A couple of very interesting articles have emerged this last week challenging the Catholic Church’s view that priests should be celibate and male.
Firstly an article in Reuters reported the stance being taken by Johan Bonny, Bishop of Antwerp, who said in a public letter to his parishioners that he would make “every effort” to ordain married men within two years, as a way of responding to the decline in the number of men willing to stay celibate in order to become priests, the current replacement rate of which he described as “just above zero”.
But he is on sticky ground as Catholic bishops take vow of obedience to the Pope and it is very unusual for them to come out and announce an action that is contradictory Church teaching. As things stand at the moment, if he was to ordain married priests without the Vatican’s permission, he could be subject to excommunication.
Pope Francis, who undertook a number of significant reforms in his 12 years as pope, apparently firmly ruled out the possibility of married priests.
Read the full Reuters article here.
And secondly an article in the Catholic Herald about the call by the Archbishop of Luxembourg for the church to consider ordaining women. Speaking at a symposium in Bonn, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich said, “I cannot imagine how a Church can continue to exist in the long term if half of the people of God suffer because they do not have access to ordained ministry.” And this is more than an issue for left leaning women: “When I speak with women in parishes, 90% share the same opinion”, he said.
The Cardinal’s intervention comes at a time when reforms initiated by Pope Francis, have opened some senior positions in the Roman Curia to lay men and women. Those changes have been presented in Rome as a widening of participation in Church governance.
Read the full article in the Catholic Herald here.