I think I'll buy a laser printer this Christmas.
WarCraft Dowload map 6.3"Holy Father in Heaven, please sanctify this purchase with the blessings of fruitful and inexpensive toner. Amen."
I'm constantly reminded by the mainstream media of the horrific shortage of priests in America. But I have to admit I'm puzzled.
First: since 1988, I've never taken residence near a parish with less that four priests - my current parish has six (though two are retired and in residence). Do we really need four priests in my parish, or four at the next-nearest? Whose job is it to make sure some parishes aren't overloaded and others aren't understaffed? Is any recruitment conducted in dioceses with too many priests, to bring them to dioceses with not enough?
More important, how many of the stories we hear in the MSM are a self-fulfilling prophesy?
Necessity, more than desire, has dictated a similarly unconventional approach in St. Fidelis Parish in a downtrodden downtown Chicago neighborhood. For 10 years, the parish has been run without a priest by Sister Leonette Kaluzny, who is entitled to do everything a priest can do except administer the sacraments, which include hearing confessions.Sister Leonette once wished she could be ordained, but now she runs a parish and her parishoners allegedly whisper of heterodoxy while she sighs that 'Rome is far away'. Is this all mere coincidence?"I hear confessions anyway," the Polish-born Kaluzny, 69, said with a smile. "You do a lot of counseling in this ministry."
St. Fidelis was once home to eight priests, but when she arrived, Kaluzny filled a vacuum now shared by more than 3,100 U.S. parishes. Each weekend, visiting priests take turns celebrating Mass in the basement of the former parish school -- rented by the diocese to the Chicago public school district to help pay the bills.
Appointed by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin as the first layperson to head a parish in the Chicago archdiocese, Kaluzny faced resistance at first. "This was something so new to our Catholic people," she said, "because a priest was next to God."
Yet after a decade of watching her in action, some of the same people wonder why she is not ordained. The Catholic Church does not permit women's ordination.
"At one time, I wanted to be ordained," Kaluzny explained. "But right now I feel freer. I feel I can do almost more than the priest does. Rome for me, it's so far away. I push the laity to take their rightful role in the church as baptized Christians."
Lastly, and interconnecting both of the above sets of questions: what's the relationship between heterodoxy in a diocese and how many priests it enjoys the services of? The article makes the claim that what I view as heterodoxy is merely necessary reform and a natural response to a lack of priests, and that the lack of reform is what's causing people to leave the Church. I think it equally (if not more) plausible that the lack of priests is caused by the decline in Church membership, spurred on by heterodoxy and the failure to stand firm on the Truth.
This is a demography student's thesis waiting to happen. We can't know what the most effective solution to our problems will be until we know how we got into this situation in the first place. And no matter the cause, the solution to curing this disease cannot be to kill the patient: we cannot save the Catholic Church by becoming Protestant.
My diocesan newspaper's online site interviewed a military chaplain who is also one of our diocesan priests. The comments of Lt. Colonel Robert Cannon are inspirational and heartwarming, sounding the call of Iraqi liberation almost like he was a Republican political operative. But he also adds some flavor that make his perspective unique among the "in the war zone" commentaries I've read.
I have found some of the most outstanding, brilliant and dedicated human beings here in the middle of a war zone, half way around the world, willing to risk everything to give the Iraqi people an opportunity to have a future bright with the promise of freedom. They range from Department of State employees, to military members, to civilian contractors building bridges and infrastructure, to just ordinary, everyday people. They all have answered the call to do their part.Indeed. Some of those extraordinary people are even military chaplains.
A commenter at Open Book made the mistake of mentioning in passing a pet peeve of mine.
A married priest is an occasion for scandal when the ordained has left his vows to become married. But in the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, it is valid for a married man to recieve the sacrament of Holy Orders. The requirement of celibacy is mandated by the rules of the Latin Rite only, and is not dogma. It is a practice of the Latin Rite, and as far as I know, it could be changed by a simple order from the pope at any time. Catholics who advocate the ordination of married men are not in the same category as pro-abortion advocates or those calling for the ordination of women.
The celibacy requirement was enacted to provide a filter for candidates to the priesthood at a time when there were too many potential priests. It is a crime to allow a shortage of priests to hurt the church when a perfectly valid solution - currently in practice in other Rites - goes ignored simply because of the obstinancy of the Roman bishops. I honestly believe many bishops do not want to provide this alternative out of sheer jealousy toward the happily married men who would become ordained as a result.
A few short weeks ago, our country put to rest the greatest president of my lifetime, and a contender for the greatest of the 20th century. His autobiography, entitled Where's The Rest Of Me?, harkened back to a pivotal line he recited when Ronald Reagan was the name of a B-movie actor. I've been realizing just how much President Reagan affected my political development by watching his funeral and reading the many retrospectives dedicated to his memory. But I also appreciate how much the title of his book captures my emotions right now, unrelated to politics.
When my other blog, The Black Republican, was still a yearling, I was expecting the approaching election would consume most of my attention and focus. While that has been true to a certain extent, "most" appears to have been an overstatement. I did not foresee the shape and character of the debate that would evolve inside the Catholic Church after the news of the sexual abuse scandal died down, and as a Catholic presidential nominee appeared for the Democratic Party. And even more, I could not imagine how all this would begin to affect me.
I could turn this entry into a lengthy autobiography of my own, but suffice to say after over twenty years of being a confirmed Catholic, I'm only now beginning to feel in my soul what I long ago thought I'd been able to intellectualize. It's a daunting realization to stumble upon at the age of thirty-five, but I still believe I have a vocation to find, and I have yet to decipher from the many yearnings in my heart exactly what that vocation should be.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Regardless of your personal faith, you really should read this funny post and its comments.
According to the film, over half a million priests and nuns have left the church since the early '60s, a loss known among Catholics as "the bleeding."If you're Catholic, you'll laugh. If you're not, you'll learn the one place you shouldn't get your information about Catholics: the mainstream press.
UPDATE: It just gets better. And in the comments:
What is next? The Bleeding 2: The Bloodening!
Posted by Chris at 02:02 AM
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Almost 1,000 years ago, the Christian Church (as it was a singular institution in those days) passed a requirement that all priests take a vow of celibacy prior to ordination. In the feudal structure of the society at the time, too many young men were left without anything to do, having been deprived of land and position by the strict inheritance laws. Many of them, seeing the potential for power, influence, and upward mobility, were becoming priests as their choice of career, with barely a thought to the spiritual component to the profession. The heirarchical clergy of the time decided the most efficient means to separate the devout from the social climbers was to deprive all priests of the pleasures of the flesh - at least officially. It was a brilliant political maneuver, conveniently supported by Scripture. ("Each one should lead the life the Lord has assigned him, continuing as he was when the Lord called him." 1 Cor 7, 17)
Some of the problems the Catholic Church has today are wholly man's problem, and this is one of them. The very passage that supports the celibacy of its priests makes no requirement beyond that of "continuing as he was". Paul goes on to say that it would be better if a man were unmarried, but admits all the other Apostles did not follow that path as he did, because "It is better to marry than to be on fire."
Oh, how prescient that statement is for us today - yet, the church leaders deny it. Why? They say it is just because we're not holy enough, that if more more Catholics were more devout, we just wouldn't have a problem.
'The problems in the church today are not caused by the teaching of Jesus and of his church, but by lack of fidelity to them,' Archbishop Dolan wrote. 'The recent sad scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors, as the professionals have documented, has nothing to do with our celibate commitment.'So it would seem that the Church leaders believe we get what we deserve. If no one wants to live under the yoke they say Scripture imposes, we have no one to blame but ourselves for our lack of fidelity to the Word.
As the bishops reaffirmed a requirement that has been part of church practice for nearly 1,000 years, priests and laypeople added their voices to those in Milwaukee calling for change. According to the National Federation of Priests Councils, associations of priests in Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Charleston, and in the states of New York and Illinois, are all considering issuing manifestos like the one issued in Milwaukee.
Bishop Gregory and Archbishop Dolan both argued that the shortage of Catholic clergy has little to do with celibacy, and is a problem shared by many Christian denominations and even Jewish synagogues.
However, Dean R. Hoge, a sociologist at The Catholic University of America who has studied clergy in Catholic and Protestant churches for more than 30 years, said that the shortage of priests in the Catholic church is 'far more severe' than any other denomination in the United States. He said that for every 100 priests who die or leave ministry today, Catholic seminaries are now training only 30 or 40 to replace them.