Catholic Unity
The Roman Catholic Church is beginning to fray at the edges, its clergy and its laity are not in complete agreement on a number of key issues important to the Church and certainly to the current Pope, both of which consider the issues immutable. First is the issue of priestly celibacy. Long a contentious issue, the vow of celibacy has famously been breached since it was first issued, although it continues to be held in high regard by the church hierarchy.Second is the issue of female ordination, a more recent issue, but with a bit of a historical pedigree nonetheless; there was, in fact, a female pope in the Medieval era. Yet the reality of that is discounted as a legend, documented or not. Now, there are dissenting groups of priests in some of the most historically Catholic of countries, like Austria and Ireland. Fealty to tradition is not as vital to these groups as a more enlightened moving with the times.
The upset in the Church over the revelations of child sexual abuse by priests whom the Church has always gone out of its way to shelter from public exposure and shame, just as they have those priests who have preyed on mature female parishioners have done the institution no favours; even its most faithful find it difficult to defend the decision-making that made a mockery of the obligations of the priesthood toward its flock.
The hypocrisy of not wanting to know or to make public which among the priesthood are homosexual as long as their aberration-lifestyle is kept discretely muted and not practised and certainly not revealed - yet another, third issue - the "don't ask, don't tell" prescription to fill the ranks of the declining priesthood does the Church no favours either. The Church is practised in hypocrisy, always has been; there have been Popes who have fathered offspring.
It is possible that some within the Church, as for example the Austrian Priests' Initiative, may place pressure on Rome and if continuing not to meet with success, may part from the organized Catholic Church, setting off on their own, through an ideological schism. Nothing particularly new about this, but not a very comfortable place to be in for the Vatican which would prefer to see its faithful in harmony.
At a time when the numbers of priests are in such decline within the Roman Catholic Church that not all communions can be adequately served it seems foolish to insist on rejecting reasonable accommodation. To insist on the immutability of a tradition within the Church that has no real basis in precise scriptural insistence, is to deny the practicality of permitting within the ranks priests who respond to the spiritual calling, allowed to marry.
An American priest, a member of the Maryknoll Fathers & Brothers was removed from the order in retaliation of his open support of female ordination. "Your numerous public statements and appearances in support of the women's priests movement continue to create in the minds of many faithful the view that your position is acceptable to our Church."
To be restored to his former position in good standing and amity with infallible Church doctrine is simple enough. In Fr. Roy Bourgeois' own words, "They want two words: I recant. For me, the real scandal is the message we are sending to women: You're not equal, you cannot be priests, you're not worthy."
There's a familiar ring to all of this. It brings to mind the plight recently revealed in the news of a Christian cleric in Iran who has been ordered, similarly, to recant. His position is somewhat more parlous than that of Father Bourgeois, for he is considered to be an apostate, and in the sharia interpretation practised by the Islamic Republic of Iran his punishment is a sentence of death.
Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is a devout Christian and has been since the age of 19, although he was born a Muslim, in his country of Iran. He is a member of a Protestant evangelical church, and he refuses to abandon his faith in Christianity. "Repent means to return. What should I return to? to the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?
But of course the Roman Catholic Church is not to be equated with Islam, where women there too have second-place status, homosexuals are hounded to death and Christianity is deplored.
Labels: Human Relations, Realities, Religion
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, October 02, 2011
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