Circular V

October 7, 2006

Let Us Talk Together In Honesty  

We have no reason up till now, my dear married Bishops and priests, for regretting for having washed our dirty linen in public. In all our documents we have shown respect and reverence for the Church. Due to the name of our Catholic Church, upheld so high in the eyes of the world, if we, the married priests have been the cause of the slow motion within the Church, which has led to the loss of her reputation, by our action to reinstate the married priests, we have taken one of the greatest steps to restore the good name to the Church.

You are surprised that I do not bring you to a Church tribunal for having married while you were in your pastoral field. What you did was an offence which was attached to your change of mind through your impulse and discovery of who you were. You longed to be with someone outside, a partner in a true human union through marriage. At that time the law, which is only a precept attached to your priestly vocation, you opted to lead a natural life in matrimony. Some of you, considered by your superiors as Angels, could not easily be allowed to put away your vow of celibacy. All the same you gave up, and with it your pastoral priestly ministry was taken away.

We who understand what that precept, which does not deserve the name law, human nature itself has in these days through human experience rejected it. From the overwhelming number of e-mails from all over the world, we have come to understand that celibacy is no more a necessary attachment to priesthood. Debates are still going on in the whole world. We have only been an opportunity through which finally the world has voiced its hidden opinion on the matter. It means that the precept was implicitly imposed on the candidates to priesthood, without offering them an option. As they presented themselves as candidates to priesthood, they were made to believe that it was a requirement to embrace priesthood. As a matter of fact it was not so. Priesthood stands on its own, without celibacy as reinforcement.

 

The New Priesthood

The Old Priesthood of the High Priest Aaron, of the family of Levi, even the nature of this priesthood demanded a superior way of living. We must admit that human nature however, has always diminished the luster of God’s calling nearly in every human vocation. Starting with the Christian family, it is said that sixty percent of the Christian families in the world are standing either on one leg or completely paralyzed. That is, living in misunderstanding and unforgiveness, or divorce. What a pity! This is the case of the actual priesthood. The delay to call the priests to the original standard of priesthood be it the Levitical or that of Melchizedek is to participate in the wearing out the true meaning of priesthood.

The perfection of priesthood is in its own nature. The priests, in the Levitical order: “The Levites were the Lord’s special company. They were not to own any part in Israel, except for the cities that were given to them by the different tribes to dwell in. the Lord was to be their entire inheritance.” (Deut. 10:8-9; 18:1-8; 21:5. Joshua 13:14.)

Gwen R. Shaw, herself a Jewishess, helps us to put clearly the demand of priesthood as God put it to the chosen family of Levi. We are tracing the roots of our priesthood. Marriage must never be an impediment to live according to what God wants of us. It is useless to come back to our priesthood, lost externally through refusal to go by the law which did not give us option. As we embrace once more our ministerial priesthood, let us show love of our vocation, and uphold the high standard to which we were originally called. It is not marriage, which was believed to reduce a priest to a carnal level of concupiscence and so be numbed by the carnal pleasures. What wicked thoughts!

Going back to Gwen R. Shaw on the matter of the Levitical priesthood, she says: “They were chosen to set a perfect example before all of Israel by keeping His Word and His Covenant, to offer the sacrifices and to teach the judgment and the law. They had to put incense before the Lord and offer whole sacrifices on the altar, withholding nothing for themselves. They were never given an inheritance. God said: ‘I will be the inheritance of Levi.’”

A Spanish journalist asked me: “How will you support your many married priests? They have business to maintain their families. That is why the Church preferred celibate priests, who, as they die, none of their relatives can claim anything.” If this be the case, we have the more reason to take away mandatory celibacy. The Church should not sacrifice the lives of the priests for a little money which a priest will have in his bank account as he dies. Then celibacy has been bought at too much of a price that has cost the lives of many priests.

The second reason for not approving their illogical sacrificing of priests to celibacy, for a material reason is the fact that the Church did not keep the way of life proposed by the first Christian community. The detachment of property, which takes the name “inheritance” in the Levitical priesthood, is the pouring together of the fruits of the work of the first Christian community. We read as follows: “The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common.” (Acts 4:12) Hence says Gwen R. Shaw: “They were never given an inheritance,” God said, ‘I will be the inheritance of Levi.’”

We are not going to be impeded to realize the designs of God, which have been announced to us through the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am certain that the Association, Married Priests Now!, will overcome this material difficulty. We just need to use some of our own priests to study seriously as to how to stick to what the Lord says in Leviticus of His own people, the priests, whose full time is as well laid down. The Lord will Himself care for those whose full time will be working for the whole community of Married Priests Now!. Gwen R. Shaw recalls the daily occupation of a Levitical priests, as follows: “He is called to be a mediator between God and man. He not only offers up the sacrifices to God, he is called to be a sacrifice himself. He has a lifetime of service before him.” (The Tribes of Israel)

The ministerial priesthood to which we are calling the married priests to reinvest themselves with takes its integrity and wholeness from the one who made it so, God the father who planned it. As you can see there is no mention of celibacy. God did not demand so called first class sacrifice “celibacy” as it has been believed up till now. “The Levites are a people with the high calling of God upon their lives.”

We, who have suffered, for the second choice of our lives, married life, should no more lower again in any way the white linen of priesthood.

Let us see why our actual priesthood has jumped from the Levitical family to the family of Judah. The Judah blood lineage does not have such good origins attached to it. But here for the sake of Jesus, who purified the blood lineage of Judah, we are settled in peace and enjoy the same nobility as Jesus.

However, in between the Levitical Priesthood and the Priesthood of Jesus, there is the Melchizedek Priesthood. Strange that the Melchizedek Priesthood is by far higher than the Levitical Priesthood! Because the humility displayed by Abraham, in whose loins was Aaron the future high priest, to Melchizedek by giving him the tithes, a tenth of each of his possessions, showed that Melchizedek was superior to Abraham. Moreover, Melchizedek was a mysterious figure. It is said that he had no father, and no mother, and nobody knew where he came from.

Why then was Jesus compared to Melchizedek? Because Jesus too is a mysterious figure, God-man. But He is higher than Melchizedek, because it is God Himself, who ratifies His Priesthood by an oath. He ratifies the eternity of his Priesthood. As to the unclear origins of Melchizedek, Jesus enjoys the same. “Who are you?” The question came from the crowd. “Why do you hide yourself,” they asked Him. “You know where I come from” He replied. So he was an unknown figure, hard to understand.

The superiority of the priesthood of Jesus has two important constituent elements. One is that it is God the Father who swore that Jesus was consecrated and appointed Priests by God Himself. The second element, not less important, but equally important, is that He was priest forever. That is, in eternity. And this is the priesthood we enjoy. King David has it in his Psalms 110:4: “Yahweh has sworn an oath which He never will retract, ‘you are a priest of the order of Melchizedek, and for ever.”

The Biblical Theology on Christ’s Priesthood which is ours, ties our priesthood with that of Christ and Melchizedek, in a nice and smooth way. Here it is: “The figure of Melchizedek serves as means of reflecting on the meaning of Christ: Priest and King, who, bringing forth bread and wine, blessed Abraham. We are called to share in the priestly reality of Christ, partaking of the bread and wine which from the ongoing celebration of our Covenant with God Most High, who loves us and draws us to himself, through the priestly mediation of Jesus Christ.” (Dictionary of Biblical theology: Michael G. Witczak, S. J.)          

The Late Holy Father, His Holiness John Paul II says: “For this reason, on Holy Thursday we, the “ministers of the New Covenant,” gather together with bishops in the Cathedrals of our local churches; we gather together before Christ – the One and Eternal source of our priesthood.

 

Married Priesthood: The Totality of Priesthood.

The family as a domestic church together constitutes a community of priests. Hence we read in Isaiah, when God foresees Israel, when well settled, will give glory and praise to God. They will offer not only sacrifices, but their whole life as a community will raise their voices to God, glorifying Him as their Father and Creator. By so doing, as a nation, they will act as one single priest does on behalf of the community. Hence Isaiah says: “The people I have formed for myself will sing my praises.” (Isa. 43:21).

St. Peter in his first letter calls us Christians to be aware of the shared priesthood from Jesus. This is what the Vatican Council II has divided into two, the ministerial priesthood, that is the ordained minister, and that of the Christian community. Hence St. Peter says in his letter: “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  (1 Peter 2:5)

The married priest’s family becomes “a living stone” which upholds the members as priests from whom sacrifices are continuously being offered for the expiation of their own sins and for those of the community. There is herein then in this family both ministerial priesthood and the royal priesthood as a chosen family to serve God and the community in a special way. To make it clear, let us refer to what Elaine M. Waiwright writes in his article in Colleville Pastoral Theology. He writes as follows in the matter: “The totality of the lives of the members of these communities then become like “sacrifices” within the temple of God’s presence in the world (Rom. 12:7). In the words of St. Paul, Romans 12, we read the following: “Think of God’s mercy, my brothers, and worship him, I beg you, in a way that is worthy of thinking beings, by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God.” (Rom. 12:1-3)

The married priest’s family should be conscious of this fact, much more than the other members of the Christian community. They share in the priesthood of the head of the family, the husband; while combining with their own “royal priesthood” received from Christ, the head of the family of Christians.

Let us work hard to bring back the true face of a Christian family, the Holy Family. They were all holy. The married priest’s family has all the elements necessary to live more the true life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. It is beyond doubt that Mary, the Mother of Jesus and St. Joseph her husband, truly shared in the priesthood of Jesus. So is the whole family of the married priest.

Archbishop E. Milingo.