Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

 Supi, celibacy is going to disappear,and you can marry me - or?
 
German Catholics have long manifested a discontent with clerical celibacy. One of Luther’s first acts was to abolish clerical celibacy; Germans currently criticize Zwangszölibat, compulsory celibacy, forced celibacy. As Cardinal Brandmüller points out, the term Zwangszölibat misrepresents the discipline; no one is forced to be celibate.
 
Now [...]

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In Männer Glauben Anders, Markus Hofer sketches the situation in the early church: the married men heading local churches and the wandering celibate missionary.
 
In Death Comes to the Archbishop, it is clear that the missionary priests must be celibate, because they have to be ready to go anywhere, into dangerous situations, on a moment’s [...]

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Several of the commentators have raised a question which has never been clearly addressed by the Church, at least to my satisfaction. Catholics believe each person has a vocation, a calling by God to a state of life, single, celibate, married, priesthood, religious, hermit, missionary, etc.
 
The Churches responsibility is to discern a vocation to the [...]

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The Eastern churches and the Western church agree that there is an affinity between celibacy and the priesthood. The episcopal office is the fullness of the priesthood, and in all Eastern churches only celibates can be consecrated bishops.
 
The question is whether only celibates should be ordained to the priesthood. The Western church makes an exception [...]

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According to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in 1970 several theologians wrote to the German Bishops asking that the requirement that all priests in the Latin Church to be celibate be discussed. Among the theologians were Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, Karl Lehman – and Joseph Ratzinger, currently Pope Benedict XVI. This letter was quietly and discretely filed [...]

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 Richard Cross at Catholic Culture has dose some thoughtful guessimating about the rates of sexual abuse among the clergy in the Catholic Church and the clergy in the Anglican Church. 
It has to be guess work because the Anglican churches are not very forthcoming with statistics. However, I have collected material on the Anglican Church in [...]

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Kiev

The New York Times has discovered the existence of an Eastern Catholic Church with a married clergy. Today’s issue contains a good article on Father Yuriy Volevetskiy and his six children.
The Times is also correct in that the attitude of the Vatican is more of toleration of the Eastern (or Greek Catholic) churches rather [...]

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The Pope’s decision to allow the setting up of an ordinariate for Anglicans who wish to become Catholic is a generous experiment. It would not be a separate “church” like the Eastern Churches, which are self-governing churches of apostolic origin in communion with Rome. As far as I kow, no pope has ever claimed the [...]

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A priest molested a boarding school boy - but this case didn’t happen in Ireland. It was an Episcopal priest, James Lydell Tucker, a father of five, who molested boys at an upper-class Episcopal school in Austin, Texas. And the Episcopal diocese conspired to cover it up.
What are the lessons? Men don’t have to be [...]

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According to Ship of Fools (who has done the most intelligible translation of the Portuguese news article): 
The final document of the 12th National Meeting for Presbyters, which ended yesterday in the Monastery of Itaici, in the city of Indaiatuba (SP), asks the Vatican for alternatives to priestly celibacy - which would mean the ordination of [...]

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The new head of the German Bishop’s conference, Bishop Zollitsch, has raised a minor fuss in Germany by his comments on celibacy. According to Der Spiegel
Der Freiburger Erzbischof und neugewählte Vorsitzende der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Robert Zollitsch, spricht sich “gegen Denkverbote” beim Thema Zölibat aus. Im Gespräch mit dem SPIEGEL sagt der 69-Jährige, die Verbindung zwischen [...]

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