pastor they can’t make you move before something like 6 years) is called a parochial administrator, unless someone else has the job. There is nothing inherently wrong with lay persons taking on the job, and it frees the priests to do the specifically priestly parts of the job. However, it would kind of make more sense, I think, if it were permanent deacons who had the job, since that’s more or less why they were originally created.
“…even a leader of a tiny Eastern Rite Catholic Church challenged his brothers in the Western Church, saying he believed there was no theological basis for the rule that priests cannot marry..”
The Eastern Catholic Church leader referred to was His Beatitude Patriarch Gregory III, the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch.
From Catholic Answers Forums:
“According to priests who briefed reporters on the synod proceedings in several languages on Tuesday, the debate produced a coarse exchange late Monday between Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, the general relator of the synod, and Melkite Patriarch Gregoire III Laham.
�Celibacy has no theological foundation� in the priesthood, Laham said, responding to an opening speech by Scola that cited �profound theological motives� for not allowing married men to enter the priesthood.
�In the Eastern Church married priests are admitted,� Laham said, adding that �marriage is a symbol of union between Christ and the church.�
Responding to Laham, Scola asserted that �in the Latin church theological reasons exist� for maintaining the policy on celibacy. He did not elaborate on those reasons. He then added, �The synod is a place to explore the Mystery, not to give directions on its use.�”
The excerpt above came from this:
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=78731
What Patriarch Gregory actually said was that celibacy (men must not be married if they want to become priests) has no theological justification. The MSM (as usual) made celibacy mean “priests cannot marry”, which is a diferent kettle of borscht.
Allowing priests to marry which is something His Beatitude Gregory III will never dream of implementing in the Melkite Church in defiance of the Tradition of the Church (both East and West) for nearly two millenia now.
I’ve always wondered, when people say that allowing married priests will solve the “vocation crisis”, why they don’t point to the massive number of married men who switch to the Eastern rites so that they can be ordained. I mean, those Eastern rite seminaries must be packed, if only with former Latin rite Catholics who desperately want to be married priests.
Oh wait…people aren’t really doing that so much…I wonder why not.
Um, I always say to these exclusionists; “But, We Are Church too!!!
We are!!! Really!
I don’t know what they are, but we are church. Perhaps they should call themselves “We chose not to be Church.”
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