Tag: Catholic Priests

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Boston Globe Spotlight Team Uncovers Secret Children Of Catholic Priests

One of the Boston Globe reporters made famous in the movie “Spotlight” has a new bombshell story on the Catholic Church – thousands of people claim they were fathered by priests.

Globe Spotlight reporter Michael Rezendes appeared on CBS This Morning Wednesday to discuss the first part of his report, “Children of Catholic Priests Live with Secrets and Sorrow.”

Michael Rezendes.

“We know there are many more than people assume, probably in the thousands. Just recently, about two years ago, a son of a priest in Ireland set up a website called Coping International and he’s heard from scores of people from all over the world who are the sons and daughters of Catholic priests,” Rezendes said.

Rezenedes first heard from a man named Jim Graham, who’s profiled in the Globe story.

“Jim spent many years tracking down evidence that a priest was his father. I was impressed with what he suffered, the pain he endured, and I was impressed with his detective work, but still it was just one person and it wasn’t until Vincent Doyle called me and gave me the information he collected through his website that I realized this was a systemic situation and deserved my full attention,” Rezendes said.

“I think it’s very similar to the situation with clergy sex abuse, whenever there was a scandal, the church treated the situation as if it was exceptional, when in fact it was systemic. And I think we’re looking at the same thing here.”

Many of these children of priests struggle in silence and secrecy as they grow up.

“I think they suffer emotionally, I think they suffer financially, I think they suffer spiritually by not having a loving father and very often by not having a father who provides adequate child support,” Rezendes told CBS.

“These people are coming together, it’s remarkable to see this community being formed right now as we speak and they would like the church, the Vatican to put some policies in place to end the secrecy and also just give some bishops a little bit of guidance on what to do when they learn one of their priests has fathered a child, because right now they have no guidance.”

The Vatican declined to comment on the Boston Globe story.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

“If a priest fathers a child, he has a moral obligation to step aside from ministry and provide for the care and needs of the mother and child. In such a moment, their welfare is the highest priority,” Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley said in a statement to CBS News.

“I think Cardinal O’Malley’s statement is important because I think more often than not the first reaction of a priest is to cover up the fact that he has become a parent. And what Cardinal O’Malley is saying, and I think this is in line with some of the things Pope Francis has said is, ‘No, if you’re a priest and you father a child, your first responsibility is no longer to the church, it’s to your child,” Rezendes said.

Part two of the Spotlight report can be found in the Boston Globe Sunday.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic woman bishop on Irish vocations recruitment drive

‘Our bishops have absolutely no authority apart from ordaining’

By Patsy McGarry

Five women who believe they have a vocation to the Catholic priesthood have contacted a US delegation visiting Ireland this month to recruit female priests.

From the US-based Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP), the delegation is being led by Irish-born Bishop Mary Bridget Meehan, who is accompanied by Rev Mary Theresa Streck and Rev Joan Chesterfield.

Speaking of the five women seeking ordination, Bishop Meehan told The Irish Times they “already have theology degrees and diplomas in spirituality”.

A Mass celebrated by Bishop Meehan, in a community centre on Dublin’s South Circular, was attended by “35 to 40” people earlier this month, while the delegation met a similar number more recently in Drogheda.

They have also visited Glenstal Abbey at Murroe, Co Limerick, where they met former Abbot Mark Patrick Hederman and Nóirín Ní Riain who was ordained Rev Nóirín Ní Riain, minister in the One Spirit Inter Faith Seminary Foundation, last month. The foundation embraces “the universal truth at the heart of all spiritual traditions”. Ms Ní Riain has a doctorate in theology.

Bishop Meehan said she had also met Limerick parish priest Fr Roy Donovan who last week called for the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood and objected to the introduction of a male-only permanent diaconate in his Cashel Archdiocese before completion of a report by the papal commission on women deacons.

The meeting with Fr Donovan was “very open” she said, and he had put her in contact with a woman who believes she too has a vocation.

Pittsburgh ordination

Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan was raised to the episcopacy in 2009 at Santa Barbara, California, after ordination to the Catholic priesthood at Pittsburgh in 2006.

Her family is from Crosskerry, near Rathdowney, Co Laois, but they left Ireland for the US in 1956. Nowadays, she holds weekly liturgies , including Mass, at the Mary Mother of Jesus Inclusive Catholic Community in Sarasota, Florida.

In 2007, she and fellow women priests were excommunicated by Pope Benedict. He decreed that anyone “who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive a sacred order” was automatically excommunicated. However, this decree has been rejected by the ARCWP.

In North America, there were about 250 Catholic women priests and 11 women bishops, Bishop Meehan said. Their ordinations were valid “because of our apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church”, she said.

This is so because “the principal consecrating Roman Catholic male bishop who ordained our first women bishops is a bishop with apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church in communion with the Pope. Therefore, our bishops validly ordain deacons, priests and bishops.”

As well as in the US and Canada, the ARCWP has members in Latin America and, increasingly, in the rest of the world.

Equality

They seek equality for women in the church at all levels, including at decision-making and ordination levels, and prepare and ordain qualified women (and men) to serve as Catholic priests. Theirs is “a renewal movement” within the church which aims at “full equality for all within” as “a matter of justice and faithfulness to the Gospel”, she said.

Bishop Meehan points out that their model of church “is exactly the opposite” of the current Roman model. For instance, “our bishops have absolutely no authority apart from ordaining [others to priesthood/episcopacy]. It’s like the monastic model,” she said.

She and other members of her delegation are back in Ireland (she has been a regular visitor over the years) “for the month of August” and hope to encourage other women towards ordination while here. They will be “celebrating liturgies and meeting with women’s groups”.

They would also “love a dialogue with the bishops” in Ireland and believe there is “a new spirit in the church” since the election of Pope Francis in 2013. They feel “in harmony with a lot of what Pope Francis is saying”.

Recently, two Vatican officials met ARCWP members in Rome and all attended Mass together, she said.

Women who believe they have a vocation to the priesthood can contact Bishop Meehan at 001- 703-505-0004, sofiabmm@aol.com and www.arcwp.org.

Complete Article HERE!

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Limerick priest challenges authorities over role of women in church

A woman ‘can give more meaning to the Eucharist than any male celibate’

Pope Francis set up a commission to look at the introduction of women deacons last year which will report “in a year or two”.

By Patsy McGarry

A parish priest in Co Limerick has called for the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Catholic Church.

Fr Roy Donovan, parish priest of Caheronlish in Co Limerick, also objects to the introduction of a male-only permanent diaconate in his Cashel Archdiocese before completion of a report by the papal commission on women deacons.

Fr Roy Donovan, parish priest of Caheronlish in Co Limerick

On women priests , Fr Donovan said he believed “a woman could celebrate the Eucharist even better than a man being more familiar with the shedding of blood. A woman saying ‘this is my body, this is my blood’ can give more meaning to the Eucharist than any male celibate.”

He also knew women “who feel it in their bones and souls that they have a call to the priesthood”.

Fr Donovan was responding to the setting up of a working group by Archbishop of Cashel Kieran O’Reilly to look at introducing the male-only permanent diaconate in the diocese.

Fr Donovan was “upset” and “taken aback” by this decision of the Archbishop’s as Pope Francis had set up a commission to look at the introduction of women deacons last year which would report “in a year or two.” He was, therefore, “uncomfortable” about Archbishop O’Reilly’s decision.

Ultimately, he felt such matters were for the local church community to decide. His fear was that parishes were “going the way of the gardaí and post offices.” Local communities “should have the last say and permanent deacons were not the answer,” he said. Nor was parish clustering, he said.

What was happening now where bishops were concerned was “a kicking of the can down the road. They are not facing reality”.

Fr Donovan was particularly surprised at Archbishop O’Reilly’s decision concerning the permanent diaconate in Cashel folowing his experiences of attempting to introduce it in his previous diocese, Killaloe.

In September 2014, two months before it was announced he had been appointed Archbishop of Cashel, then Bishop O’Reilly announced he was delaying introduction of the permanent diaconate there following strong protests by women mainly.

Just a month beforehand, in a pastoral letter circulated throughout parishes in Killaloe, he had invited men to apply for posts as permanent deacons there.

Complete Article HERE!

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St Bride’s RC Church praised for issuing strong public message on homosexuality

Catholic church in Cambuslang praised for issuing strong public message on homosexuality

By Aftab Ali

A Catholic church in Cambuslang has earned the admiration of thousands after issuing a strong public statement on its stance on homosexuality.

St Bride’s Roman Catholic Church in the town’s Greenlees Road took to its social media page on Sunday afternoon to insist that “all gay Catholics are accepted and welcomed in this parish.”

Endorsed by the head of the parish, Father Morton, the statement added: “Every single human person is loved by God and created to love by Him; this is a fundamental belief of our faith. No one is ever excluded from God’s love or his concern or his care or his plan for them.

St Bride’s Roman Catholic Church

“In God’s house, all are welcome and are the blessed and loved children of God. There should be no place in our language or our attitude which allows for prejudice or exclusion.”

Reaching out to anyone who is gay and wishes to speak with Father Morton, St Bride’s has urged them to head along for a talk.

“We must do everything we can to redress the harm that has been done in the past by the negative stance we seem to have taken up. We must join with others who are seeking to build a more inclusive society,” the statement added.

Father Morton’s message comes just two months after he issued a similar one in which he acknowledged how gay people feel “excluded” from the Catholic Church.

He added at the time: “We wish to emphasise in the strongest terms that we are a welcoming and inclusive parish.”

Yesterday’s message has gone down a storm on social media and is continuing to gather praise and positive reactions both at home and further afield.

“Fr Morton is such an amazing man. Lucky parish to have such a wonderful priest,” said one follower, while another added: “What a courageous statement. Hopefully others will follow this Christian lead. Time to stop burying our heads in the sand. Well done Fr Morton.”

The statement comes as religious leaders in Glasgow spearhead gay rights in the UK.

Just last week, St Mary’s Cathedral in the west end of the city became the first in Britain to confirm it has started taking bookings for same-sex weddings following a decision earlier this year in the Scottish Episcopal Church’s General Synod.

The Provost of the cathedral, the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, said: “I want to live in a world where same-sex couples can feel safe walking down the street, hand in hand, and in which they can feel joy walking hand in hand down the aisle of a church too.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Mary Magdalene: The Single Best Argument for Women Priests

By Kerry Walters

On 22 July each year, the Christian community venerates a saint who is the single best argument for why women should be priests: Mary of Magdala, more commonly called Mary Magdalene and traditionally known as the “Apostle to the Apostles.”

Given what we know about her, it’s a scandal that some Christian communities—most notably the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention—still consider women unworthy of ordination.

The Roman Church’s refusal to ordain women is succinctly stated in its official Catechism:

The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry…For this reason the ordination of women is not possible. #1577

The Southern Baptist Convention bases its refusal on several passages in the Pauline letters to Titus and Timothy that seem to disallow women from serving as pastors. (Never mind that biblical scholars agree that the letters were almost certainly not written by Paul himself.) Predictably, perhaps, the Convention adds that pastoral ministry would interfere with women’s single-minded dedication to their God-appointed “family roles.”

Such objections to the ordination of women strike rational people, including millions of Christians, as absurd. But Dominican priest Wojciech Giertych, who served as theologian of the papal household for Pope Benedict XVI, adds risibility to absurdity when he argues that women simply don’t have the mechanical know-how of men, and so would be helpless when it comes to guy-stuff like church repairs.

I don’t know how handy she was with a hammer or screwdriver, but the scriptural accounts of Mary Magdalene certainly confound these arguments against women priests and pastors. Her prominence in the New Testament is indisputable.

She’s presented as one of the earliest disciples of Jesus, joining his band of followers after being cleansed of “seven demons” (Mark and Luke). Although she actually isn’t the New Testament “sinner” who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears or anointed them with precious oil she’s often thought to be—this is an identification invented by Gregory the Great in the 6th century—she’s still mentioned more often in the Gospels, no fewer than 12 times, than nearly all the male apostles.

The gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John recognize her as one of the women who followed Jesus to Golgotha, when all the male apostles except John had fled in terror. All four gospels also announce that she was either the very first person (Mark and John) or one of the first (Matthew and Luke), her companions also being women, to whom the Risen Christ appeared, and that she was the messenger who carried the good news to the male apostles.

Luke tells us that the other disciples didn’t believe her, either because she was a woman or because the tale was so fantastical, and ran to see the empty tomb for themselves. In the apocryphal Gospel of Mary, dating from sometime in the 2nd century, the disbelief of the male apostles, especially the brothers Andrew and Peter, is clearly rancorous. “Did he then speak secretly with a woman, in preference to us, and not openly? Are we to turn back and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” In the later Gospel of Philip, another apocryphal text, the anger directed against Mary by the male apostles is even more intense.

These texts suggest that even at this early stage in the Church’s history, animosity toward women in leadership positions was present. But the more important point here is that both canonical and non-canonical texts affirm Mary as the witness-bearer for the risen Christ. There simply is no debate in the ancient texts about her centrality.

We have nothing but legend to fall back on for the rest of Mary’s life. She isn’t mentioned in either the Acts of the Apostles or any of the New Testament epistles. Some stories say she retired to Ephesus with Mary, Jesus’ mother, after the Resurrection. Others say that she undertook missionary work, even appearing before the Roman emperor Tiberias and astounding him with a miracle.

But these legends, charming as they are, aren’t necessary for establishing her bona fides. Scripture does that. Mary Magdalene, like so many women, was one of Jesus’ earliest followers; she remained loyal to him, at great risk to herself, when the male apostles fled in doubt and terror; the Risen Christ appeared first to her; and she carried the good news to the male apostles, who refused to believe her testimony. Even John Paul II, who declared the topic of women’s ordination settled and done (a position unfortunately affirmed by Pope Francis), acknowledged that this rightly made her the Apostle to the Apostles.

So if men are qualified to ordained ministry because of the male apostles, wouldn’t Mary’s primacy over them qualify women?

The answer’s pretty clear, isn’t it?

Complete Article HERE!