Catholic Priests – Page 221

February 9, 2013

New Polish film tackles homosexuality in Catholic Church

By Gareth Jones

Polish director Malgoska Szumowska tackles the controversial topic of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood in her film “In the Name of” that had its world premiere on Friday but she said her aim was not to deliver a political message.

“In the Name of”, the first of 19 competition entries to screen at this year’s Berlin film festival, focuses on a priest’s struggle with his sexuality while working with troubled youths in a deprived corner of rural Poland where drug and alcohol abuse are commonplace.

The film takes a swipe at the Catholic Church, which still wields huge influence in Poland, and Szumowska said she expects Polish conservatives to react negatively, but she said her main concern was to depict the loneliness of a priest’s life.

“They (the Catholic Church) don’t want to change anything. The church does not fit in with modern society,” Szumowska told a news conference after the screening.

“Out of this conflict only bad things happen. I think they are extremely closed and intolerant… But I am not a politician or an intellectual,” she added.

“We did not want to make a movie about an oppressive church… We wanted to make a movie about love.”

The priest Adam, played by Andrzej Chyra, has a good rapport with the dope-smoking, hard-talking young men in his care, playing soccer and swimming in a lake with them. He wards off his growing sexual frustration with long runs in the forest.

After rejecting the advances of a young woman parishioner Ewa, Adam strikes up a friendship with the taciturn son of a simple local family who returns his affection.

In one of the more memorable scenes in a film characterized by furtive glances, whispered confessions and a tense mood that swings swiftly from joy to despair, Adam dances with a portrait of the Pope to loud music after downing a bottle of vodka.

“It is hard to imagine a more lonely person than a priest… I spoke to many priests and they told me that it is very hard,” said Szumowska.

“I wanted to understand my character (Adam), not judge him,” she told the news conference where she was joined by Chyra and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz who played his young lover.

CHANGING TIMES

“We have very strong discussions now in Poland, about the church, about homosexuality. We now have priests leaving the church,” she said.

The film’s premiere comes just weeks after the Polish parliament rejected draft laws that would have given limited legal rights to homosexual couples in a move that disappointed many younger, urban Poles with liberal views about sex.

And yet Poland – whose parliament includes its first transsexual lawmaker – is changing.

“It was not hard getting money to make the film. The Polish Film Institute is not afraid of controversial issues. Poland is a democracy and you can say whatever you want,” she said.

Szumowska, 39, is a graduate of the famous Lodz film school where some of Poland’s greatest directors including Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski also studied.

Asked why she thought there were so many films from former communist central and eastern Europe screening at this year’s Berlin festival, Szumowska said it may be because of the rapid pace of change in a region that has had to embrace capitalism and democracy in a short period of time.

“Everything is still fresh… There are so many things going on, always we have strong discussions. We are always talking about who we are,” she said.

Though somber in tone – one of the boys hangs himself after a homosexual affair with another boy – “In the Name of” ends on a disconcertingly ambiguous note, showing the object of Adam’s love joining a seminary to train as a priest.

“The ending is ironic and kind of confusing but realistic,” said Szumowska.

Complete Article HERE!

February 9, 2013

Women priests set to ordain Roman Catholic from Toledo

BY TK BARGER

Deacon Beverly Bingle, a 68-year-old Roman Catholic woman from Toledo, will be ordained a priest by Roman Catholic Womenpriests today.

Her ordination at 2 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Toledo, 3205 Glendale Ave., will not be recognized by the Diocese of Toledo, however.

After she was ordained a deacon on Sept. 13, the diocese stated her participation “in an invalid and illicit attempted ordination” meant she was automatically excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

The diocese has released a similar statement in advance of today’s ceremony, reminding that Deacon Bingle is excommunicated and that Ann Klonowski, a woman from the Diocese of Cleveland who will be ordained a deacon at the same ceremony today, will lose her standing in the church.

However, the Reverend Bingle, as she can be called with today’s ordination by Bishop Joan Houck of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, not only will participate in the ceremony; on Sunday, she will start holding weekly services as a priest for the Holy Spirit Catholic Community, a church she’s starting that will meet at Unity of Toledo, 3535 Executive Pkwy., at 5:30 p.m. Sundays. Ash Wednesday services are set for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“The whole excommunication thing, I don’t accept,” she said. “Neither do the members of the church. People are literally fighting over who gets to give me communion every day. It’s beautiful.”

She attends despite controversy.

“I go to Mass daily, or at least try to,” she said. “That’s my most important prayer, is the Mass, the assembly of the people of God acknowledging that they are the body of Christ, and that we are called to make a difference in the world. I go various places. I normally go to Corpus Christi [in Toledo]. I’m still a member, and they can’t take away my baptism. I just go and I sit there at Mass, and and I will receive communion. Somebody will break a host and give me one surreptitiously, or I’ll receive it before or after. I drive a good distance sometimes to go to Mass where nobody knows me.”

Knowing Roman Catholics do not welcome women into the priesthood, why did she pursue this dissident path rather than finding another denomination?

“Roman Catholic Womenpriests calls it prophetic obedience,” the she said. “I am obedient to God and that requires me to speak out against injustice, and when God says, ‘Do this,’ I do. I feel I’m called [to be a Roman Catholic priest]. Our purpose is renewed priesthood in a renewed church. We can only renew from where we are.”

She started on a more traditional route to Catholic ministry with the Toledo diocese’s five-year deacon-training program. “I started in, and I did two years [of study.] This would have been the early ’90s. At the end of the second year, they handed out this paper. One of the questions was ‘Do you want to be ordained a deacon?’ I said yes — what did I know? Well, I was told that I didn’t have ‘the equipment’ and I was not allowed to continue in the program. I guess they expected that [as a woman], I would have known to say no, but then I would have lied.”

She continued to work for the church, though. She was the pastoral associate at Most Blessed Sacrament Parish until she retired in 2011. “As an employee of the Catholic parish,” she said, “I did everything except sacraments at one time or another.”

Priests traditionally administer sacraments, such as blessing the host for communion, performing weddings, and leading other sacred acts.

The Reverend Bingle says she doesn’t believe she will be mystically transfigured with the bestowal of priesthood or as the actions of her hands invoke God’s blessing. “It’s God’s actions, the spirit of God in the community transforming us and the elements of the Eucharist into Christ’s holiness, but we’re Christ, [all people] are,” she said.

She is jumping into parish ministry by starting the Holy Spirit Catholic Community. “I never thought of myself as starting a church,” she said, “and in a lot of senses, the church is already there. I’m just going to hopefully allow those folks who have been dissatisfied, alienated by the [Roman Catholic] hierarchy, they’ll see a place to come. There’s a lot of people who might be able to walk into a community that is renewed, a community that understands that they were abused by priests; that understands that their kid couldn’t go to a Catholic school because he had a handicap — that we got fixed; or parents who won’t go because their kids are gay, ‘their kids can’t go, so I won’t go.’ That’s what keeps me going. Those folks, they need a church, they need a place to go.”

There is the possibility she could preside in a Roman Catholic church, she said. “I’ve had a Catholic church in the diocese contact me about saying Mass for them when they can’t find a pastor,” she said, laughing. “I wish I could say who they are, but I can’t.”

Complete Article HERE!

January 29, 2013

German Catholics vent their dissatisfaction with the Church

A study on Germany’s Catholic community reveals the discontent of faithful with the ecclesiastical institution. But proposals for solutions are lacking

By ALESSANDRO ALVIANI

The Pope’s ecclesiastical policies are “backward-looking” and suspected of trying to take the Church back to the pre-Second Vatican Council period. As for the Church’s leaders, they are “cut off from reality, reactionary and obstructionist.”

This is the opinion German faithful have of Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church according to a study by Sinus Institute and consulting agency MDG (which the German Church controls). In-depth interviews were conducted with 100 Catholics from different social backgrounds. According to the study, which picks up on a similar one carried out in 2005, German faithful are convinced that today’s Church finds itself in a “desolate situation” and the most obvious manifestation of this is the sex abuse scandal.

The authors of the study wrote that the scandal seriously damaged the image of the Church, even in the eyes of the most fervent Catholics, whose faith was deeply shaken. The scandal was seen as confirmation of the Church’s “modernization deficit”. The Church lost a great deal of credibility not just as a result of the accusations of paedophilia made against it but also because many believe it dealt with the abuse issue inadequately.

Internal dogma and rules that had been tacitly accepted until about a year ago are now openly criticised by faithful. Criticisms range from complaints about “discrimination against women” and celibacy, to the condemnation of homosexuality, contraception and sex outside wedlock, to the marginalisation of lay people involved in Church life.

Another factor that is creating animosity, is the organisational restructuring that is taking place in Germany, with a number of parishes being merged because of the shortage in parish priests, for example.

The study also shows the Church’s detachment from the weakest sections of society: it would make no difference to the lower social classes if the Church ceased to exist.

Despite their criticisms, however, faithful still look to the Church for “spiritual guidance” and “meaning”. The majority of them do not want to lose their Catholic identity and few consider leaving the Church.

So what do German faithful expect from the Church? They want lay people involved in the Church to play a greater role; they want more women in leadership roles; the possibility for women to be ordained priests; the elimination of celibacy; a different attitude towards sexuality and contraception; the sacraments to be administrated to all Christians, regardless of their denomination or sexual identity; less ostentation and less abuse of power and a greater focus on God’s love and love for one’s neighbour.

Complete Article HERE!

January 29, 2013January 29, 2013

Catholicism’s Curse

A must read!

By FRANK BRUNI

But while I have nothing against priests, I have quite a lot against an institution that has done a disservice to them and to the parishioners in whose interests they should toil. I refer to the Roman Catholic Church, specifically to its modern incarnation and current leaders, who have tucked priests into a cosseted caste above the flock, wrapped them in mysticism and prioritized their protection and reputations over the needs and sometimes even the anguish of the people in the pews. I have a problem, in other words, with the church’s arrogance, a thread that runs through Wills’s book, to be published next month; through fresh revelations of how assiduously a cardinal in Los Angeles worked to cover up child sexual abuse; and through the church’s attempts to silence dissenters, including an outspoken clergyman in Ireland who was recently back in the news.

Complete Article HERE!

January 20, 2013

Priest Is Planning to Defy the Vatican’s Orders to Stay Quiet

By DOUGLAS DALBY

A well-known Irish Catholic priest plans to defy Vatican authorities on Sunday by breaking his silence about what he says is a campaign against him by the church over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings.

The Rev. Tony Flannery, 66, who was suspended by the Vatican last year, said he was told by the Vatican that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality.

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

Father Flannery, a regular contributor to religious publications, said he planned to make his case public at a news conference here on Sunday.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to Father Flannery’s religious superior, the Rev. Michael Brehl, last year instructing him to remove Father Flannery from his ministry in County Galway, to ensure he did not publish any more articles in religious or other publications, and to tell him not to give interviews to the news media.

In the letter, the Vatican objected in particular to an article published in 2010 in Reality, an Irish religious magazine. In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.”

Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.”

Father Flannery said the Vatican wanted him specifically to recant the statement, and affirm that Christ instituted the church with a permanent hierarchical structure and that bishops are divinely established successors to the apostles.

He believes the church’s treatment of him, which he described as a “Spanish Inquisition-style campaign,” is symptomatic of a definite conservative shift under Pope Benedict XVI.

“I have been writing thought-provoking articles and books for decades without hindrance,” he said. “This campaign is being orchestrated by a secretive body that refuses to meet me. Surely I should at least be allowed to explain my views to my accusers.”

His superior was also told to order Father Flannery to withdraw from his leadership role in the Association of Catholic Priests, a group formed in 2009 to articulate the views of rank-and-file members of the clergy.

In reply to an association statement expressing solidarity with Father Flannery, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith denied it was acting in a secretive manner, pointed out that Father Flannery’s views could be construed as “heresy” under church law, and threatened “canonical penalties,” including excommunication, if he did not change his views.

This month, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote to an American priest, Roy Bourgeois, notifying him of his laicization, following his excommunication in 2008 over his support for the ordination of women.

Complete Article HERE!