Spanish Church to mull optional celibacy and women priests

Spanish Catholics want Rome to consider talks on the future of the priesthood including optional celibacy, the ordination of women, and also of married men.

Spanish priests celebrate a mass at the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona.

Spanish Catholics want Rome to consider talks on the future of the priesthood including optional celibacy, the ordination of women and also of married men, a key document showed Saturday.

The document, a copy of which was seen by AFP, was unveiled by the CEE Episcopal Conference that groups Spain’s leading bishops at a 600-strong gathering in Madrid.

It was drawn up after months of consultation with more than 215,000 people, mostly lay people but also priests and bishops, with the proposals to be condensed into a final document that will be presented to next year’s Bishops in Synod assembly at the Vatican.

In it, they stress “the need to discern in greater depth about the question of optional celibacy for priests and the ordination of married people; to a lesser extent, the issue of the ordination of women has also arisen,” it said, while noting such issues were raised only in certain dioceses.

“There is a clear request that, as a Church, we hold dialogue about these issues… to be able to offer a more holistic approach to our society,” it said. It also stressed the need to “rethink the role of women in the Church” to
give them “greater leadership and responsibility” notably in places “where decisions are made”.

There was also “a need for greater care” for those who have been divorced or remarried or with an alternative sexual orientation. “We feel that, as a Church… we must welcome and accompany each person in their specific situation,” it said.

The document was unveiled just months after lawmakers approved Spain’s first official probe into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church through an expert independent committee.

The Church itself also took its first steps earlier this year towards addressing alleged abuse by clergy by engaging lawyers to conduct a year-long investigation that will take cues from similar probes in France and Germany.

Complete Article HERE!

With bishops like these, it’s hard to be Catholic

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone leading a service in San Francisco. His stance against Nancy Pelosi will alienate others who are tired of U.S. clerics’ rigidity.

By Jackie Calmes

To flip the famed line from “The Godfather Part III,” just when I think I might return to the Catholic Church, they pull me back out.

“They” are the church’s archbishops and bishops, in particular those in the United States, who not only advocate for the church’s teachings against gay rights, contraception and abortion, which is their right, but also repeatedly enforce them in ways that often seem un-Christian and downright wicked. All the while, the church’s pedophilia scandal persists into a third decade because of the clerics’ coverups.

What would Jesus do? Not act like these guys.

On Monday, two weeks after the archbishop of San Francisco, the archconservative Salvatore Cordileone, ordered that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not receive Communion because of her support for abortion rights, leaders of the Colorado Catholic Conference sent an open letter condemning state lawmakers who’d voted for an abortion-rights bill.

The Denver archbishop and three bishops admonished the lawmakers not to take Communion until they performed “public repentance” and confessed their sins to a priest. In contrast, they praised four Republican legislators who opposed the bill. Increasingly, church leaders overtly ally with the Republican Party, despite its general hostility to policies beneficial to needy people once they’re born, to immigrants and to those on death row.

The clerics’ “pro-life” actions in California and Colorado came even as Americans were reeling from news of one mass shooting and then another, including the massacre of fourth-graders. Four bishops wrote a letter to Congress calling for “reasonable gun control measures,” but where’s the muscle and outrage comparable to that against abortion rights?

Seven months ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement on the sacrament of Communion that stopped short of singling out the pro-choice President Biden for sanction, but only after much debate. While conservative bishops are often critical of the progressive pope, uncommonly so, Biden had just enjoyed a warm meeting with Pope Francis, who blessed the rosary the president routinely carries and urged him to keep taking Communion.

As Francis says, the Communion wafer that Catholics believe incorporates the body of Christ “is not a prize for the perfect.”

With the Supreme Court expected to soon issue a decision overturning abortion rights after a half-century, the divide between Catholic bishops and most rank-and-file church members is likely to widen. A majority of the justices, five, are conservative anti-abortion Catholics.

The U.S. church hierarchy isn’t exactly playing single-issue politics. Opposing gay rights as well as contraception also remain the bishops’ preoccupations, at the expense of attention to poverty, social and racial justice, and nonviolence. Those latter issues are the ones that “my” church emphasized during my first 18 years, including 12 years in Catholic schools. Then came Roe vs. Wade in 1973, and the peace-loving church turned culture warrior.

I recall Masses during which the priests directed us church-goers to use the small pencils and postcards provided in the pews to petition lawmakers against abortion. There were parish convoys to Washington to protest on the anniversary of Roe. And there were the periodic sermons, including one so graphic when I listened from the front pew with my preteen daughters that I switched parishes — and took another step in my walk away from the church.

Yet from early on, even as I accepted the church’s teachings and its authority to preach them, I privately questioned why those positions should bind the state, public officials (including the Catholics among them) and citizens of other faiths.

Again to quote Francis, speaking in this instance about LGBTQ people, “Who am I to judge?”

I’m hardly alone in my estrangement from the church. While Catholicism remains the nation’s largest religious denomination, the church has declined in membership from about a quarter of the U.S. population to roughly one-fifth. Polls consistently show that the hardline positions of so many bishops are anathema to most of their so-called flock.

The bishops may be known as shepherds, but we’re no sheep. A poll of Catholics in mid-May from the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 63% of Catholic adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases; 68% said Roe should stand. Both percentages are in line with the views of the overall U.S. public.

Two-thirds of Catholic adults said Catholic politicians who are pro-abortion rights should not be denied Communion, and even more — 77% — said that Catholics who identify as LGBTQ should be allowed to receive Communion.

Still, a Catholic diocese in Michigan recently said its pastors should deny the sacraments, including baptism and Communion, to transgender, gay and nonbinary Catholics “unless the person has repented.” That’s rich coming from “leaders” of a church in which a disproportionate number of priests are gay.

Thank God, literally, for the dissenters like Archbishop Michael Jackels of Dubuque, Iowa, who recently said that “protecting the Earth, our common home, or making food, water, shelter, education and healthcare accessible, or defense against gun violence… these are life issues too.”

It’s priests like him, and the sentiments they espouse, that entice me to return to the church. Yet there are just too few like him among the men in charge. The self-righteous Cordileones are setting the tone, in religion and politics. And they keep pulling me back out.

Complete Article HERE!

Dioceses find ‘urgent desire’ for greater role for women

College students, other young adults and ministry leaders during a synodal listening session.

by Sarah Mac Donald

Synod synthesis reports from dioceses in Ireland have expressed a strong desire for “urgent change” and a fear that once the synodal process has finished, the decline in priest numbers and young people will continue, and there will be no change in the role of women in the Church.

A total of 173 parishes hosted gatherings for 10,500 participants in the Archdiocese of Dublin. The synthesis of those consultations revealed that more than half of parishes believe change has to happen or “the children of tomorrow will never experience Church”.

Hope was expressed that women will have a meaningful role in the life and governance of the Church and that priests would have the option to marry and enjoy family life.

Concern was expressed over the current workload of priests and the age profile of both priests and people. “Many priests are over-stretched and the current model of parish is no longer sustainable. There is an urgent need to develop new ministries,” the report states.

A key concern for young adults is the lack of “relational warmth” in many Church settings. Young participants in the synod consultations stated: “The church is a cold place for young people.”

The effort to renew the Church must be marked by urgency and an openness to the new. This will include much more significant roles for laity, recognition of the role of women and expanding the criteria for who can be ordained.

“The continued treatment of women as less than co-equal with men is a source of anger as well as of sadness in the majority of the parishes. Across the vast majority of the parishes, there is great hope that women will have a meaningful role in governance and ministries, including becoming deacons and priests.”

The declining numbers of clergy can be viewed positively as an opportunity to develop new ministries, parishes suggested and urged the Church to facilitate and promote lay leadership at a local level immediately.

However, concern was expressed that lay people who respond to the call to serve in the near future would not have the support or formation they need.

In relation to marginalised groups, the report noted the call to develop Church teaching and to find ways of welcoming and becoming more inclusive. There was a strong plea that the Church should become genuinely inclusive not only in word but also in deed, by reaching out to unmarried couples, divorced, remarried and LGBTQI+.

It also underlined that a clear strategy is needed to support young people and young parents, with a particular focus on catechetical accompaniment in the parish.

In the Diocese of Limerick, one of the strongest points raised in the responses from parishes is that the Church is often not as inclusive and relevant as it should be.

The acid test of parishes, parishes said is “how they connect with people on the margins. Broken people need to be included, not judged. The Church needs to become more accepting of difference.”

An issue of concern highlighted by parishes was how to give lay people a voice and how to empower them. “Our present structures are seen as too hierarchical and since we are all called by virtue of our baptism… we are co-responsible and this needs to be enabled,” the report stated.

According to the report, the issue raised repeatedly by parishes was that the voices of women are not heard in the Church’s present structures. “There is a sense that little thought has been given to the role of women in the Church. Church leadership is overtly patriarchal, and the hierarchy do not adequately value, appreciate or meaningfully listen to the voice of its female members (either lay or religious).”

Referring to the Diocesan Synod held in Limerick in 2016, the main focus of hurt named then was clerical abuse cases in the Church. However, the synthesis report noted that the hurts named in this consultation were more focused on exclusion and the sense of being silenced, stifled and alienated, particularly amongst women and the LGBT community.

In an open letter to his diocese last weekend, Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick said the Church needs to listen to those it “does not normally hear” and involve those who feel excluded or marginalised from the faith.

In its synthesis report the Diocese of Elphin included feedback from an LGBT+ focus group which called for an apology to LGBT+ people from the pope, bishops and priests. It also called for a review of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality to reflect modern scientific, psychological and sociological research and the lived experience and relationships of people.

The LGBT+ focus group of ten comprised four women and six men, all of whom either live in the Diocese of Elphin or have some connection with it. They also called for access to all sacraments, including marriage, for LGBT+ people and access to the priesthood for women.

The group drew up its report at the invitation of Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin. However, in their submission the focus group strongly criticised Bishop Doran over his comments during the marriage referendum in 2015 when he encouraged parishes to vote no.

Elsewhere in the focus report, participants hit out at the “breath-taking” hypocrisy of the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality, given it has a significant number of gay priests in its ranks.

“It is the lie at the heart of the clerical church and in plain sight. It is also a lie that sustains the architecture of homophobia in society,” the LGBT+ focus report states.

Complete Article HERE!

Church convicts Catholic ex-priest of abusing boy for years

By Associated Press

A Catholic diocese in Germany said Tuesday that a former priest has been convicted in a church trial of sexually abusing a minor over several years almost three decades ago.

The man, who wasn’t identified, was ordered to pay 10% of his income to a charitable organization that helps victims of abuse, the diocese of Limburg said.

While financial payouts have been included in confidential settlements between the church and victims of abuse, the announcement of a financial penalty against a priest as a result of a canonical investigation is unusual.

The male victim had filed a complaint about the abuse in 2018 following the publication of a study into sexual abuse within the church.

German prosecutors declined to open an investigation because the alleged crimes had passed the 20-year statute of limitations, but church authorities launched a probe.

The crimes were committed between 1986 and 1993 in the Limburg diocese.

After receiving a dossier from the diocese, the Vatican asked it to open criminal proceedings.

The diocese said that the church now considers the man to be a convicted sex offender. It said the man would have been defrocked as part of his conviction, but he left the priesthood during the trial

The verdict can’t be appealed.

The Limburg diocese made news several years ago when Pope Francis removed its bishop following an uproar over his lavish spending on a new residence complex.

His successor became the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, which in 2020 announced a new system to compensate survivors of sexual abuse by clergy with up to 50,000 euros ($58,400) to each.

Treatment of women in Catholic church is ‘source of anger’ in Dublin parishes

Vast majority of parishes express hope that women will have meaningful role in governance and ministries, consultation finds

Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell launched the consultation process last October

By Patsy McGarry< The continued treatment of women as less than coequal with men is a “source of anger as well as of sadness” in the majority of Dublin’s Catholic parishes.

A “vast majority of the parishes” expressed “great hope that women will have a meaningful role in governance and ministries, including becoming deacons and priests” in the future Catholic Church, while they expressed “great openness to married men becoming priests”. They also favour optional celibacy for priests.

These are among the main findings of an extensive consultation process with people in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese as part of a synodal process being undertaken in the church worldwide in preparation for an October 2023 synod of bishops in Rome called by Pope Francis.

Catholics consulted in Dublin also made “a strong plea that the church should become genuinely inclusive not only in word but also in deed, by reaching out to unmarried couples, divorced, remarried, LGBTQI+. The church needs to explore how people can be included and stop looking for reasons to turn people away,” a synthesis of their views has also found.

The report, Synodal Pathway Synthesis: the Archdiocese of Dublin Report, has been published on the Archdiocese’s website dublindiocese.ie.

The consultation process at Ireland’s largest Catholic diocese involved 173 parishes which hosted gatherings for 10,500 participants. These were co-ordinated by 325 animators, with an average attendance at gatherings of between 35 and 40 participants. The largest gathering had 280 participants, while another 2,200 people took part, mainly through focus groups.

This process was launched by Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell last October and the outcome will be presented at a national pre-synodal meeting in Athlone on June 18th where findings from all 26 Irish Catholic dioceses, following similar consultations, will be collated before being sent to Rome next August.

Among Catholics in Dublin “there was a strong voice for urgent change. At the same time, anxiety was expressed that nothing might happen as a result or it might happen too slowly. In particular, there is a consciousness that change may face resistance to renewal from within the church and from clericalism,” the report found.

Fears were also expressed that “once the synodal process has finished, there will be a continuation in the decline that sees a drop in numbers of priests, young people in the church, and no change in the role of women in the church or the option for priests to marry and enjoy family life”.

Language

Many of those taking part also found that “the language in the liturgy is a barrier. The language needs to speak clearly to people, relate to laity and connect with people at Mass,” they said.

Older Catholics in Dublin spoke of their “sorrow, guilt and helplessness about their children not participating in the sacramental life of the church and grandchildren not being presented for baptism”.

In a homily last Friday, marking the feast of Dublin patron St Kevin, Archbishop Farrell invited “women and men who feel that they are called to ministry to come forward to train for ministry as instituted lectors or acolytes or catechists”. These, he explained, were “lay ministers, women and men who are publicly recognised by the church and appointed by the diocese to minister alongside priests and deacons in leading liturgies, supporting adult faith formation and accompanying families preparing for the sacraments”.

He also said he would appoint “pastoral leaders – deacons, religious and lay people – where necessary when parishes cannot have a resident priest, to support the priest who will have pastoral responsibility for that parish. Their voluntary service will be supported by the pastoral workers in the diocese.”

Complete Article HERE!