Fr. John's announcement regarding his leave of absence from ministry [Archive]

Sid

10-25-2006, 05:25 PM

Another priest who decided that celibacy was a crock:

http://www.sthilarychurch.org/uploads/10c785658fe8c3a39e3b4369441566a4.jpg

Fr. John's announcement regarding his leave of absence from ministry (http://www.sthilarychurch.org/uploads/c8c4ce20dec52f27451a6306574aab62.mp3)

St. Hillary Church (http://www.sthilarychurch.org/)

Sid

10-25-2006, 08:39 PM

He gave all the reasons need to justify it, yet will stay a Catholic?

Or is he questioning other things as well, I wonder. ;)

CI:

I don't know, but will try to follow any news that comes out.

This link, from a Catholic source no less, shows the problems with celibacy:

Let’s remind ourselves how the Catholic church got into the celibacy mess.

It didn’t have anything to do with sex, purity and holiness.

It was the money.

And when one mixes money and the Catholic church, there’s usually a mess.

The problem for Christianity was it started to become financially prosperous.

The rich, the thoughtful ones who understood that their earthly goods were barriers to heaven, were delighted to hand over chunks of wealth to the priests and bishops as a down payment on easier transmission from one place to the next. (The soul’s equivalent, the wealthy presumed, of time-sharing a jet instead of having to stand in line at a purgatorial Southwest counter.)

Not only were priests and bishops becoming wealthier, they were becoming worldier. Many were married, others just had “open marriages” -- concubines. Worse than that -- in the church’s eyes -- the priests and bishops begetting sons regarded the endowments being made to the church as personal property. So the same rollicking clerics were setting themselves up as landed gentry and passing the fortunes along to their primogenitor sons and heirs.

Celibacy’s history of power and money (http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/041202/041202s.htm)