Benedict XVI, top aides to discuss Milingo and celibacy
Print Friendly VersionBy JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York
Last night, the Vatican Press Office released the following communiqué:
“The Holy Father has convened for Thursday, November 16, a meeting of the heads of offices of the Roman Curia to examine the situation created following the disobedience of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, and to undertake a reflection on requests for dispensation from celibacy as well as requests for readmission to priestly ministry presented by married priests in the course of the most recent years. Other topics are not anticipated on the schedule.”
Italian reports suggested that the meeting would also discuss recent rumors that Pope Benedict XVI is considering issuing a motu proprio, or a document under his personal authority, authorizing wider use of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. One report indicated that a paper on the subject would be presented by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, created by Pope John Paul II to work with Catholics attached to the old Mass, especially the followers of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The Vatican statement, however, appears to contradict those reports, suggesting that the discussion will be confined to Milingo and celibacy.
On Sept. 24, Milingo ordained four bishops without authorization from Pope Benedict XVI, and on Sept. 26 the Vatican responded by declaring Milingo and the four new bishops excommunicated. Milingo has nevertheless vowed to press on in his struggle to persuade Pope Benedict XVI to accept a married priesthood.
Milingo has resumed living with his own wife, Maria Sung, whom he wed in a 2001 mass ceremony presided over by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Movement.
Each year roughly 300 requests for dispensation from the priestly state arrive in the Vatican, though the majority of priests who leave to become married never go through this formal process. There are an estimated 150,000 priests who left to become married worldwide, and many have indicated their willingness to return to priestly service should permission be granted.
The subject of priestly celibacy came up repeatedly during the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist in October 2005. Pope Benedict XVI is now preparing the concluding apostolic exhortation from the synod.
The synod’s final proposition on celibacy was the following:
“The Synod Fathers have affirmed the importance of the inestimable gift of ecclesiastical celibacy in the practice of the Latin Church. With reference to the magisterium, in particular Vatican II and the recent popes, the Fathers have asked that the reasons for the relationship between celibacy and priestly ordination be illustrated adequately to the faithful, in full respect for the traditions of the Eastern churches. Some made reference to the viri probati, but this hypothesis was evaluated as a path not to follow.”
The phrase viri probati refers to “tested married men,” meaning men who are pillars of their communities, well-known for their personal morality and their knowledge of church doctrine and practice, who might be called into priestly service.
Pope Benedict XVI followed the synod debates closely, however, and is well aware that the language of the final proposition in some ways did not do justice to the complexities of the discussion on the floor.
There was general agreement among participants that mandatory celibacy in the Western church is not the cause of the priest shortages that affect many parts of the Catholic world. Secularization and the general reluctance of modern men and women to make lifelong commitments, participants believe, are the deeper forces at work, noting that many Christian denominations with married clergy or female clergy are also experiencing shortages. Moreover, numerous interventions from bishops from Eastern rite churches, which already have married priests, offered powerful witness to the practical difficulties created by such a system. Many of these bishops warned that married priests sometimes experience hardship in balancing their commitments to their families and their parishes, that bishops often find it difficult to economically support priests with families, and that it is much more difficult to move married priests to new assignments when their wives have jobs and their children are in schools in a given location.
Further, at least in many parts of the developed world, the priesthood is not just a spiritual vocation but also in some ways a profession requiring specialized training and competence. It’s not clear, some bishops have warned, that the viri probati would necessarily bring the skills and background that Catholics have come to expect of their priests.
None of this is to suggest, however, that participants believed there are no situations in which the viri probati might merit further consideration. Several synod fathers have mentioned areas in the developing world, such as rural areas of Latin America or the Pacific Islands, where isolated communities strung out over vast distances often go without priests for long periods of times, perhaps months. Participants were struck by the repeated appeals of bishops facing such situations, and regard them as requiring creative pastoral solutions. In those cases, some participants felt, there may be good reasons for considering the viri probati as a potential solution.
In such cases, however, participants appeared to agree that the ball is in the court of individual bishops and bishops’ conferences, rather than the synod, to approach the pope with a recommendation. The consensus seemed to be that as a matter of the general discipline of the Western church, celibacy should be upheld, but that in individual cases exceptions are imaginable.
Cardinal Thomas Williams of New Zealand, for example, said this to me in a February 2006 interview:
“In the end, it was clear that the ordination of the viri probati was not going to get majority support in the form of a proposition, in part because of the views of some of the bishops from the Curia,” Williams said. “The decision was to live to battle in another arena on another day. Some felt, ‘How bad do things have to get before we can get people to listen?’ Some bishops are very concerned. They have to send consecrated hosts in quantity in biscuit tins with pilots on island-hopping planes, or with the skippers of fishing boats, to be handed over to catechists, in order to be sure that people have the Eucharist. This is happening in Papua New Guinea, in the Solomon Islands, in other Pacific Islands. These places would be isolated without their airstrips. In New Guinea, some missionaries have to trek for three days to reach their communities.”
Benedict XVI has long been aware of the debate.
In the 1997 interview that became Salt of the Earth, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger discussed the issue of celibacy at length. At that time, he said he did not anticipate married priests in the Catholic Church, “at least not in the foreseeable future,” as anything other than exceptional cases (such as converts from Anglicanism or Lutheranism).
“One ought not to declare that any custom of the Church’s life, no matter how deeply anchored and well founded, is wholly absolute,” Ratzinger said then.
“To be sure, the church will have to ask herself the question again and again … But I think that given the whole history of Western Christianity and the inner vision that lies at the basis of this whole, the church should not believe that she will easily gain much by resorting to this uncoupling [of priesthood and celibacy]; rather in any case she will lose if she does so.”
Privately, some Vatican sources expressed irritation to NCR that Milingo has apparently succeeded in “goading” a response from Benedict XVI. These officials voiced doubt that the Zambian prelate actually has the capacity to muster a schism on the order of that triggered by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre after the Second Vatican Council, and hence wondered why the pope appears to be taking his defection seriously.
Others, however, argued that Milingo at best provides a catalyst for a discussion over celibacy – which, as the Synod of Bishops suggests, poses much deeper issues than Milingo’s personal fate.
CS: There are no doctrinal
CS: There are no doctrinal reasons in the Tradition which require mandatory priestly celibacy.
>>That is absolutely correct.
CS:This is only a man-made law of the Church
>>That is absolutely false. It is an example of the power of binding and loosing which comes directly from heaven. It is therefore NOT "man made". It is, however, subject to change under direction of the same charism of the Spirit, precisely because, as you said above, "(t)here are no doctrinal reasons in the Tradition which require mandatory priestly celibacy."
CS:which can be changed by the Church
>>through the power of binding and loosing granted her from heaven
CS:and will be changed by the Church.
>>If I were a betting man, and you had two milion dollars, I would make you a millionaire :-)
Agreement on most
Agreement on most everything, but a question about your argument about "not man made" and the connection of decision-making as a power of binding and loosing. How do you understand the power of binding and loosing as a charism of the Spirit? Matthew 16 is a charged chapter, surely, and is often used to explain such magesterium decisions as these. I find the extension of preaching God's forgiveness into the arena of practices and sacraments fascinating. I'm interested in your understanding of this broadening of binding and loosing and the keys of the kingdom.
As to binding and loosing:
As to binding and loosing:
Even as early as Clement's second epistle (circa 96 AD), we have a wonderfully clear indication of the meaning attached to "binding and loosing" in the Apostolic age. Clement represents Peter as appointing him his successor, having him say:
"I communicate to him the power of binding and loosing so that, with respect to everything which he shall ordain in the earth, it shall be decreed in the heavens; for he shall bind what ought to be bound and loose what ought to be loosed as knowing the rule of the church."
So, in addition to the more familiar notion of "binding and loosing" in regard to sins, the earlier, Judaic notion of "binding and loosing" also applies here to Church disciplines, and this is attested by an Apostolic Father.
The Holy Spirit ratifies the decisions taken by Clement "as knowing the rule of the Church".
Also:
"Whatever be the primary signification of this metaphor in the Aramaic language, these words as used by Christ, as is evident from the context and from Christian tradition, meant that He was to confer upon the rulers of His Church the power to bind the faithful to the observance of laws and to loose them from impediments to eternal happiness, especially from sin and its consequent debt of punishment. "
New Catholic Dictionary
Here again, both the aspect of sins, and of Church practices, is in view.
Since we know with complete assurance that God, the Author of Scripture, has ratified these acts of binding and loosing (Matthew 16:18ff), then it follows that they are more than merely "man made laws", even in those many cases where a specific dogma or doctrine is not involved.
Transfinitum, I think you're
Transfinitum, I think you're right as to the perspectives of the Bishops of Rome in this matter, although I'd go further and say that they extended the binding and loosing to every aspect of social and political life, not just religious observances.
I'm curious how you view something that has puzzled me for years: Iranaeus telling Victor he was wrong to cut off communion with the asiatic quartodecimans:
St. Irenaeus, while condemning the Quartodeciman practice, nevertheless reproaches Pope Victor (c. 189-99) with having excommunicated the Asiatics too precipitately and with not having followed the moderation of his predecessors.
As I understand the history, Victor retracted. Did he feel he had "bound and loosed" in error, or was there something else that sort of negated it? Was Iranaeus wrong? If he was right, how did he know he was right when Victor had said "this is the way it's gonna be"? I'm truly just curious, I'm not trying to trap you. Obviously I haven't been curious enough to actually go back and try to work it through on my own.
It seems to me, Crazy
It seems to me, Crazy Diamond, that we have here a virtual reenactment of the great confrontation of Peter by Paul, as recounted in the second chapter of Galatians:
11 But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. 12 For before that some came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them who were of the circumcision. 13 And to his dissimulation the rest of the Jews consented, so that Barnabas also was led by them into that dissimulation. 14 But when I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all: If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as the Jews do, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
>> So, heaven will not prevent a Pope from undertaking actions, even of the character of binding and loosing, which are imprudent, or even blameful. Victor's act carried more of the "binding and loosing" flavor than Peter's merely up and sitting somewhere else, but Paul rightly grasps that this action will be interpreted as binding. And Irenaeus, while not denying the power of Victor to bind the faithful, does not shirk his duty to "withstand Peter to his face", if the Pope should bind and loose imprudently or even blamefully.
It seems that heaven, while ratifying Peter's bindings and loosings,also has a Plan B at hand, should the Big Fisherman get it wrong.
CD: As I understand the history, Victor retracted.
>>Yes, as did Peter.
Did he feel he had "bound and loosed" in error, or was there something else that sort of negated it?
>> In both cases, imprudent actions by Popes with the heaven-ratified power of binding and loosing, were reversed by those same Popes, under the.....er...further prompting of heaven.
:-)
CD: Was Iranaeus wrong?
>>Apparently not.
CD: If he was right, how did he know he was right when Victor had said "this is the way it's gonna be"?
>>Same way Paul knew he had to stand up to Peter: he "saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel". The Holy Spirit used the family to correct the Papa. But it's still Papa's call, in the end.
CD:I'm truly just curious, I'm not trying to trap you. Obviously I haven't been curious enough to actually go back and try to work it through on my own.
>>Well, there's my two cents worth. How shall I make the invoice out? :-)
So much for binding and
So much for binding and loosing, binding and loosing, binding and loosing; It sounds so 1-900ish. The priests are getting a hard enough time as it is.
... the greatest of these ...
Huh? Could you expand? I'm
Huh? Could you expand? I'm missing your point... are you for/against/indifferent to what we were saying?
I think transfinitum would say the binding and loosing is part of "the greatest of these..."
The path that leads to
The path that leads to priesthood is long enaugh to have very mature priests, if those in charge of formation are capable and loyal enaugh to follow the criteria of the Church regarding admision and promotion.
So celibacy is not a problem at all. In fact, failure in priesthood does not seem to be greater than divorce rates.
Besides, it would be a false signal to young people, who at the begining may find hard to decide to be celibate, to tell them that in fact they do not need that to become priests. Why should something so important as priesthood, such a great gift from God, come with no requirement of a very generous self-giving in celibacy?
Cristobal Orrego
Professor of Natural Law
Chile
Why should something so
Why should something so important as priesthood, such a great gift from God, come with no requirement of a very generous self-giving in celibacy?
The priesthood requires a very generous self-giving because it requires that one give one's life for others.
The way one does this is through service to the flock and not through celibacy.
A celibate can be completely ungenerous and non-selfgiving.
Celibacy does not automatically lead to a generous self-giving. Love of God leads to a generous self-giving.
God Bless
Corregos, I certainly agree
Corregos,
I certainly agree that there is a place for celibate priests and would not suggest celibacy be done away with, but I guestion whether or not the gift of a vocation to the priesthood necessarily includes a vocation to be celibate.
I would also question whether the generous self-giving of celibacy is any greater than the generous self-giving of marriage and parenthood.
Furthermore, I question whether or not those who do not experience married life can ever really appreciate the sacrifices and difficulties experienced in raising children. I would suggest the life experience of a celibate clergy is quite different from that of married couples and therefore a married cleric could better identify with the people he (or she) is to minister to.
Viri probati points directly
Viri probati points directly to the church's problem with married priests. Trust. The loss mentioned above, concerning the lack of focus and concentration and sacrifice on the part of married men in their role of shepherd, reveals the true wringing of hands.
Once the church accepts that Jesus placed the trust of his Body in the weakest of men, chosen in fact for their solidly human connection to their friends and family, then our celibate leadership can do the same, and see the availability of roles of all trusted men and women.
To place, no elevate, celibacy primarily under the banner of priesthood negates the powerful commitment men and women can make to this lifestyle of commitment to the community. It also presumes full support for the commitment of married life, simply by relegating a lack of trust in the married.
I suggest that mandatory
I suggest that mandatory celibacy as such is probably not the cause of the Western Church's priest shortage. However, ordinary experience suggests that most men only reach genuine maturity in a married relationship.
Given that celibacy is an integral part of the priestly package in the Western Church, there is a strong likelihood that we are setting up a high proportion of immature young men among our newly ordained priests. No wonder they crash out. Of course some will mature "on the job" but by no means all.
Englishwoman
I find it interesting that
I find it interesting that celibacy discussions always get linked to a priest shortage these days instead of tradition. I remember reading in Charles Morris' book American Catholic that concubinage was very common among priests in the US until the early 20th century, when the bishops worked very hard to eliminate it. And as I understand the history, whatever the requirements for celibacy have been at a given time, there has always been a struggle to implement them. I'm just curious why discussions of priestly celibacy never ask "what is the unchanging tradition that we can actually see in the Christian records?" but rather take today's version of priestly celibacy as a given and only ask if it can be tweaked in minor ways. Maybe there's a foundation that needs to be built on again, instead of treating today's version of priestly celibacy as the bedrock.
Of the dozen or so rites in
Of the dozen or so rites in the Catholic Church, only the Latin Rite requires mandatory priestly celibacy.
There are no doctrinal reasons in the Tradition which require mandatory priestly celibacy.
This is only a man-made law of the Church which can be changed by the Church and will be changed by the Church.
Allowing married priests won't solve the vocations crisis but if a good number of the 150,000 priests who left the priesthood to marry would return if allowed, then this would go a very long way towards allowing the faithful what is their right - access to the sacraments.
God has given us what we need to "feed my lambs" we just need to wake up, change the man-made rules, and allow God to work through the married priests he has so generously provided for us.
God Bless