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DEFROCKED PRIESTS ON CELIBACY DEBATE
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012
The News making headline this week is of Roman Catholic priest Rev Fr Peter Njogu Kibutu from Nyeri Archdiocese who got married and joined Renewed Universal Church and became a bishop. Before he left he had served as a priest, attached to the Mweiga Catholic parish for 13 years. He is married to Berith Karimi Njogu with three children.
Inset from left- Bishop Peter Njogu of the Renewed Universal Church in Nyeri,
David Kasomo with his wife- from Machakos, Godfrey Shiundu with his wife –from Kitale/ File
Like Bishop David Kasomo, Njogu was ordained bishop by former Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. He is in charge of Mt. Kenya diocese, covering Nyeri, Meru, Embu, Nakuru and parts of Nairobi.
He says nearly all priests have girlfriends, while some even have secret families and their bishops or superiors know this, only that they are covering up. The Standard view Newspaper Nairobi, Kenya, sates:” It is becoming clear that some priests prey on children with abandon. They engage in sex escapades that are the province of the brothel and the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah."
Emmanuel Milingo while presiding over the ordination of Rev. Daniel Kasomo in Nairobi about three years ago said the reason priests should marry is because no where in the bible does it say that a priest cannot get married - this is a man made law of the Catholic Church. Like bishop Njogu he maintains that nearly all priests have girlfriends and secret families.
He says he opted for ‘Married Priest Now’ movement because if priests are allowed to get married most of sex scandals by clergy would cease.
Rev Fr Godfrey Shiundu of Kitale Catholic Diocese was the first to be ordained bishop for Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ (ECCC) Splinter group from the Roman Catholic Church that supports married priests.
Nairobi Star reports that more than 40 priests have in the last few years defected from the Catholic Church in Kenya seeking freedom from celibacy. Shiundu says his church is growing stronger and more priests were seeking advice from him on the celibacy issue. One of the first priests he has ordained Fr John Angelo Msaazi from Uganda.
It was followed by Rev. Fr Benedict Simiyu, formerly of the Bungoma Roman Catholic Church who began to defy celibacy in 2000 while serving in one of the parishes in the Diocese.
The next priest to be ordained was Rev Fr Francis Nyawir, who was ex-communicated from the church after he returned to St Aquinas Major Seminary in Nairobi to pursue his theological studies. He is based in Kisumu town.
Father Shiundu was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 2004 after he allegedly impregnated a nun, Ms Stella Nangila when he served in West Pokot District. They wedded in 2006 at a lavish wedding presided by RCC Archbishop Dr Karl Rodig.
Rodig flew in from Germany to marry the couple at the Kitale ASK showground, only a kilometre away from Kitale’s main Catholic Church Cathedral.
The RCC is a US-based Catholic splinter group that allows its clergy to marry and openly accepts polygamy as opposed to the Catholic Church.
There are about 150,000 married priests worldwide, 25,000 of them in America and 18,000 in Brazil, according to Bishop Milingo. Milingo was excommunicated from the Catholic Church after he got married to a Korean woman, Maria Sung.
Another splinter group of the Roman Catholic Church, Independent Catholic Charismatic Church of Kenya ordained Bishop George Odhiaambo Jamba at a ceremony in Ugenya District, last year.
Bishop Jamba leads the church’s mission in Western Kenya. High-ranking officials of the church include Bishop Tom Kiiza of Uganda and its Vicar-General Cyprian Kinzi Musyimi. The sec is headed by Archbishop Anthony Mackiilop from Australia.
Bishop Mackiilop claims their Church is growing fast in Kenya. They have so far attained more than 10,000 faithful and nine bishops.
Priests who advocate for married priests argue that even nuns were suffering secretly in the confines of the convents. The nuns cite cases of lesbianism, sex with priests and even abortion in the holy grounds, citing a case of a nun from Molo who was quoted by press as saying that she has witnessed cases of lesbianism and abortion.
The nun said the picture of innocence and humility portrayed by nuns in veils to the public changes immediately they get into the confines of the convents (Standard, Nairobi, Kenya-June 27, 2009).
They are also citing the incident where a Kenyan nun studying in the US got married after being a nun for 16 years. The story has it that when Rev Sr Beatrice Magoka went to America for further studies, she fell in love with a staunch Catholic man who regularly attended Mass where she was also a churchgoer.
Sr Magoka could not resist her intense love for Wright-they got married eventually/ File
As Magoka, 37, and American Tyrone Wright, 46, saw each other daily in Mass they secretly admired each other. After two years to pray over it with the view to overcome temptations, instead they found themselves falling in love intensely and they could not hide it any more. They got married last year April, Magoka and Wright through a civil wedding.
Few weeks ago Crazy Monday Magazine reported a moving story how Timothy Mburu (not his real name) was tagged into sexual affairs by a nun. Timothy was a school bus driver for the parish next to the convent.
The nun has been admiring him, and as the admiration turned into intense love the nun began sneaking out of her room to his house, which was at the far end of the parish where they could have an affair with him for two hours before she could return into the convent. The nun got pregnant and ran away.
It did not end there. When other nuns realized that one of them was sneaking to his house, nearly half of the nuns would troop to his little house, including a senior nun who was almost the age of his mother.
The senior nun realized that a junior nun was already in his bed. She insisted that Timothy opens the door. When he refused to open the senior nun went back to the convent but kept vigil, waiting until she spotted the novice sneaking out of his house back into the convent. Senior nun had to wait for her turn to come and indeed it did come.
Last year some groups of Italian women who claimed they were mistresses of the priests wrote to Pope Benedict XVI asking him to lift the vow of celibacy so that they could officially stay with their priests.
This is what happens when a priest has no vocation to celibacy/ File
Pope Benedict has been confronted with a powerful opponent in the campaign for the revision of church celibacy rules. In 1970, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) and eight other leading theologians signed a memorandum proposing that, to address the shortage of priests, the Catholic Church “quite simply has a responsibility to take up certain modifications” on celibacy.
Some
of the theologians included
Karl Rahner,
Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann. They urged the German
bishops to appeal to Pope Paul VI for a serious
examination of the celibacy rule on account of the
shortage of priests. It was published in full in the
Suddeutsche daily.
Then on 3 February, 208
Catholic theologians from Germany,
Austria and
Switzerland
published a memorandum entitled Church 2011: A Necessary
New Departure, again in the Suddeutsche, urging bishops
to introduce sweeping reforms including the ordination
of married men and the ordination of women (Full text in
English of both memoranda – visit http://www.thetablet.co.uk/).
Catholic priests have been unable to marry since the Gregorian reforms in the 11th century made celibacy compulsory. However, in recent years Pope Benedict XVI has made allowances for married Anglican ministers to transfer to the Catholic Church after a number made the move in protest at controversial Anglican issues including the ordination of women priests, and acceptance of ministers in same-sex relationships.
In 1980 the Vatican approved special provisions under which former Episcopal priests who had become Catholics could apply for ordination in the Catholic priesthood. Since then several dozen married former Episcopal priests have become Catholic priests. In addition, a few married former Methodist and Lutheran ministers have been ordained Catholic priests.
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