Sandro Magister at his blog Chiesa, suggests that celibacy may be next up on the Papal chopping block:
ROME, January 12, 2016 – An exchange of letters, a conversation, and an innovation already become law confirm the intentions of Pope Francis to extend the presence of married clergy in the Catholic Church, as already anticipated in this article from www.chiesa:
> The Next Synod Is Already in the Works. On Married Priests (9.12.2015)
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The exchange of letters took place through the initiative of a high-ranking German theologian, Wunibald Müller, 65, who in December of 2013 wrote an open letter to the pope, prominently displayed on the official website of the episcopal conference of Germany under the title “Pope Francis, open the door,” asking him to remove the stricture of celibacy for priests.
Müller is not just anyone. He is a psychologist and a prolific writer. He founded and directs the “Recollectio-Haus” at the Benedictine abbey of Münsterschwarzach in the diocese of Würzburg, for the care of priests and religious in existential crisis, financed by another seven dioceses (Augsburg, Freiburg, Limburg, Mainz, Munich-Freising, Paderborn, Rottenburg-Stuttgart) and with the spiritual assistance of the most widely read Benedictine not only in Germany but in the world, Anselm Grün.
Müller’s stance is represented well by the titles of his undergraduate and doctoral theses: “The priest as spiritual guide of homosexual persons” and “Homosexuality, a challenge for theology and the care of souls.”
Not having received a reply to his first missive, in April of 2014 Müller took another shot with a second letter to Jorge Mario Bergoglio. And almost twenty months later, the pope finally responded to him.
Last November 25, the “Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur,” the press agency of the German bishops, published news of the correspondence and of signals of “openness” from the pope. And on January 4, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” interviewed Müller and asked him for more details:
Q: You wrote a letter to Pope Francis.
A: I asked for a relaxation of celibacy. There should be married priests as well as celibate, homosexual as well as heterosexual.
Q: And the response?
A: Francis thanked me for my reflections, which made me very happy. He says that my proposals cannot be realized for the universal Church, but I think that this does not rule out solutions at the regional level. Francis has asked the Brazilian bishop Erwin Kräutler to find out if in his diocese there are married men, of proven experience, who could be ordained priests. The pope is seeking places where something can be changed that can then develop a dynamic of its own.
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Erwin Kräutler (in the photo), the bishop who is retiring for reasons of age from the immense Amazonian prelature of Xingu but is still very active as secretary of the episcopal commission for the Amazon, is precisely the Brazilian bishop who a few days before Christmas had yet another conversation with Pope Francis about the possibility of recourse to a married clergy in territories dramatically devoid of celibate clergy.
Vatican Radio covered the news of the conversation between him and the pope in an interview with Kräutler on December 22:
Q: What did the pope say about communities without a priest to celebrate the Eucharist?
A: He told me that we must make concrete proposals. Even bold, daring proposals. He told me that we must have the courage to speak. He will not take the initiative on his own, but in listening to people. He wants the creation of a consensus and the beginning of attempts in a few regions aimed at making it possible for the people to celebrate the Eucharist. If one reads the apostolic exhortation of John Paul II “Dies Domini,” this says very clearly that there is no Christian community if there is no gathering around the altar. According to the will of God, then, we must open up ways so that this may happen. In Brazil a commission is already working on what these ways may be.
Q: So what should we expect on this point from the pontificate of Francis?
A: A turning point. Even more, we are already at a turning point. I believe we have already come to a point of no return. Even the next pope or the one after him will not be able to turn back from what Francis stands for and is doing today.
In a previous article of July 12, 2015 in the Italian magazine “Credere,” Kräutler had confirmed that “the pope asked the commission for the Amazon for a concrete proposal as far back as last April,” and since then “we have been hypothesizing a few ways for all communities to have the possibility of participating in the Eucharist more than three times a year.”
Among these “ways” is precisely the ordination of married men, in order to compensate for the fact that – as Kräutler went on to say – “for 800 communities we have only 30 priests, and the region is truly very vast.”
It must be said, however, that the lack of vocations to the priesthood in Brazil could also be due to the terrible example that part of the clergy of that country are giving, if there is truth in the depiction provided a while ago by a Catholic magazine as authoritative and unexceptionable as “Il Regno”:
“The faithful have no alternative but to gather in church to celebrate a sort of priestless Mass even in the cities where there is no lack of priests. On Sunday they could fan out to the various churches, but instead they prefer to concelebrate among themselves and leave the faithful to the mercy of unbridled fanatics, when the fanatics are not the celebrants themselves, who sometimes modify the liturgical texts as they please because they are not even capable of understanding them, who turn the singing of the Sanctus into a dance rhythm, who do not commemorate the pope, the bishop, the deceased. Priests so shiftless that typically on Mondays, like the barbers in Italy, they take a day off and do not celebrate Mass, not even in the cathedrals. Or do not visit the sick, do not bring viaticum, do not celebrate funerals. And they cannot always justify themselves by bringing up the scarcity of their numbers.”
Go here to read the rest. Anyone surprised by this?
Trying not to be negative here….however it sure seems like a case of planting weeds in the Master’s field. “Pope gone Wild.”
The celibacy rule is something that could be legitimately changed…unlike giving communion to those living in adultery (divorced/remarried), habitual fornicators, abortionists, etc. But the vast majority of Catholics (and non Catholics) probably don’t understand that.
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Most think the contraception ban has been overturned long ago, or don’t realize we should be doing some kind of penitentual act (like not eating meat) on Fridays.
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I honestly think Francis means well, but this isn’t going to help the Church convert the masses to Christ
I don’t see why we don’t just cut to the chase and relax the requirements in those dogmatic tablets Moses brought down from the mountain. There’s hardly a word on them that speaks about “mercy.” How pastoral could that Moses guy have been?
I do not have an objection to married clergy. After all, St Peter the first Pope was married. And St Paul gave instructions on deacons, presbyters and bishops being the husband of one wife in some of his epistles. Further, the Eastern Orthodox permit married deacons and priests, and there are Anglican priests who were married and enter the Roman Catholic Church to contine to serve as priests (Fr Dwight Longenecker comes to mind). Additionaly, Eastern or Byzantine Catholic Churches in union with Rome permit married deacons and priests.
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However, the problem I do have is whom the Pope consults in order to address the issue of married clergy. He consults an advocate of sodomite perversion. Why does he not talk with Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church about this issue since that Patriarch has married clergy? I will tell you why. Pope Francis hates the conservativism that Patriarch Shevchuk represents and loves heterodoxy. He loves the popular accolades that come from being in the forefront of change. The Obama FORWARD icon comes to mind. This isn’t about doing what’s right for the priesthood. It’s about being noticed and praised for modernizing the Church and bringing Her into the 21st century.
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I am wrong for this, but I think of this Pope in the same way that I think of Barack Hussein Obama. Not everything the MSM purports to him being liberal progressive is true, but enough of it is true to make me wish for his replacement on the Seat of Peter. That however will happen in God’s own time.
PS, Excellent commentary from Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment blogsite:
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http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2016/01/married-priests.html?m=1
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I hadn’t thought of what he points out, that the iintroduction of married clergy into the Latin priesthood is done under the program of gradualism: get people to accept this innovation and eventually you’ll have womyn priests, married sodomite priests, etc.
Permitting married secular priests does not mandate it for everyone and religious order priesthood will always be there for those who want the strength that comes from vows and being near others in vows. The piece shows that there are parts of the world that are very undeserved compared to us…very awful. And if Brazilian priests are so non moral in the cities, the exodus of Catholics to pentecostal groups has a reason we never see in the Catholic media general reports.
Once again…we need Popes who do administration and firings 35 hours a week not one hour a month because of their author ambitions. Author Popes for decades are why there is so much chaos. The situation in Brazil would not exist under a Pope who looked forward to administrating each new day and all day. He’d rearrange some of those priests in Rio into the Amazon….instead of authoring yet another mostly unread document.
While the discipline may be overturned I have only the example of the many faithful priests I know to question when they would have time for a wife and children.
Or do people think seminaries are going to be bursting at the seams the moment the discipline is changed?
This is more lowering of standards.
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A line from the movie “Black Hawk Down” comes to mind, “What could go wrong?”
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We’ll see if the priest divorce rate equals the civilians’ divorce rates.
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They will learn first-hand the worries and toils of maintaining the sexual and family situation. And, they may as well be as miserable as the rest of us.
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Married priests can return to preaching about Hell. They will have personal experience of misery.
“Or do people think seminaries are going to be bursting at the seams the moment the discipline is changed?’
Ken, when the hordes find out that the seminaries provide diaper changing stations and free baby-sitting they’ll have to expand everywhere.
Isn’t a priest already married? His flock and his Saviour is his spouse. Father is a title that fits the priest. Husband is limiting the bond and commitment priest are to have with their flock. My two cents.
Yes, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, that is my thought as well: I don’t have a problem with married priests, but I fear married priests becoming a prelude to women priests, etc.
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Christ chose his disciples from a cross section of society-fisherman, tax collector, doctor, and yeah, even a guy who turned out to be a thief and betrayed him. Some were younger, some were a bit older. One was a horrid persecutor of his apostles. Some married, some not.
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I’d like to see a day when we return to that kind of thing. I think there are a few good married men (whose children are pretty much out of the house) out there who could do quite well in the priesthood as a second career.
Like most here, I have no temperamental objection to the idea of married clergy. But if the past fifty years has taught us anything, it should be to distrust our own temperaments when it comes to altering ancient disciplines and traditions of the Church. Many people were likewise open to the ideas of reforming the liturgy, or to adopting a more welcoming stance towards modernity, but these were instances (among many others) in which they should have distrusted their own temperaments.
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We are in Chesterton’s field, gazing at a fence that someone erected several centuries ago. Why is the fence there? Beats us. It’s a little ramshackle; surely it would do no harm to tear it down and replace it with something a little more up to date? After all, we modern men certainly know better than the old fellow who built it all those years ago.
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We should also remember that, according to the law of the Latin Rite, all clerics are required to maintain perpetual continence. This law, along with many others, has fallen into desuetude over the past few decades, but it remains on the books until a pope decides to repeal it. Do we really want to open that can of worms?
I am completely opposed to doing away with the celibacy requirement for Latin Rite priests.
What does it say about the quality of a man’s possible vocation that he
would only pursue it if it’s made less demanding? It doesn’t seem that
such a man is wiling to follow the Lord’s call without counting the cost to
himself.
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I’ve long believed that our priest shortage is an engineered famine, with
the endgame being fourfold: exclude future priests who are insufficiently
on board with the progressive agenda, normalize lay control of parishes
and make Father just another parish employee who happens to dispense
Sacraments, jettison celibacy, and– the holy grail for progressives– ordain
women. The first two goals have already seen some success.
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This push to jettison celibacy is just the reaction of a Church leadership that
lacks the courage to examine the real reasons why there is a shortage of
priests.
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/increase-in-ordinations-the-result-of-faithfulness-and-orthodoxy
The pendulum is swinging back.
I hope the link will encourage you to keep praying for vocation’s and religious life.
Hours of Holy Eucharist Adoration are paying off praise be to God.
Agree with Donald
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“He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of this world how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your profit, not to cast a snare upon you, but for that which is decent and which may give you power to attend upon the Lord without impediment.“
Excuse my link-age…the home page will suffice. Go to second article from the top….if you wish.
Well celibacy is an evangelical counsel intimately linked to the priesthood. Although the East has married priests, the priest par excellence in each diocese, the bishop, is a celibate. Also, a simple priest must be married before Holy Orders and cannot re-marry if widowed. In the East, this rule also applies to deacons. It also applied in the West but I think that that was changed. Moreover, the discipline for all priests in the West to be celibate has been more or less applied since patristic times. The tradition is that Peter, although married, lived like a celibate after Pentecost at least. The practice of living as brother in sister to dedicate oneself to prayer is known both East and West.
The fact is the meaning of the evangelical counsels are totally lost in the West. The ascetic meaning of it, the surrender to Our Lord, the willingness to act as an eschatological sign, the superiority of the celibate state are all taboo in the West. The best you get is blah blah blah about how it frees up the priest.
I know the Orthodox intimately as my wife is a devout Russian Orthodox and we are very involved in several communities. The Orthodox priests I know are wonderful and faithful and have wonderful families. But the ethos of the Orthodox church reveres holy celibacy in an intense way. LOL, I remember a Russian priest presiding at his daughter’s wedding whose sermon mentioned that celibacy was the superior state of life vis a vis marriage!
This is yet more vandalism by Bergoglio.
I’d say this is more of the usual, agenda-driven suspects not letting a “crisis” go to waste,
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but that’d be too political.
It’s another example of the fundamentally self-aggrandizing character of this Pope. Gotta put his greasy fingers on everything.
Clinton,
BINGO, your final paragraph nailed it.
Karl
Agree with Cllinton and Karl. Can’t see how many parishes could afford a married priest and his family. Would like to hear from some Roman rite priests on this subject of celibacy.
Also from Eastern rite married priests on juggling the two vocations.
Am open to married priests with some reservations., keeping in mind the USA is not the upper Amazon.
I am definitely opposed to women priests or homosexual priests of any gender. Even altar girls.
Married priests? No way!
Most of us know the Eastern Rite already employs …
hetero celibate priests (fingers crossed)
homo celibate priests (fingers crossed)
married priests (in fact, have in our parish)
I suspect the concerns not married priests per se, but around crackin’ the door further for more adverse liberalism of the 70s to creep further in.
Some awesome comments in the combox on this subject. Donald and Clinton, I’m on board with you. I won’t try to add my two cents worth, since I’m from Wyoming, and that means all of you are smarter than I (Unless of course, there is someone on here who is from Colorado) am.
“since I’m from Wyoming, and that means all of you are smarter than I (Unless of course, there is someone on here who is from Colorado) am.”
Comment of the week James! Take ‘er away Sam!
James, I wish I was from Wyoming. It is one of the five happiest states and its public finances are on a firm footing, among the top ten. Plus, you Westerners all (notice I separated the “you” and “all”) are good folks. You guys even like Yankees.
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Likely, I won’t abscond to New Zealand (too far and they wouldn’t have me, anyway), Wyoming is high on the list.
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Do yous have an extradition treaty with New York?
It is one of the happiest states because it is out West! Western states are generally happy ones.