November 17, 2010
WASHINGTON - Catholics for Equality is concerned about the anti-equality direction of the U.S. Catholic bishops in their election of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as the new president, and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville as vice-president, of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). This election broke the long-standing tradition of elevating the current vice-president.
Catholics for Equality Board member Rev. Tony Adams said, "following their tradition would have meant electing a noted social justice champion, Bishop Kicanas of Tucson, to lead the Catholic Church in America. Instead, the bishops chose two outspoken opponents of pro-equality civil rights measures." Both men are leaders against civil rights equality in their states and across the country.
Board member and political strategist Aniello Alioto said, "this election broadens the gap between the people of the Catholic Church in America and the increasingly uncharitable demands of the Pope in Rome. It also threatens the broad American consensus that began with the election of President John F. Kennedy, allowing American Catholics to contribute more fully to the common good as both Americans and as Catholics. We are concerned that this election will result in a shift from the pastoral nature of American Catholicism to efforts to politicize in America the will of Rome."
Concern is amplified by the election of Archbishop Kurtz as the new USCCB Vice President. Archbishop Kurtz, as head the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, has led the Catholic hierarchy's national campaign to deny marriage and family rights to gay and lesbian citizens. That campaign has been financially assisted by the national office of the Knights of Columbus, most recently through the production of videos that demean and discredit gay and lesbian relationships, as well as single parent and extended family households. Adams said, "American Catholics are alarmed when tax-exempt church resources are diverted from charity, education and parish work into political campaigns and veiled candidate endorsements."
"In his report from the ad-hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, Archbishop Kurtz makes it clear that our bishops are waging a new political campaign to change the laws in our country" Alioto said. The Committee's report compares court challenges to Proposition 8 in California and the federal Defense of Marriage Act to Roe v. Wade and the battle over reproductive rights. This results in a new "pro-family, pro-life" messaging strategy that harms all non-traditional as well as LGBT families. It contributes to the climate that permits bullying and harassment of youth from such families who become at higher risk for depression and suicide.
Catholics for Equality calls upon our bishops to pledge full transparency in all efforts to shift funding from our national charitable, pastoral and educational efforts into the Pope's interference to deny freedom and fairness in American politics. It calls on all Catholics of good conscience to monitor and challenge the priorities of our bishops.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Pope, cardinals don’t need prayer; they need to listen
Nov. 11, 2010
By Thomas P. Doyle
Recently I finished reading Xavier Rynne's monumental volume on the Second Vatican Council. I didn't read it when it was first published because I was struggling through theology, just trying to get a grip on the dogmatic and canonical mysteries of the Catholic church I was born into and into which I had thought I'd soon be ordained.
Reading the book now was more soul-jarring than had I read it then. What's so shocking?
At the council there were a significant number of bishops, archbishops and cardinals who actually had a handle on the real world and on the reasons the Church Triumphant left by Pius XII was so out of touch. This is shocking in light of the fact that these men were raised in a radically different church, steeped in clericalism, power and control.
Some of the men I read about had a much better grip on reality than most of the gilded hierarchs that have been inflicted on God's people over the past two decades. Pope John XXIII and his cohorts may not have liked everything they saw when they opened the windows of the clerical bunker, but at least they realized that before they condemned what they didn't know it might be smart to check it out.
Today's collection of bishops is radically different. Many of them, at least the ones who are regularly holding forth on what is wrong with everything around them, sound and act as if they are living in a hermetically sealedalternate reality. They are convinced that the world "out there" is wrong about most moral and ethical issues. They of course, being the divinely appointed teachers of the human race, are always right. They act and sound as if the only acceptable way for the world to exist is according to whatever norms, models and structures these satin and silk-enshrouded anachronisms hand down. They firmly believe the outside world, steeped as they claim, in secularism and relativism, must change to the extent that it
clearly reflects their myopic view of existence.
The pope keeps agonizing over these encroaching threats of "secularism" and "relativism." Many of the bishops, wanting of course to gain favor in the pontifical eyes, parrot the papal pronouncements in their own attempts to communicate to their "faithful." I have struggled to figure out just what the pope means. I am losing the struggle because I have only a smog covered clue … what he's afraid of is that people out there in the real world … the
abode of the vast majority who aren't Catholic clerics, don't think the way they're supposed to think and that means they don't think like he does.
The Vatican announced Nov. 8 that the pope would hold a meeting Nov. 19 of the world's cardinals, of which there are 183 according to the 2010 Annuario Pontificio, the topic of which will be the world-wide clergy sex abuse scandal. He's also inviting the latest batch of appointees although technically speaking they won't be real
cardinals until the following day when they get to put on their scarlet raiment for the first time.
The meeting, according to Vatican press dispatches, is supposed to include "prayer and reflection." If nothing else, the proposed gathering shows that the worldwide nightmare of clergy sex abuse, which the popes, cardinals and bishops have been desperately trying to shut down by every means imaginable, has finally gotten the pope's attention. If it has the pope's attention and he took the unprecedented step of calling this kind of meeting, you can be
sure a lot of the Vatican luminaries who surround the pope and "advise" him have finally realized that the problem isn't going away.
The trouble is that this will end up being another meaningless disappointment. The worldwide sex abuse nightmare doesn't need "prayer" and "reflection" now and it never needed it because these pious sound-bites are really ineffectual attempts to shift the attention from the gravity of the real problem. If prayer and reflection worked, the problem would have been gone long ago. What the pope and the cardinals really need is an unvarnished
assessment of just how horrendous the world-wide scourge really is and an unvarnished admission that the pope and the collected cardinals and bishops are not just part of the problem. They are the problem.
Pope John Paul II summoned the U.S. cardinals to Rome in April 2002 and told them sex abuse of a child is a crime and a sin. Duh!!!! After this meeting several of the cardinals continued to confirm their abrasive and uninformed attitudes by mouthing off to the effect that it's all a media exaggeration and that priests and bishops cannot be held accountable to civil authorities.
Nothing happened and nothing could have happened just as nothing can possibly happen in the upcoming extravaganza.
If the pope wants to get a real picture of the sex abuse phenomenon, presuming his emotions and intellect can handle it, he needs to talk to the right people. When he and these people get together all he needs to do is say is "Hello! Have some nice esperesso." Then he needs to sit quietly and listen, no matter how long it takes.
He needs to listen to the victims, not just for two minutes apiece as he has done with the dozen or so he's met, but for as long as it takes for him to get a slight glimpse of the horrific nature of this worldwide pandemic. From all he has said so far it's clear that he's a long way from "getting it." He needs to absorb their fears, their anger, their disappointments and he needs to hear their demands.
He needs to forget about defending the perverse actions of the bishops, archbishops and cardinals because there is no honest defense.
He needs to listen to the men and women survivors who have arisen from their prisons of fear and shame and have pulled other survivors together in world-wide support groups. He especially needs to listen to these people because they are the ones in the driver's seat of this whole debacle, not the churchmen who thought they had control of it throughout the decades and even centuries. The popes and the bishops never had control. If they did they would not have had to lie so much.
He needs to listen to some of the attorneys from the United States, Canada, Ireland and England, especially the ones the Exalted Lord Bishops have vilified because these same attorneys forced them to look at the damage they had caused. Many of these attorneys have done what the bishops and priests were either unable to do or afraid to do … they listened, they believed and they provided support.
He needs to listen to the psychologists and psychiatrists who have struggled to help so many victims find peace.
He needs to listen to the same mental health professionals who have tried in vain to wake the episcopal aristocracy up to the harsh reality that most Catholic priests are very immature and some deeply troubled. Unless something radical is done, the sex abuse debacle we have been living through will hardly be the last one.
He needs to listen to those who have been telling him that mandatory celibacy doesn't work.
He needs to listen to those very few priests and even fewer bishops who have stood with the victims and survivors, always at great cost to their own careers. He needs to listen well as they describe what it's like to try to help people whose souls have been shredded and who can't possibly believe in the same God the holds out.
Above all, the pope needs to sit and listen to the devout, faithful, generous and loyal mothers and fathers of the victims. He needs to hear from these men and women the anguish they felt when they learned their little boy or little girl had been raped and molested. He needs to see and hear the abject horror they experienced when that terrible blow was followed by one
much worse .. that the man who did this was a priest!
The pope and the cardinals are wasting their time and a lot of the people's money … money the donors naively thought would go towards helping those in need instead of supporting an anachronistic and hedonistic lifestyle. They are setting themselves up to deliver yet another elaborate public relations "happening" to the world. The Vatican spokesman keeps telling us the pope is deeply concerned about the clergy abuse "crisis," There is little doubt that he is, but not because of the massive harm done to countless victims and their families and to the disappointed faithful who are tired of waiting for the "church" to do something meaningful.
He and the cardinals are deeply concerned, but they're concerned for the wrong reasons. They see their credibility, their power and their relevance eroding at an ever increasing rate. They see a rapidly growing number of Catholics who refuse to be treated as children by the bishops and who pose a very serious threat to the crumbling myth that the pope and the bishops know what's best for all. They see the growing chasm between the moral code the
hierarchy is trying to persuade everyone, even non-Catholics, to accept and the reality of what is really happening out there in the world they are so afraid of.
This meeting will come and go as will the elaborate ceremony the next day when the pope will formally invest the 31 new members of the "Sacred" College. In the long run the most concrete effect of it all will be the added business for the Roman robe makers. The pope, the Vatican and the rest of the world's hierarchy will not bring about the needed change because they
are unable and not simply unwilling to do so. Their personal interests are far too deeply ingrained to allow then to make the sacrifices needed to step down from their thrones and be for the suffering and marginalized rather than for themselves.
The pope and the cardinals have betrayed the real church. They have perpetrated the sexual and spiritual violence just as much as the priests who physically violated the victims. They need to be willing to say "I hurt you" and not hide behind Vatican mumbo jumbo and double-speak.
They need to acknowledge that the formalities and legalities they have relied on to protect their own interests have been secondary and equally vicious acts of violence against the victims.
They need to admit that restitution is essential and deserved by the men and women abused by the immediate perpetrators but also by the church.
They need to acknowledge that they have intentionally tried to shift the responsibility for this worldwide debacle to other persons, to societal forces and even to the victims themselves and they need to admit without qualification that they, the hierarchs of the church, are solely responsible for the horrific damage to the victims and to the Body of Christ.
It is beyond hope that anything but more useless words will come out of this meeting. The fallout will be even more evidence that the institutional church is completely incapable of initiating a change in its self-destructive course.
Editor's Note: Read Eugene Kennedy's take on the pope's meeting with the
world's cardinals: Sex abuse doesn't
top cardinals' agenda -- literally.
[Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time
supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse victims.]
By Thomas P. Doyle
Recently I finished reading Xavier Rynne's monumental volume on the Second Vatican Council. I didn't read it when it was first published because I was struggling through theology, just trying to get a grip on the dogmatic and canonical mysteries of the Catholic church I was born into and into which I had thought I'd soon be ordained.
Reading the book now was more soul-jarring than had I read it then. What's so shocking?
At the council there were a significant number of bishops, archbishops and cardinals who actually had a handle on the real world and on the reasons the Church Triumphant left by Pius XII was so out of touch. This is shocking in light of the fact that these men were raised in a radically different church, steeped in clericalism, power and control.
Some of the men I read about had a much better grip on reality than most of the gilded hierarchs that have been inflicted on God's people over the past two decades. Pope John XXIII and his cohorts may not have liked everything they saw when they opened the windows of the clerical bunker, but at least they realized that before they condemned what they didn't know it might be smart to check it out.
Today's collection of bishops is radically different. Many of them, at least the ones who are regularly holding forth on what is wrong with everything around them, sound and act as if they are living in a hermetically sealedalternate reality. They are convinced that the world "out there" is wrong about most moral and ethical issues. They of course, being the divinely appointed teachers of the human race, are always right. They act and sound as if the only acceptable way for the world to exist is according to whatever norms, models and structures these satin and silk-enshrouded anachronisms hand down. They firmly believe the outside world, steeped as they claim, in secularism and relativism, must change to the extent that it
clearly reflects their myopic view of existence.
The pope keeps agonizing over these encroaching threats of "secularism" and "relativism." Many of the bishops, wanting of course to gain favor in the pontifical eyes, parrot the papal pronouncements in their own attempts to communicate to their "faithful." I have struggled to figure out just what the pope means. I am losing the struggle because I have only a smog covered clue … what he's afraid of is that people out there in the real world … the
abode of the vast majority who aren't Catholic clerics, don't think the way they're supposed to think and that means they don't think like he does.
The Vatican announced Nov. 8
cardinals until the following day when they get to put on their scarlet raiment for the first time.
The meeting, according to Vatican press dispatches, is supposed to include "prayer and reflection." If nothing else, the proposed gathering shows that the worldwide nightmare of clergy sex abuse, which the popes, cardinals and bishops have been desperately trying to shut down by every means imaginable, has finally gotten the pope's attention. If it has the pope's attention and he took the unprecedented step of calling this kind of meeting, you can be
sure a lot of the Vatican luminaries who surround the pope and "advise" him have finally realized that the problem isn't going away.
The trouble is that this will end up being another meaningless disappointment. The worldwide sex abuse nightmare doesn't need "prayer" and "reflection" now and it never needed it because these pious sound-bites are really ineffectual attempts to shift the attention from the gravity of the real problem. If prayer and reflection worked, the problem would have been gone long ago. What the pope and the cardinals really need is an unvarnished
assessment of just how horrendous the world-wide scourge really is and an unvarnished admission that the pope and the collected cardinals and bishops are not just part of the problem. They are the problem.
Pope John Paul II summoned the U.S. cardinals to Rome in April 2002 and told them sex abuse of a child is a crime and a sin. Duh!!!! After this meeting several of the cardinals continued to confirm their abrasive and uninformed attitudes by mouthing off to the effect that it's all a media exaggeration and that priests and bishops cannot be held accountable to civil authorities.
Nothing happened and nothing could have happened just as nothing can possibly happen in the upcoming extravaganza.
If the pope wants to get a real picture of the sex abuse phenomenon, presuming his emotions and intellect can handle it, he needs to talk to the right people. When he and these people get together all he needs to do is say is "Hello! Have some nice esperesso." Then he needs to sit quietly and listen, no matter how long it takes.
He needs to listen to the victims, not just for two minutes apiece as he has done with the dozen or so he's met, but for as long as it takes for him to get a slight glimpse of the horrific nature of this worldwide pandemic. From all he has said so far it's clear that he's a long way from "getting it." He needs to absorb their fears, their anger, their disappointments and he needs to hear their demands.
He needs to forget about defending the perverse actions of the bishops, archbishops and cardinals because there is no honest defense.
He needs to listen to the men and women survivors who have arisen from their prisons of fear and shame and have pulled other survivors together in world-wide support groups. He especially needs to listen to these people because they are the ones in the driver's seat of this whole debacle, not the churchmen who thought they had control of it throughout the decades and even centuries. The popes and the bishops never had control. If they did they would not have had to lie so much.
He needs to listen to some of the attorneys from the United States, Canada, Ireland and England, especially the ones the Exalted Lord Bishops have vilified because these same attorneys forced them to look at the damage they had caused. Many of these attorneys have done what the bishops and priests were either unable to do or afraid to do … they listened, they believed and they provided support.
He needs to listen to the psychologists and psychiatrists who have struggled to help so many victims find peace.
He needs to listen to the same mental health professionals who have tried in vain to wake the episcopal aristocracy up to the harsh reality that most Catholic priests are very immature and some deeply troubled. Unless something radical is done, the sex abuse debacle we have been living through will hardly be the last one.
He needs to listen to those who have been telling him that mandatory celibacy doesn't work.
He needs to listen to those very few priests and even fewer bishops who have stood with the victims and survivors, always at great cost to their own careers. He needs to listen well as they describe what it's like to try to help people whose souls have been shredded and who can't possibly believe in the same God the holds out.
Above all, the pope needs to sit and listen to the devout, faithful, generous and loyal mothers and fathers of the victims. He needs to hear from these men and women the anguish they felt when they learned their little boy or little girl had been raped and molested. He needs to see and hear the abject horror they experienced when that terrible blow was followed by one
much worse .. that the man who did this was a priest!
The pope and the cardinals are wasting their time and a lot of the people's money … money the donors naively thought would go towards helping those in need instead of supporting an anachronistic and hedonistic lifestyle. They are setting themselves up to deliver yet another elaborate public relations "happening" to the world. The Vatican spokesman keeps telling us the pope is deeply concerned about the clergy abuse "crisis," There is little doubt that he is, but not because of the massive harm done to countless victims and their families and to the disappointed faithful who are tired of waiting for the "church" to do something meaningful.
He and the cardinals are deeply concerned, but they're concerned for the wrong reasons. They see their credibility, their power and their relevance eroding at an ever increasing rate. They see a rapidly growing number of Catholics who refuse to be treated as children by the bishops and who pose a very serious threat to the crumbling myth that the pope and the bishops know what's best for all. They see the growing chasm between the moral code the
hierarchy is trying to persuade everyone, even non-Catholics, to accept and the reality of what is really happening out there in the world they are so afraid of.
This meeting will come and go as will the elaborate ceremony the next day when the pope will formally invest the 31 new members of the "Sacred" College. In the long run the most concrete effect of it all will be the added business for the Roman robe makers. The pope, the Vatican and the rest of the world's hierarchy will not bring about the needed change because they
are unable and not simply unwilling to do so. Their personal interests are far too deeply ingrained to allow then to make the sacrifices needed to step down from their thrones and be for the suffering and marginalized rather than for themselves.
The pope and the cardinals have betrayed the real church. They have perpetrated the sexual and spiritual violence just as much as the priests who physically violated the victims. They need to be willing to say "I hurt you" and not hide behind Vatican mumbo jumbo and double-speak.
They need to acknowledge that the formalities and legalities they have relied on to protect their own interests have been secondary and equally vicious acts of violence against the victims.
They need to admit that restitution is essential and deserved by the men and women abused by the immediate perpetrators but also by the church.
They need to acknowledge that they have intentionally tried to shift the responsibility for this worldwide debacle to other persons, to societal forces and even to the victims themselves and they need to admit without qualification that they, the hierarchs of the church, are solely responsible for the horrific damage to the victims and to the Body of Christ.
It is beyond hope that anything but more useless words will come out of this meeting. The fallout will be even more evidence that the institutional church is completely incapable of initiating a change in its self-destructive course.
Editor's Note: Read Eugene Kennedy's take on the pope's meeting with the
world's cardinals: Sex abuse
top cardinals' agenda -- literally.
[Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time
supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse victims.]
Saturday, November 6, 2010
"IF WE WAIT, RENTAPRIEST.COM WILL GO AWAY"
“If we wait, Rentapriest.com will go away”
In the late 1960s when it was expected that the Second Vatican Council would vote to end mandatory celibacy in the Catholic Church, priests were poised to get married. Then Pope John 23rd died and Pope Paul VI was in charge. Mandatory celibacy and birth control went out the same window that John 23rd had opened for this new fresh air to come from the Holy Spirit.
Shocked by the results of Vatican II, the climate in the Catholic priesthood changed and a mass exodus began that lasted for almost twenty-five years. Over 25,000 priests in the U.S. left their clerical ministry and nine out of ten did so to get married, many of them marrying nuns, according to a sociological study done in 1985 and reported in “Full Pews and Empty Altars” (Schoenherr and Young, 1990).
Priests got jobs, started families and became part of the mainstream—some may even be your neighbors or co-workers today. When they left, however, resentment set in by the hierarchy, as one archbishop admitted; some were blackballed in their communities and couldn’t get decent work, and they were told by their bishops that under no circumstances were they allowed to function as priests—in fact, “don’t even think of celebrating Mass” and “don’t tell anyone you’re a priest.” Some were forced to move as much as 500 miles away because of “scandal,” as the church put it.
Through the efforts of one married priest Canon Lawyer, Delmar Smolinski of Michigan, research was conducted in the Code of Canon Law to find church laws that validate the priests’ ordination, and “what about those canons that apply to ministry?” Twenty-one canons were in fact found, beginning with, “…after it has been validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid,” (290). More importantly, in the laity section of the Code of Canon Laws lies power to invite a married priest to any sacrament for “any just cause” (1335) and that he “may not deny the Sacraments to those who opportunely ask for them” (843).
While Canon Laws may not be the reason hundreds of thousands of people have contacted rentapriest.com over the last 15 years, it has helped many priests realize that what the bishops told them upon leaving about their priesthood and ministry was not true. It may also explain the reason there has been no cease and desist from the Catholic institution. What CITI Ministries is doing in promoting their availability falls within these Canon Laws—we are valid. The people may not care, but CITI protects married priests in its defiance of the hierarchy, but not its laws.
A few facts:
1. In 1996, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) based at Georgetown University, conducted a study of Catholics who no longer attended Catholic Church. The results, reported in Maine’s Church World in Feb. 1996 indicated that 73.3% of American Catholics (48 million) had stopped attending Catholic Church. Clergy sexual abuse revelations since 2002 only added to that figure so the publicly held FIGURE OF 30 million is grossly incorrect.
2. When CITI MINISTRIES INC first went into “business” in 1992, it was with the notion that married priests would be invited by bishops and the parishioners to fill in where there were shortages in the church buildings. However, no one called.
3. Much to our surprise after some national publicity due to the name Rent A Priest (received by the Holy Spirit's inspiration in a dream), calls came from the unchurched. While mostly for marriage and remarriage because of denials by their pastor, many calls to rentapriest were also surprisingly received from those whose babies were refused baptism because the parents no longer attended Sunday Mass and “put money in the collection plate."
But, people get complacent and priests get even more complacent. Without the availability of married priests, many important life cycle events may not have the Catholic traditions we grew up with. Married priests may forget what was afforded to them by CITI Ministries by making this service available was out of their lives, in some cases for as much as 20 or 25 years.
Now, CITI is struggling to stay afloat. Is this the end of our mission? Maybe it’s the end of the commercial aspect of our mission and the referrals for marriages are taking care of themselves. Is this all married priests were looking for? A marriage business?
If it's the end of our mission, why are Home Churches popping up? A few of the laity are beginning to notice the value of CITI/Rentapriest because of its association with Roman Catholic married priests. In the past three years, 75 lay people have become support members of CITI. In addition, a clergy sexual abuse survivor and his wife who were responsible for starting a Home Church with married priests are now members of the CITI Board.
While these numbers may not seem like a lot, we are remindful that in 1994 with all its efforts at Corpus/FCM/CTA and other church reform meetings, CITI had only signed up six married priests for its referral service because the others were skeptical. Home Churches are a new phenomenon with Catholics, especially the ones on the fringe, and they too are skeptical. It will take time, but CITI’s laity support member base grew by 23% in 2010 over 2009. Something is going on!
Please help support this effort to the end. We’re crossing a new threshold and really becoming the lay organization that we have been promoting, and we really need your help to continue. There is nothing better that the institution would like at this point than to see us disappear. That is their mantra. Will we succumb to their “If we wait, Rentapriest will go away?” or will we continue to support an organization that has (maybe too quietly) been using our ministry as our protest or our advocacy -- we don't picket -- no time because people need us for spiritual assistance. Close to a half million folks have contacted CITI/rentapriest for a free married priest referral in the past 15 years or so.
How can you help? If you’re a married priest certified member, continue your certification with an added donation. If you’re a sacramental recipient, become a support member at $50 per year for the couple. If you are a Home Church member, do likewise; maybe set up a special collection once a month to benefit CITI's work. If you are none of these things but believe in our ministry, please send a donation so it can continue--so we can continue to recruit married priests and so we can continue to supply referrals. CITI is a 501.c3 non profit and all donations are tax deductible. You can donate online at www.rentapriest.com or send a donation to CITI Ministries, Inc. 14 Middle Street, Brunswick, ME 04011.
Thank you and God bless you.
In behalf of all of us,
Sincerely,
Louise Haggett, Founder/President
CITI Ministries, Inc.
In the late 1960s when it was expected that the Second Vatican Council would vote to end mandatory celibacy in the Catholic Church, priests were poised to get married. Then Pope John 23rd died and Pope Paul VI was in charge. Mandatory celibacy and birth control went out the same window that John 23rd had opened for this new fresh air to come from the Holy Spirit.
Shocked by the results of Vatican II, the climate in the Catholic priesthood changed and a mass exodus began that lasted for almost twenty-five years. Over 25,000 priests in the U.S. left their clerical ministry and nine out of ten did so to get married, many of them marrying nuns, according to a sociological study done in 1985 and reported in “Full Pews and Empty Altars” (Schoenherr and Young, 1990).
Priests got jobs, started families and became part of the mainstream—some may even be your neighbors or co-workers today. When they left, however, resentment set in by the hierarchy, as one archbishop admitted; some were blackballed in their communities and couldn’t get decent work, and they were told by their bishops that under no circumstances were they allowed to function as priests—in fact, “don’t even think of celebrating Mass” and “don’t tell anyone you’re a priest.” Some were forced to move as much as 500 miles away because of “scandal,” as the church put it.
Through the efforts of one married priest Canon Lawyer, Delmar Smolinski of Michigan, research was conducted in the Code of Canon Law to find church laws that validate the priests’ ordination, and “what about those canons that apply to ministry?” Twenty-one canons were in fact found, beginning with, “…after it has been validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid,” (290). More importantly, in the laity section of the Code of Canon Laws lies power to invite a married priest to any sacrament for “any just cause” (1335) and that he “may not deny the Sacraments to those who opportunely ask for them” (843).
While Canon Laws may not be the reason hundreds of thousands of people have contacted rentapriest.com over the last 15 years, it has helped many priests realize that what the bishops told them upon leaving about their priesthood and ministry was not true. It may also explain the reason there has been no cease and desist from the Catholic institution. What CITI Ministries is doing in promoting their availability falls within these Canon Laws—we are valid. The people may not care, but CITI protects married priests in its defiance of the hierarchy, but not its laws.
A few facts:
1. In 1996, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) based at Georgetown University, conducted a study of Catholics who no longer attended Catholic Church. The results, reported in Maine’s Church World in Feb. 1996 indicated that 73.3% of American Catholics (48 million) had stopped attending Catholic Church. Clergy sexual abuse revelations since 2002 only added to that figure so the publicly held FIGURE OF 30 million is grossly incorrect.
2. When CITI MINISTRIES INC first went into “business” in 1992, it was with the notion that married priests would be invited by bishops and the parishioners to fill in where there were shortages in the church buildings. However, no one called.
3. Much to our surprise after some national publicity due to the name Rent A Priest (received by the Holy Spirit's inspiration in a dream), calls came from the unchurched. While mostly for marriage and remarriage because of denials by their pastor, many calls to rentapriest were also surprisingly received from those whose babies were refused baptism because the parents no longer attended Sunday Mass and “put money in the collection plate."
But, people get complacent and priests get even more complacent. Without the availability of married priests, many important life cycle events may not have the Catholic traditions we grew up with. Married priests may forget what was afforded to them by CITI Ministries by making this service available was out of their lives, in some cases for as much as 20 or 25 years.
Now, CITI is struggling to stay afloat. Is this the end of our mission? Maybe it’s the end of the commercial aspect of our mission and the referrals for marriages are taking care of themselves. Is this all married priests were looking for? A marriage business?
If it's the end of our mission, why are Home Churches popping up? A few of the laity are beginning to notice the value of CITI/Rentapriest because of its association with Roman Catholic married priests. In the past three years, 75 lay people have become support members of CITI. In addition, a clergy sexual abuse survivor and his wife who were responsible for starting a Home Church with married priests are now members of the CITI Board.
While these numbers may not seem like a lot, we are remindful that in 1994 with all its efforts at Corpus/FCM/CTA and other church reform meetings, CITI had only signed up six married priests for its referral service because the others were skeptical. Home Churches are a new phenomenon with Catholics, especially the ones on the fringe, and they too are skeptical. It will take time, but CITI’s laity support member base grew by 23% in 2010 over 2009. Something is going on!
Please help support this effort to the end. We’re crossing a new threshold and really becoming the lay organization that we have been promoting, and we really need your help to continue. There is nothing better that the institution would like at this point than to see us disappear. That is their mantra. Will we succumb to their “If we wait, Rentapriest will go away?” or will we continue to support an organization that has (maybe too quietly) been using our ministry as our protest or our advocacy -- we don't picket -- no time because people need us for spiritual assistance. Close to a half million folks have contacted CITI/rentapriest for a free married priest referral in the past 15 years or so.
How can you help? If you’re a married priest certified member, continue your certification with an added donation. If you’re a sacramental recipient, become a support member at $50 per year for the couple. If you are a Home Church member, do likewise; maybe set up a special collection once a month to benefit CITI's work. If you are none of these things but believe in our ministry, please send a donation so it can continue--so we can continue to recruit married priests and so we can continue to supply referrals. CITI is a 501.c3 non profit and all donations are tax deductible. You can donate online at www.rentapriest.com or send a donation to CITI Ministries, Inc. 14 Middle Street, Brunswick, ME 04011.
Thank you and God bless you.
In behalf of all of us,
Sincerely,
Louise Haggett, Founder/President
CITI Ministries, Inc.
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