If the Catholic Bishops want to know why they are ordaining so few priests, then they should ask themselves why this problem simply does not exist in most of the world, what those countries are doing right, and what the handful of countries where vocations are not overflowing are doing wrong.
During the Pontificate of John Paul II, ordinations worldwide increased by seventy-two per cent. But in a few Western countries, power is concentrated in the hands of those who, being of a certain background and generation, have an ideological objection to the celibate male priesthood, and have therefore gone out of their way to contrive a shortage of celibate male priests in order to “prove their point”.
They can then go bleating to Rome about the “need” for the normative ordination of married men (which would not actually make any difference, and could not possibly be afforded by the Catholic Church on this island, which owns almost nothing except the land on which Her schools and churches stand) and for the “ordination” of women.
In the United States, in particular, there is vast and irrefutable evidence of a long-standing network of radical feminist nuns in diocesan vocations offices, who have spent decades packing seminaries with men who have a sexual interest in teenage boys (persons of no concern whatever to radical feminists, of course), so that the inevitable scandals could be used to fuel their own demands for “ordination”. That radical feminist lobby is rapidly gaining ground within the Church here, too.
Of course, those who have contrived, and who are contriving, the priest shortage know perfectly well that the large-scale ordination of married men is financially impossible, while they at least accept as a fact of life that the “ordination” of women is theologically impossible. So they are instead committed to handing over the running of our parishes and chaplaincies to lay people (usually women) who enjoy salaries, contractual hours, annual paid leave, the statutory retirement age (not that any of them will have been working for 10 years by then), and occupational pensions.
Expect these people to be moved into our presbyteries sooner rather than later. Expect them to pretend to celebrate Mass up to just before the Offertory, and then jump to giving Communion from the Reserved Sacrament. Once a month, an elderly priest will say Mass in full so that there is any Reserved Sacrament, but probably on a weekday and at some inconvenient hour, lest there be any detraction or distraction from the leading lady. And once he dies or becomes too frail to carry on, then what?
I repeat that this whole situation is being created on purpose.
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Bloody hell David, I'd love to see your evidence. And I'll come back to you on the role of the laity in the Church at a time of mutual convenience.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for the role of laity in the Church. It's the laity running parishes that I don't agree with. And what I describe is already happening in American parishes, as well as in chapliancy settings (where it started over there) over here.
ReplyDeleteAll academic studies on clerical child abuse have found that the level of clerical abusers (roughly 1% of clerics) is the same across all churches - Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, etc. And as clerical abuse is no higher in the Catholic Church than in other denominations and faiths, there is no reason to link clerical abuse with clerical celibacy.
ReplyDeleteIn the U.S Catholics have taken all the flak because of their greater numbers (there are at least 20,000 Protestant denominations while Catholics -- 23% of the population -- make up a single denomination) but it seems the rate of clerical child abuse is actually higher in the Protestant faiths ...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0405/p01s01-ussc.html
The following study attempts to put clerical child abuse in its proper context by comparing the levels of abuse among priests with the levels among Protestant ministers and rabbis, and with other professions with access to children. It suggests that (statistically) a child is far safer if left in the care of a priest than if left in the care of a school teacher ...
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm
I quote from the report ...
"In the authoritative work by Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, it was determined that between 0.2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. The figure among the Protestant clergy ranges between 2.0 and 3.0 percent."
From the report's conclusion ...
"The issue of child sexual molestation is deserving of serious scholarship. Too often, assumptions have been made that this problem is worse in the Catholic clergy than in other sectors of society. This report does not support this conclusion. Indeed, it shows that family members are the most likely to sexually molest a child. It also shows that the incidence of the sexual abuse of a minor is slightly higher among the Protestant clergy than among the Catholic clergy, and that it is significantly higher among public school teachers than among ministers or priests.
In a survey for the Wall Street Journal-NBC News, it was found that 64 percent of the public thought that Catholic priests frequently abused children. This is outrageously unfair, but it is not surprising given the media fixation on this issue. While it would be unfair to blame the media for the scandal in the Catholic Church, the constant drumbeat of negative reporting surely accounts for these remarkably skewed results."
Last year in the UK we had three high profile cases of Anglican clerical abuse, with much media accusations of a cover-up by the Anglican hierachy. So far in 2007 and 2008 (touch wood) there have been no Catholic cases.
While the reporting of non-Catholic clerical abuse cases helps to put Catholic child abuse stories in some sort of context, it should also be stated unreservedly that if a single Catholic priest is an abuser, this is a scandal. And to compound the scandal, too often in the past the reaction of the Church was to close ranks to protect the priest, rather than care for the victim. Hopefully this is now a thing of the past as the Church now operates a child protection policy.