Marriage followed by the priesthood: Will priestly celibacy be abolished?
What critics have been predicting for almost two years has
come to pass. Pope Francis officially
convenes an Amazon Special Synod. It is
about "new ways" for the "evangelisation of the indigenous
population" according to Pope Francis and the Brazilian Pope's friend,
Claudio Cardinal Hummes. "The indigenous population as a pretext for the
introduction of married priests", on the other hand, writes Secretum meum
mihi.
The "Amazon Workshop", very active since 2014.
On 9 December 2015, Vaticanist, Sandro Magister was the
first to report on plans by Pope Francis to use the next Synod of Bishops to
abolish priestly celibacy. Magister
named the Amazon region as the starting point and the Brazilian bishops,
Cardinal Claudio Hummes and Erwin Kräutler as the main actors. The fact that both are of German descent is a
not-so-insignificant detail.
and Cardinal Hummes : key players against celibacy
In Rome, they remained silent. However, the fog slowly began to lift. Magister's report received quick confirmation
as to the declared intentions of Hummes and Kräutler, who had set up an
"Amazon workshop" for a new priesthood whose main goal is the
abolition of priestly celibacy as a constitutive element of the priesthood.
The goal is as old as the modernist West German student
movement in the Church. The vocation
crisis is very convenient for this faction to bring about a "vocation
turnaround" with structural changes.
Kräutler's statement, which he himself recounted after his
first visit to Pope Francis in 2014, is perfectly timed. Francis had shown himself open-minded and
encouraged him to make "bold" proposals on the vocation question, the
Austrian missionary bishop said. Under
Pope Benedict XVI, it was quite different. When he, Kräutler, complained to the German
Pope about the lack of priests among the Indians in the Amazon region, the Pope
asked him to pray for priestly vocations. "I won't take part in that," was
Kräutler's reply.
250,000 Amazon Indians as a pretext for abolishing celibacy
Critics therefore say that the lack of priests for 250,000
Indians in the Amazon is only a pretext to lay a hand on the priesthood of the
Latin Church and to abolish priestly celibacy.
The point is to set a precedent, however small. For most people, the Amazon is far away and
tainted with all kinds of socially romantic clichés. The real situation in the Amazon is unknown to
most Catholics. This state of affairs is
supposed to facilitate the creation of a "distant" special regime. However, the exception would only serve as a
crowbar to thereby undermine celibacy as an essential feature of the priesthood
worldwide.
When a meeting was held in a Brazilian diocese in September
2016, Cardinal Hummes also spoke and lamented the difficult situation of the
Indians, who too rarely get to see a priest in the remote areas of Amazonia and
can therefore only rarely receive the sacraments. He then presented plans for an
"indigenous clergy" who should be allowed to be married because
celibacy is foreign to the Indians. When
a conference participant suggested that one should ask each missionary order of
the universal Church to send two priests to the Amazon, then the problem would
be more than solved, the real intentions behind the "Amazon workshop"
were exposed. Cardinal Hummes reacted
energetically and rejected the proposal. "No, no, the Pope does not want
that". Not only did he
categorically reject the alternative proposal but he also invoked Pope Francis.
The reason? "Since the Second Vatican Council"
there should only be one native clergy.
No more mission then?
New version of the synod strategy
What Magister did not know at the beginning of December
2015, but his colleague Marco Tosatti added a few months later: the Synod of
Bishops in Rome was to be preceded by an Amazon Synod. All dioceses that have a share in the Amazon
basin should participate in it. According
to Tosatti, the choreography for the abolition of celibacy is provided by the
holding of the Amazon Synod. This will
formulate a complaint about the lack of priests among the Indians and a request
to Pope Francis to allow a special form of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Francis would then convene a Synod of Bishops
in Rome and present the complaint and request to it. In the case of the Synod on the Family, he
spoke before the Synod began of a "cry of the people" that must be
heard. It will be similar with the new
topic.
The fear: the Synod could end the same way as the Family
Synod. Despite all the trickery of the
Synod's direction, the Synod members affirm Catholic teaching, but Francis
nevertheless decides what he had planned from the beginning, as a chronology of
facts from March 2013 to October 2014 proves. Openly, however, he has not said and admitted that
until today. The result would be that a
new priesthood would be created within the framework of the Amazon workshop in
the primeval forests of Brazil, which would at least provide the entry point
for the abolition of priestly celibacy worldwide in the future.
The formulation that one is committed to an "indigenous
clergy" in order to promote the "evangelisation of the indigenous
population" and to counter the shortage of priests sounds very good, but
is "only a façade", according to Secretum meum mihi.
Pope Francis told the bishops and more than 80 priests of
the Archdiocese of Lyon on 5 October that he saw no reason "at the
moment" for anything to change related to priestly celibacy. The affirmation of celibacy is vaguely worded.
Francis also continues to declare that
nothing has changed in the doctrine of the indissolubility of sacramental
marriage, but at the same time promotes the recognition of adultery, divorce
and second marriages in his own Diocese of Rome and in other dioceses that want
to follow him in this. Words are
patient. Clarity looks different, as the
refusal to answer the dubia (doubts) of Cardinals shows.
The announcement of the Amazon Synod
Yesterday, Francis officially announced the convening of the
Amazon Synod in his address before the Angelus (15 October 2017). He justified this by referring to a wish of
the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America, which he was accommodating. The Special Synod will take place in Rome in
October 2019.
The main goal of the Synod is to
"find new ways of evangelising that part of God's people, especially the
indigenous people".
Cardinal Hummes was the first
Church representative to react to the announcement. He thanked the Pope
effusively for the convocation.
"It will be a very important
ecclesial event for the mission of the Church". The Cardinal spoke of the jungle and the
climate. He said the "whole
world" has a "special interest in Amazonia because of the world's
climate", only to say something more interesting:
"The Synod is above all
important for the evangelisation of this region, the evangelisation of the
indigenous people who are there, who hope with great hope for the presence of
the Church and the Word of God."
Intervista con il card. Hummes
Grande soddisfazione del card. Claudio Hummes, presidente della REPAM, Rete
Ecclesiale Pan-amazzonica, per l'annuncio del Papa di un' assemblea speciale
del Sinodo dei vescovi per la Pan-amazzonia, da tenersi nell'ottobre del 2019. Guarda
la nostra intervista
Posted by News.va Italiano on
Sunday 15 October 2017
What is not being said is more
important than what is said - Is Amoris laetitia II coming?
Neither Pope Francis nor Cardinal
Hummes mentioned the priesthood, the priestly shortage or celibacy. At the end of the Synod on the Family, Francis
had asked Archbishop Bruno Forte not to mention the remarried divorced in the Final
Report because the defenders of the sacrament of marriage would "otherwise
give us a fuss". He, Francis, would
then do everything. What he has
"done" is known since Amoris laetitia and the resulting division of
the Church.
What happened at the Synod on the
Family could, according to fears, be repeated at the Amazon Synod. The real reason for the convocation, the
admission of remarried divorcees to communion at the Synod on the Family and
the admission of married men to the priesthood at the Amazon Synod, could be
concealed and sneakily introduced with a document Amoris laetitia II, which is
neither officially confirmed nor denied.
"Typically Jesuitical"
is Archbishop Forte's thoroughly benevolent comment on the Papal Instruction of
October 2015. "Typically
Jesuitical" could now also be how the Amazon Synod goes and before the
Church knows it, the attack on priestly celibacy has already been carried out,
according to concerned Church circles.
The "real issue": the
"viri probati"
Confirmation that Pope critics
are not seeing "ghosts" comes from sources close to the Pope. As with the Family Synod, Bergoglians
understand papal intentions, even if they are not clearly stated. This is also emerging in the matter of the
Amazon and celibacy. While Francis and
Cardinal Hummes only spoke of the "evangelisation of the indigenous
population", the website Faro di Roma, which is very close to Francis,
headlined:
"At the Synod for Amazonia,
the 'Viri probati'. The real
question"
"The real issue" at
stake is thus not evangelisation, nor in this case the world climate, but the
admission of married men to the priesthood.
The "viri probati" are married men admitted to the diaconate, the lowest level of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Thus, since the Second Vatican Council, the Sacrament of Holy Orders has already been interfered with in a first stage. There is no doubt that modernist church circles saw the admission to the diaconate only as a first step towards the desired abolition of celibacy. But when Paul VI did not agree to this, tens of thousands of priests gave up their priesthood and allowed themselves to be laicised. John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not reverse the admission of "viri probati", but left no doubt that celibacy is an essential feature of the priesthood. Through it and in it, even the claim of the Catholic Church to be the true Church of Jesus Christ is confirmed, since only the Latin Church among all Christian churches, denominations and denominations has upheld the sacramental priesthood and priestly celibacy. It was predictable that a differently minded Pope could start here. He has ruled in Rome since 2013.
.jpeg)
Comments