From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2013
Some of our News Dispatch readers have asked me to comment on the letter
Catholic peers and MPs wrote to Pope Francis asking him to consider permitting bishops in the United Kingdom to ordain married men as priests- British Catholic legislators ask pope to relax priestly celibacy rule.
The parliamentarians, led by Rob Flello MP and Lord Alton of Liverpool argue in their letter that it is anomalous that married Anglican priests can be received into the Catholic Church and ordained as Catholic priests but married Catholic men cannot do the same.
The 21 parliamentarians from all political parties suggest that “if the celibacy rule were relaxed, there would be many others who would seek ordination bringing great gifts to the priesthood.”
I do not see this happening given that in a 2012 interview, Pope Francis (then Cardinal Bergoglio) said that he favoured maintaining priestly celibacy. He said: “In Western Catholicism, some organizations are pushing for more discussion about the issue.
For now, the discipline of celibacy stands firm. Some say, with a certain pragmatism, that we are losing manpower. If, hypothetically, Western Catholicism were to review the issue of celibacy, I think it would do so for cultural reasons (as in the East), not so much as a universal option.
“For the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with all its pros and cons, because we have ten centuries of good experiences rather than failures. What happens is that the scandals have an immediate impact. Tradition has weight and validity.
There are many reasons, both practical and theological, why the Church insists on clerical celibacy. It is a wise practice that was gradually codified in light of centuries of accumulated knowledge and experience.
Early on, it became obvious to many bishops that a married priesthood doesn’t work and that the Church needs men who are willing to embrace a higher spiritual state. Starting with the Spanish Council of Elvira in 305, regional churches began to ask of the clergy what many priests had already spontaneously chosen.
The early Church Fathers—Tertullian, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Hilary—wrote in favor of clerical celibacy, and at the end of the Dark Ages, great reforming popes like Leo IX and Gregory VII insisted that henceforth the priesthood would be celibate. This decision greatly strengthened the Church and still does so today.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote eloquently about how Mary’s virginity is really a condition of spiritual fruitfulness. At one point, the disciples ask Christ if it is “expedient not to marry?” He replies that “not all can accept this teaching; but those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born so…and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let him accept it who can” (Mt 19:10-12).
Although in Africa and elsewhere childlessness was seen as a curse, one has to sacrifice the best of him self to remain celibate for the best part of serving the people of God. The love to serve the people of God overshadows the curse.
There has always been a deep human intuition that celibacy brings great spiritual gifts, a heightened sensitivity to divine things. Even under the Old Covenant, a married priest had to observe continence while he served in the Temple—in other words, when he was acting as priest.
Moses asked that the Jews abstain from conjugal sex while he ascended Mount Sinai, and the prophet Jeremiah was forbidden by God to take a wife in order that he might fulfill his ministry.
And although the apostles and their successors had freedom of choice in this matter—at least until the fourth century—a large number of the clergy during this period did choose celibacy.
The exaltation of celibacy does not in any way denigrate marriage. Nobody can outdo Pope John Paul II in praising conjugal love. And yet, as he points out in his famous talks on the theology of the body, marriage “is only a tentative solution to the problem of a union of persons through love.”
The final solution lies only in heaven, where, as Christ explained to the Sadducees, there is no marriage. Those who live celibately are, in effect, “skipping” the sacrament in anticipation of the ultimate reality, the “Marriage of the Lamb.”
According to Catholic peers and MPs, the Church’s requirement of continence is a primary cause of the sex scandals, arguing that it is the lack of sexual outlets which drives priests into pedophilia, even though the recent scandals have little to do with pedophilia.
Concerning priests, including Fr Peter Kinyanjui, who was the parish priest at Ngewa Catholic Church in Kiambu who have left priesthood to marry, cannot be the measure that celibacy is failing.
Fr Kinyanjui has requested Pope Francis I to review the celibacy rule and allow priests to get married. Kinyanjui who practiced celibacy for 10 years got married three years ago saying he did so after realising he would not win war with nature.
“I had lived a celibate life for 10 years and at one time I realised I could no longer remain celibate or even sojourn on with the fight against nature,” says father Kinyanjui. Kinyanjui is now married to Emma Mungure-click here for further reading- Married Priest Who Views.
Father Kinyanjui says he believes this is the right way to go and urges Pope Francis to listen the cry of many other priests who would want to tie the knot. Kinyanjui also looks forward to a second wedding although he is yet to fix the day. His wife will give birth later in the year.
According to Fr Kinyanjui who lives in a rented house in Ting’ang’a in Kiambu, many other priests live in denial. “Many of them have partners but since the church doesn’t allow it, they court secretly.
Some have secret families, which I believe should not be the case. It was God’s intention for all of us to get married when he creates a man and a woman,” says Kinyanjui. His wife Emma Mungure describes her husband as a loving and caring.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002