Robert Mickens
The Tablet
March 1, 2008
 
Catholic priests in Brazil, a country with one of the worst clergy shortages in the world, have drafted a petition asking the Vatican to consider lifting mandatory priestly celibacy.

The request is one of four proposed changes drawn up at the twelfth biennial National Priests' Meeting held last week in Itaici in São Paulo state. The "proposals" are now being reviewed by priest councils in all of Brazil's 269 dioceses, and Brazilian news reports said the final text could be sent to Rome as early as next week, although conflicting reports said it had already been sent.

In the current wording of the text, which The Tablet obtained from a Brazilian church source, the priests ask the Congregation of the Clergy to "make possible other forms of ordained ministry that would not be just the celibate presbyterate". In a second proposal they ask the Congregation "for clearer and more defined guidelines" to help them minister to divorced and remarried Catholics.

The authenticity of the as yet unpublished text was corroborated by Fr Francisco dos Santos, newly elected president of Brazil's National Priests' Commission (CNP), in an interview with Vatican Radio's Brazilian service.

The priest stressed that the first proposal to the Congregation to the Clergy was "not against celibacy" but was merely a plea for the Vatican to approve "other forms of ordained ministry". The CNP is the office of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference (CNBB) that represents Brazil's 18,600 priests.

In the text The Tablet received, the Brazilian priests also ask the Congregation for Bishops for a "more transparent, democratic and participatory" process of choosing diocesan bishops, including consultation with "priests, dioceses and regions of the CNBB".

Finally, in a fourth proposal, the priests urge the Congregation for Saints to "examine the processes of beatification and canonisation of Brazilian priests and bishops that have been a great inspiration for life and the ministerial priesthood".

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/11095/

The traditional view of priestly abstinence as a ’ godly calling’ has been challenged by new evidence from Latin commentators of 1000 years ago. Dr Conrad Leyser from The University of Manchester says the vow of celibacy in the Catholic clergy can instead be traced to attempts to safeguard church property and keep tabs on careerist clerics.

According to Dr Leyser, who is based in the Centre for Late Antiquity in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, the 1137 rule of celibacy can be traced to a period of upheaval beginning with the trial of Pope Formosus’ corpse in 897.

The Catholic establishment tried Formosus’ dead body for " illegally" leaving his post as Bishop and seeking promotion to the papacy precipitating clashes over attitudes to careerism and trustworthiness of the clergy.

The conflict escalated in the following decade with the election of Pope John X, rumoured to be the lover of Theodora, the most powerful noblewoman in the city of Rome.

He said: "These historical events give a strong case to those arguing for abandoning the vow of celibacy as a way to reverse declining numbers of priests.

"If the Church is to find a way of reversing this decline - then arguing that celibacy is ’god given’ holds no water at all as it is not .

"The Pope himself has recognised that celibacy is a late addition to Catholic tradition.

"Celibacy was created as a mechanism to help carve up church wealth between lay people and priests during a period of upheaval.

in http://www.manchester.ac.uk

 My fellow Married Bishops and Priests,

Dr. Frank Kaufmann

Executive Director, Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace

The Jewish-Christian Dialogue that took place in Jerusalem March 13–14, 2006 came not a moment too soon. The pursuit of peace in the Holy Land, and by extension the region and world, continues to be a pressing matter for the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI) of the Universal Peace Federation.

The region and the world abound with peace initiatives for the Holy Land and rightfully so. Not only for the obvious, humane reasons, but further for the pressing social and geo-political realities there to which the entire world is closely tied. Each initiative has its own signature and special insight. All are urgently needed.

MEPI proceeds along a handful of core impulses that make it an indispensable partner in the shared pursuit of peace. These include full affirmation that all religions are born of God, the fact that conflict is spiritual in nature above all, and finally insistence that success requires broad and closely integrated collaboration among the key spheres of influence including the religious and spiritual, political and social, media and education, and other centers of human striving.

This particular meeting extended a monumental moment in peace history based on spiritual leaders going to places of extreme trust and vulnerability for the sake of peace. The formal signing of the Jerusalem Declaration took place May 18, 2003. On that occasion Christian and Jewish leaders took the all but unheard of position of repenting to one another. The courage and humility of these leaders far exceeded the routine conventions and norms of polite interfaith dialogue. These leaders managed in this moment to put the cause of peace, and true love as taught in their respective traditions above all other concerns.

Israelis and Palestinians in the pursuit of peace in the Holy Land. The prominent and influential partners of this dialogue are not named in this report as this project is meant to create an enduring and effective community of religious leaders.

Session 1 provided the occasion for self introduction and for all gathered to discuss in general terms the premise for the dialogue. The premise in part included the view that peace issues beyond Jewish-Christian relations, including peaceful relations with Muslims, requires that Jews and Christians transcend their a terrible history, and knit ourselves together as enlightened world leaders.

The other four sessions treated scripture, tradition, theology, and social and political implications respectively. All but the final session was deeply ground in scripture and source documents. The scripture session took up a comparative analysis of the Jacob and Esau story. The tradition session compared the obligations of charity in each tradition. The theology session examined the doctrines about the divine image intrinsic to each group.

All sessions were rich beyond our best imagination. Once the spirit of harmony prevails, content and inestimable value inside each tradition pours forth for the other. What is gained in profound. Surely all involved left far richer and wiser each better equipped as Jews and Christians alike. Furthermore, the bonds formed marked the beginnings of a world-important community of leaders forged in the intimacy of this conversation.

The final session examined social and political implications derived from the prospect of increasing harmony and collaboration among Jews and Christians. Special emphasis and particular interest was given to applying to solutions to conflict in the Holy Land. in upf.org

Co-President, American Clergy Leadership Conference

 
The essence of love is to reach out without hesitation or reservation to embrace one another despite our religious beliefs and traditions, despite the current conflicts to somehow transcend ideology and religion, and become the people that God, Yahweh, Allah has called us to be.

We have to seek repentance in relation to each other, but more importantly we have to seek repentance in relation to our God for not truly being the people, the children that He has called us to be. We must forgive one another, we must be bold enough and big enough to forgive each other. In the Hebrew scriptures, Genesis 1:26, God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." We have been made in the image and after the likeness of God, whether we be Jew, Christian, or Muslim. We have to be restored back to that original position where we can see one another as God made us.

We need religion not to separate us, not to define us, but to help us find our way back to the same God. As Jacob saw the face of God in Esau, we must seek the face of God on all of humanity. We must all repent because we have hurt each other. And sometimes we have hurt each other in the name of God, as if somehow one of us has more of God than the other. Deuteronomy 6:5 says, "love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." And Leviticus 19:18 says, "love thy neighbor as thyself."

We have become entrapped in the symbols, in the signs, and not in the substance. The real substance of all of our faiths is God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God never changes.

I have to ask forgiveness on the part of my Jewish brothers. I have to show the deepest sense of humility, as well as profound gratitude for you being the ones to whom Yahweh has entrusted the faith. He has used you as the foundation to build a great family of God. God chose you in order to lead us back to Him. That’s why He chose you. He chose you from among all people on the face of the earth to be the foundation for the return of Yeshua. He desired that you would recognize him Nx receive him when he came. He chose you.

But we as Christians have persecuted you. We have not understood your calling. In our desire for dominance, we persecuted you. The holocaust of World War II is a clear indication of man’s inhumanity toward man. We are sorry and we seek your forgiveness because it was wrong. Even at the highest levels, Catholicism somehow played a role in humanity’s ungodliness, and we seek your forgiveness.

Even as Christians, we put a chain to Jesus, to Yeshua. We thought he came just to die—to be rejected, to be misunderstood—and we saw the cross as being the preordained will of God for Yeshua. But we realized that we were wrong, that God the Father sent His only son to restore all things, to bring us back to Him, to restore us to our original position.

We said the cross was the path that God desired. We Christians must repent for saying that God sent His son primarily for that purpose. He sent His son to reconcile us, to redeem, to restore all things. We repent because we have wanted to blame the Jews for his crucifixion. We have to blame ourselves because we have glorified the cross.

I am not ashamed to say that I am a brother to the Jew. I’m not afraid to say I’m a brother to the Muslim. God will not say to me when I face Him, "George, were you a good Catholic?" He will not say to me, "Did you cling to your icons?" He will say, "Did you love one another? Did you look beyond their faults to see their needs?" All of us together will be right when we stand together under the one God.

Thank you for coming here today, holding hands, one to another, saying to the world that we have one God and we will serve that one God and we will destroy everything that separates and divides us from one another for we are one family of God. in upf.org