Married Priests & Harsh facts around the world.
(Note: The article below which
appeared the New York Times highlights various aspects of Married priests,
their global spread -- about 150,000 worldwide – attitude of successive popes
etc. in the context of the on-going debate
on family and married life in the Church. James Kottoor)
ROME — They had
not planned on falling in love, but they did.
They did not want
to become the objects of malicious gossip, but they are. They had not imagined
living a life of furtive affections and secret rendezvous, but that is what has
happened since the woman and the priest defied a Roman Catholic
Church taboo and became romantically involved.
“Some people see
me as a devil, something dirty,” said the woman, who, along with the priest she
is involved with, agreed to discuss their situation, sitting for an interview
at a hotel in a city far from his parish.
They asked to
remain anonymous, fearing further disapproval from their parents, who know, and
the disdain of friends and parishioners, who already suspect that their
friendship is more than platonic.
“I risk losing everything if it
were to come out into the open,” the priest said. Yet they agreed to speak, his
partner said, “because suffering pushes you to do something, to try and change
this injustice.”
An
online search using “in love with a priest” produces blog after blog about
church-crossed lovers, in any number of languages. There are support groups on
social media, including Facebook groups for women. One group of 26 women even
petitioned Pope Francis to change the church’s requirement of celibacy for
priests, and relieve their suffering.
“It’s
really hard to explain this relationship to someone who hasn’t gone through
it,” said one of the women who signed the letter to the pope but did not want
her name printed because she, too, is romantically involved with a priest. “We
wanted to let the pope know that the suffering is widespread.”
She
again wrote to the pope in September just before the Synod of Bishops, aVatican gathering
of some 200 clerics convened to discuss issues faced by families in
contemporary society.
It was
the most closely watched synod in decades, and some Vatican experts drew
parallels with the synod convened by Pope Paul VI in 1971, where the celibacy
requirement for priests was the hot-button issue.
At that
time, after heated discussion, the synod reaffirmed the obligation of celibacy,
and there has been no official review of that position for 40 years. Those who
were hoping the issue would be revisited during October’s synod were
disappointed again.
Yet a
growing number of priest organizations in the United States, Austria, Ireland
and elsewhere continue to press for change.
Challengers
to clerical celibacy point to the shortage of priests worldwide and to studies
that show celibacy is a significant deterrent for young men wanting to enter
the priesthood.
The
statistics collected by the Congregation for the Clergy do
not specify the reasons priests “defect,” but critics of clerical celibacy
suggest it is partly to blame.
While
no numbers are authoritative, Advent, a support group for priests who have left
the ministry in Britain, estimates that about 10,000 men have left the
priesthood to marry in the past 50 years in England and Wales alone.
The
shortage has had significant impact in parishes around the world, said Alex
Walker, the leader of Advent, who left the priesthood to marry.
“Bishops
can keep praying for vocations, or look at what can be done about it,” he said.
“If celibacy is causing a problem they’ll have to allow optional celibacy, and
even recall those priests who have been dispensed.”
Another
group, Married Priests Now, estimates that there are
25,000 men in the United States who have left the priesthood to marry, and
about 150,000 worldwide.
That
group was founded eight years ago by the charismatic former archbishop of
Lusaka, Emmanuel Milingo, who grabbed headlines in 2001 when he was married in
a group wedding presided over by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the
Unification Church.
In a
letter sent to the pope in September 2013, Married Priests Now praised the “new
wind blowing in the Church,” after Francis’ election that year, and noted that:
“It would be nice if the new spirit of reconciliation would include the married
priest.”
Organizations
of liberal Catholics have also been calling for a change to the celibacy rules,
arguing that clerics routinely married in the early centuries of the church.
“We
know that St. Peter was married,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior analyst
at The National Catholic Reporter. “All the apostles were married, so celibacy
isn’t intrinsically connected to the priesthood.”
The
debate took a turn when Pope Benedict XVI decided in 2009 to create a mechanism
for welcoming priests from the Anglican Communion to the Roman Catholic church,
opening the door to clergy with families.
“It
proves that married priests can exist in the church, it doesn’t mean the world
is going to end,” Mr. Walker said.
Those
hoping for a change of heart by the church were encouraged last May when Pope
Francis told reporters that clerical celibacy was an issue open to discussion.
“Celibacy
is not a question of dogma, but rather a rule of life that I greatly
appreciate, as I believe it is a gift for the Church,” the pope said during a
return flight from the Middle East. “But, since it is not a dogma, the door is
always open.”
He
expressed similar sentiments in a 2010 book, “On Heaven and Earth,” written
three years before becoming pope, even as he expressed his personal support for
celibacy.
“Every
time he endorses celibacy, he qualifies it with a ‘for now,’ or ‘for the
moment,’ ” Father Reese said. “At one point he even writes of a hypothetical
review of celibacy. These are all strong signals that he thinks that optional
celibacy could happen.”
While
seeming open to a change in policy, the pope has also exhorted priests to take
their celibacy seriously, and to leave the church if they can’t, in particular
if they have fathered a child.
But for
many priests in serious relationships, leaving the priesthood is a tormented
option. Some priests spoke of the demeaning procedures they must go through to
“defect” from the ministry, made worse by unsupportive bishops who often try to
get them to change their minds, and allow them to transfer to a different
parish.
“The
idea is to recover the priest, in part to avoid scandal, in part because the
clergy is getting older and a bit thin in the ranks,” said Ernesto Miragoli, a
priest who married in 1986 and provides support for other priests pondering
leaving the church.
In
conversations with church experts, priests and the women in relationships with
them, many also pointed to financial uncertainties as a major deterrent to
leaving the ministry.
Some
noted that a theology degree doesn’t have much market value in Italy’s
depressed economy. And others said that in many cases priests who defected
found little financial support from their families, Italy’s de facto welfare
system.
Francesco
Brescia, a Naples-based former priest who provides support to defectors through
Vocatio, an Italian association for married priests, said priests who want to
leave for love frequently contacted him “because returning to civilian life
isn’t easy.”
“And if
it’s hard finding work, it’s twice as hard for a priest who doesn’t have a
trade or usable skills,” he said.
The
priest who agreed to discuss his relationship in the hotel interview conceded
the same concern. “What would I do, unload fruit from a truck?” he asked.
“There’s a crisis and then I am too used to being a priest. I like being a
priest and I think I do it well.”
In
fact, he said he believed his relationship improved his ministry. “Since I am
with her, I am a better priest, because I am calm, relaxed,” he said. “The only
problem is having to sneak around.”
No comments:
Post a Comment