BOSTON, Massachusetts (AFP) — Three women are to be ordained as priests Sunday here in one of American's most Catholic cities, but they will face automatic excommunication by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

The trio is to be ordained in a ceremony performed by a woman at a Protestant church affiliated to the US Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ, in Boston's first female ordination.

The move has angered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which has sent out an email to local priests reminding them of Vatican law that women are allowed to have key roles within the church, but cannot become priests.

The Archdiocese says the three women will be automatically excommunicated. Historically, the Vatican's position has been that women cannot become priests because Jesus did not have female apostles.

However, the women say they are united in the belief of being called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they believe to be wrong church teaching.

"We're part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying unjust law," said Gabriella Velardi Ward, 61, a New York based architect.

"Excommunication or not, I will still be able to serve the people of God," she told the Boston Globe.

The two others are Gloria Carpeneto of Maryland and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of New Jersey.

Dana Reynolds of California, a women consecrated as a bishop in Germany earlier this year, will perform the ceremony.

Reynolds and the others are members of the organization Roman Catholic Womenpriests, holding ordinations for women since 2002. The organization reports 28 women Catholic priests in the United States.

The organization claims its ordinations are valid because its first bishops were ordained by Catholic bishops in good standing. The identity of the bishops is kept secret to protect them from being sanctioned by the Vatican.

The Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay, led by Rev. Jennifer Wegler-McNelly, offered support by renting its historic edifice with Tiffany windows depicting women of the Bible.

However, the Archdiocese was stern in its email warning.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church."

Referring to "the loving ministry of Jesus Christ, we pray for those who have willingly fallen away from the church by participating in such activities."

The Boston ordination ceremony is scheduled to coincide with the first joint conference of four organizations advocating for the admission of married men and also women into the priesthood. The meeting is expected to draw 200 participants.

http://unionesarda.ilsole24ore.com/

Vatican III In the Mind of Many

The matter to encourage a Vatican III Council was dealt with, at the Second International Catholic Symposium in June 2008 in Korea, as all participants spoke of the Church as we see it to-morrow. The form of the Church to-morrow will take the original form it had at the beginning of the Apostolic Church. None of the Married Priests Now! Prelature will take the stance of one sided dogmatism, predominance, authoritative one way righteousness. They cannot stand what they call clericalism, which includes Roman Catholic domination. The false Collegiality of Vatican II has failed to renew the Catholic Church. The reason is clear, because Rome monopolized the truth, and only Roma had the last word in everything. Episcopal Conferences became mere stooges of the Vatican State.

I came across some married priests, who are now no more members of our Church. They fall into depression as soon as one mentions Rome. This poor Priest was sent to be analyzed by a psychiatrist when he insisted that he did not feel at home in the Catholic Church, which treated him so cruelly when he discovered that celibacy was not his life.

Another Priest, now a professor in one of the universities of St. Paul, in Brazil, was ordered to write: "I was stupid, for having taken the vow of celibacy, without understanding the consequences." He refused to sign. Still to-day he is not reconciled to the Catholic Church, which lost its brains with upholding celibacy up to be no more sensitive to the mental tortures caused by imposed celibacy.

How Do They See Vatican III?

It may sound Utopian to present the views of Hans Kung, who says of the Church as it ought to be: "The Church" which triggered a debate between him and the Vatican, claims three points. The first, the Church can become the Church of Jesus Christ only when she becomes an open Church that aspires to ecumenism. Second, the purpose of the Church is not to preserve itself, but to serve the world. Third, the original Church system was not to-day's papacy but was closer to a priesthood of all believers, and the diversity of Church duties do not mean class orders (Hans Kung: 1967).

Already, in the words of Hans Kung, the Church failed immediately after its launching in 1965. Hence Archbishop Lefebvre could not stand the change of documents under the banks of the Vatican (desks of the Vatican).

Pope John Paul I was the sacrificed lamb of the refusal of change of the Vatican Policy. Abbe Pierre of France received a revelation in 2005. "One night he was awakened, he saw in the streets of the villages innumerable lamps around the tabernacles. Then a voice said to him: Once more Jesus lives with you, the whole of his body dwells in the tabernacle." From then on he worked very hard to propose the ordination of men, well balanced and approved by people as worthy to be promoted to priestly ordination. He wrote letters to all the Bishops of France, and to the Pope, whom he called "Hostile to the ordination of married men."

Some of the concepts of the married priests at the Symposium, as they view a Priest of to-morrow, define him as a prophet who foretells the events of the coming Kingdom of God. While others see him among his community, as one of them on their aspirations, and planning together the needed services in the community.

The thoughts of Father Schellebecks and the Augustinians in Holland are in line with what our married priests are already experiencing now. They have no money to put under control the people, and to maneuver them as they want. They too are mere wage-earners, leading a simple family life. They preside at mass, counting on everybody present to drop in new ideas for the success of the community services.

Hence the 90 years old Bishop of Brazil says that "the Church of tomorrow will have no Apostolic Nuntio, and no Curia Romana." As a matter of fact the Vatican State is a secular State. It is preoccupied with the expansion of its territory in influence and power. The Vatican State has its own parliament, which has nothing to do with God's Catholic Church. The two genuine simple popes, John Paul I and John Paul II, were not accepted by the Vatican State.

We know what they underwent. Hence Hans Kung put it well when he said: "If the Roman Catholic Church wishes to have its future as the Church in the 21st century, there is a necessity of a new John XXIII, that is, a John XXIV. This John XXIV, as did John XXIII in the mid 20th Century, must call for a Third Vatican Council and lead the Church to change from a Roman Catholic Church to a True Catholic Church, which is a True Universal Church."(Hans Kung: The Catholic Church: 2003)

Married Priests in Vatican III will save the Church.

There are now three categories of married priests with which we are familiar. It is sometimes good to follow a mathematical method. So I write as follows:

1. The associations of married priests, which are first national, then international.

2. The rental or Rent-A-Priest, otherwise CITI Ministries.

3. Married Priests Now! Prelature, the youngest organization of married priests.

The three organizations are totally one in aim:

A. Citi: Restoration of a married priesthood.

B. Associations of married priests: "Finding ways and means to prudently proceed to reach the Vatican Authority to open doors to married priests."

C. Married priests now Prelature: "To reinstate the married priests as they are, and resume their God-given duty to serve the Holy people of God."

The Rent-A-Priest and the Married Priest Now! Prelature are already using the married priests for the services needed for the Holy People of God. They are building communities by starting with celebration of mass in their families, and slowly attracting the surrounding families. While the "Rentapriest" the CITI are as well already on call from all Catholics or Christians in general who are in need of married priest's services. The CITI have a very interesting experience. They say that they are most called by the Catholics who don't go to Church. They call married priests to celebrate at home.

I am sorry for having avoided mentioning the names in any of the organizations

since my aim was to show finally the movement for change into Vatican III has already started. It is not for us to solicit Vatican III. But the Church as it is today needs change, otherwise, it will never move forward with its people. In order to serve its people properly, it has to listen to their cries.

Here we are, the Church of to-morrow.

May the Holy Spirit guide the Catholic Church.

Arch. E. Milingo.

This is a new about A. Milingo (italy)

Links:

Adele Horin
July 12, 2008
Advertisement

As crowds of fervent young Catholics descend on Sydney, up rises Anthony Jones to remind us of the running sore of clerical sexual abuse and the cover-ups by the church elite.

For all the joy the World Youth Day event will bring to thousands of pilgrims, it cannot disguise the critical situation of the Catholic Church in Australia. The average priest is in his 60s, church attendance has plummeted, ordinary Catholics flout the ban on contraceptives and the legacy of sexual abuse by priests is still raw.

The issue of priestly celibacy cannot be ignored. Celibacy was once the source of a priest’s high standing and special aura. Now it is the rot undermining the church. Celibacy is the common denominator in the twin crises of sex abuse scandals and declining priest numbers.

When the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, wrote a deceptive letter to Jones, dismissing his allegations of sexual assault against a known serial abuser, Father Terence Goodall, it was on the grounds no one else had complained - and the sex had been consensual. (Jones had a different version, accepted by the church investigator, which the cardinal ignored.)

You might jump to the conclusion from this response that Pell thinks it is all right for priests to have sex as long as it is consensual. He makes no reference in his letter to the priest’s vow of celibacy, the gravity of breaking it and the special trust people place in priests because of it - at least in 1982 when the events occurred.

But of course you would be wrong. The church hierarchy has not moved an inch on celibacy. I am no theologian - I’m a rank outsider - but I read the accounts from all over the world of priests and lay people begging the church to change its ban on married priests, and to slowly open its doors to women.

People want to examine whether the unique celibacy of the all-male priesthood is a factor in its record of sexual misconduct, and whether making celibacy optional would attract more men to the priesthood. The church had maintained pedophilia has nothing to do with celibacy. Celibacy does not make a pedophile, it is true, and marriage does not cure one. One infamous Boston pedophile priest continued to abuse children after he left the priesthood and married.

But the issue of celibacy is still highly relevant to the troubles afflicting the church. Celibacy so narrowed the pool of people willing to be priests it appears to have led to disproportionate numbers of sexually immature and confused people, and self-denying homosexuals and pedophiles, entering the seminaries.

As well, until recently the aura celibacy conferred on priests allowed them easy access to children and young people, even more so than teachers, scout leaders and coaches. Priests were presumed to be especially disciplined by their code of sexual abstinence. Their word was so credible parents might distrust their children’s accounts of abuse.

The aura of celibacy also facilitated the cover-ups. A church had even more to lose than other institutions caught up in sex abuse scandals. As Garry Wills, the author of Why I Am A Catholic, wrote: "Many parents have kept silent after church authorities begged them ’not to damage the church’ … The aura of celibacy was definitely an advantage to the predator from the outset of his crimes. It then became a further advantage when church authorities provided him protection."

The church’s recent efforts to scapegoat homosexuals, and to introduce measures to screen them out of seminaries, will not solve problems that stem from a policy of mandatory sexual repression. Homosexual pedophilia is not the church’s only problem. Priests also have sex with consenting adults, in an atmosphere of secrecy conducive to psychological damage, blackmail and cynicism. A 1995 book, The Sex Life Of The Clergy, by the Spanish psychologist Pepe Rodriguez, says 60 per cent of Spanish priests were sexually active, more than half with women, 20 per cent with men, 14 per cent with minor males and 12 per cent with minor females. The citadel of celibacy is crumbling, whether the sex is consensual or not, with homosexuals or children.

The National Council of Priests in Australia, representing almost 1700 priests, petitioned the Vatican in 2005 asking it to allow priests to marry. More than 17,000 Mass-going Catholics signed a similar petition to Australian bishops. The pleas were made on the basis that drastic action was needed to restore the number of priests, which has fallen dramatically over 30 years while the Anglican and Protestant churches have not suffered any significant shortage of trainees.

The unworkable policy of celibacy began in the 12th century as a way to stop married priests from passing on property to their children instead of to the church. It has done great damage.

A clerical elite that is anti-sex, anti-birth control, misogynist and homophobic, and will not let priests have partners, is in a crisis of its own making. When the party is over, the rot will still be there. To many inside the church, making celibacy optional has become a matter of urgency.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com

link:

Catholics appeal to Benedict on ordination of married men, women

 I Know You Have Been Waiting For This
I Am Going To Paradise, I Am Certain Of It.

I am certain that many of you think of me as a presumptuous person. I am aware of the fact that Paradise is not my property, and naturally I have no right to go to Paradise. I am one of the sons of Adam and Eve, and through them I lost my natural original right to live in Paradise.

You will commit sin if you think of me as being proud and presumptuous as I said earlier on. I have come across many presumptuous people who even swear that they will realize what they have planned. They are cocksure of what they say and declare to others. Those who do not want to be unbelieving Thomases are satisfied by saying: “Anyhow there is a saying that where there is a will, there is a way.” They avoid to be judgmental and give good wishes for success to them.

Going To Paradise Is Very Easy

“Today, you will be with Me in Paradise,” said Jesus to the thief dying on the cross with Him. What made Paradise so easy for the thief? He was not thinking as the crowd was thinking that Jesus was not the Son of God, that He was not the Messiah, and that He was not the King of the Jews. One might say that he was just favored by Jesus because he said consoling words at the moment so dark in the life of Jesus. Not at all, the thief was a very ponderant man, one can see the words he said, and how he said them. In order to avoid a long quotation, I shall try to split the conversations of the three on the crosses. The two who were crucified with Jesus are commonly known as “criminals.” One of these criminals, the first one to address Jesus, acknowledges the great work He did for the people, but challenges Him to do the same for them and for Himself. But he says so with arrogance and selfishness. He says: “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us as well.” The man says such words that Jesus had still to prove to him that He was the Christ. But by so saying, he still offended Him as those who were still standing by to see to it that He dies. With arrogance and self satisfaction, you do not go to Paradise. Jesus had not to show Himself to every Jim and Jack that He was the Christ. He appeals to people of good will, never by force, in order to respect their freedom through persuasion.

I spoke of the second criminal, whom Saint Luke calls “the Good Thief,” as a ponderant person, who weighed every word he said. He first spoke charitably to his companion: “Have you no fear of God at all? You got the same sentence as He did, but in our case we deserved it; we are paying for what we did. But this Man had done nothing wrong.” Then he said: “Jesus remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” This Kingdom is what is commonly known as Paradise, the Abode of God and His Angels and Saints. Jesus then gives an immediate answer: “In truth I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:39~43)

The good thief is the first one to be canonized in the New Testament Era. The Saints who were waiting to have Paradise opened by the Risen Jesus were surprised to see beside Him this good thief, whom they saw on the cross. How long Moses and Aaron were waiting for the coming of Jesus. This good thief just walked into Paradise without even brushing the dust as he came in: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (315~386) has a say on the story of the Good Thief. “O mighty and indescribable grace! The faithful Abraham had not yet entered, but the robber enters! Moses and Prophets had not yet entered and the robber enters, though a breaker of the law.” Paul also wondered at this when he said: “However much sin increased, grace was always greater.” (Roman 5:20)

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem looks at the two in the same boat of condemnation and suffering. He abhors the way the first thief speaks. He was repeating as if it were the insults of the so many passersby who ridiculed Jesus, and were satisfied to see Him crucified. He puts it in one sentence as follows: “He reviled the Lord with passersby who mocked the crucified, fulfilling the Prophetic Psalms that said: ‘They shake their heads at the sight of me.’” (Psalm 109:25)

How many of us would like rather to hear the sweet words of Jesus, as a reply to the words of the good thief? But it is ours to decide. This is how Saint Cyril of Jerusalem looks at the beautiful words of the good thief: “What Power, Oh robber, led you to light? Who taught you to worship that despised Man, your Companion on the cross? O Eternal Light that gives light to those who are in darkness! His request reached into a distant, but grace came quickly.”

“A Paradise On Our Face – A Smile”

In the bygone days in Africa, there used to live in the forests and mountains, those who had committed heinous crimes, which today could condemn them to death. This is different from what in most African countries happens, when the word “thief’ is shouted loudly in the streets. In these cases the Africans have applied what they call instant justice by killing the person on the spot. Nobody is charged for such street murder.

What I am referring too is a crime, dreadful, shameful, and so cruel, be it murder or adultery. It is not good to go into details. Such crimes instead of putting the criminals in prison, they sent them away from the village. Such a one lived in the wilderness. They were called Akapondo. However they could not settle in fixed places, otherwise they will be hunted and killed. However in order to get something to eat, they robbed people in the path ways. This is how they survived.

One day a mother carrying her baby on the back, as usual in many African countries, was going home after cultivating in her garden quite a distance from the village. She was alone, speaking with her baby on the back as she went along. Suddenly this man came out of the bush, holding a club high ready to strike her and her baby. He wanted to rob her of what she had in her basket, green maize, pumpkins, and whatever other victuals she had carried in such a small basket. She ran, but with care, holding the baby in the back and the basket on the head. As the man approached her the baby on the back turned to the man and smiled. The baby did this any time the man raised his club to hit the mother. The man was completely overcome by the smile of the child who showed no sign of being afraid or crying. In the end he stopped, looked at the smiling child on the back of the mother. He gave up pursuing her and her baby.

This is a true story. The mother could not explain why the child was smiling and laughing, the closer the robber came, the more the baby giggled. The baby never saw danger in this man.

I was shocked to death, when I watched a celebration of Mass by an Archbishop on television. He had worn all the required signs of being an Archbishop, including a Pallium. That is how I recognized him as an Archbishop

This solemn personal presentation of an Archbishop automatically adjusted the attitude of the whole audience in the Church. One felt that he was an Archbishop. His comportment, his conduct, the solemnity that was around him, all geared to his seriousness as a man of dignity, who demands respect from everyone who deals with him.

From time to time the television camera was shot on the audience. All fixed their eyes on him. Since he did not smile at any moment during the Mass, I saw none among the crowd who smiled. They were all preoccupied as to how to behave themselves before such a high person in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

As he preached, he never left his eyes from the written notes. He wanted to be certain that all he had prepared should be delivered. He brought no Paradise to the audience. What a concept people have of the Roman Catholic Archbishop. The little they expected from him was a smile.

I Am Certain I Am Going To Heaven

I am not joking, I mean business. Those who go to hell make their own choice. Nobody is thrown into hell. Those who go to hell go walking, they have decided it throughout their life, and some of them do even boast of it. Why should not some of us who have lived every day, every minute in the presence of God, be forced to go to hell? It is not in our line of thought. I have never cultivated a thought to imagine myself in hell. I am geared for Paradise with all that I am. I am now certain because the thief was assured by our Lord Jesus Christ: “In truth, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

I know that there are those who see pride in such declarations. But it is not pride; it is a conviction and a decision. I have no interest in the stories of the triumph of the devil. I cannot just stand the stories of the devils, though I myself have spoken with the devil more than a thousand times. Nor am I interested to tell the stories of exorcism with gusto.

Guarantees For Going To Heaven

Just two requirements:

1. To love God

2. To love your neighbor

The problem is: What is love? It is a long story. Everybody longs to be loved, going around the world looking for being loved. How much is there love in business? Not every business had bad aims, nor full of cheating.

This is outside my subject. I am not competent in all the intricacies of business. I hate money, except for its proper use. I have lived without valuing money for many months. I am queer, of course I am. That is why I am easily condemned by those who are my friends.

I do not see love except in self destruction. Even giving birth is a pain. But the Bible says then follows joy after the birth of a child. There is nothing that comes without sweat. It cost Jesus more than just pains in His body, He became a nobody: “It was Yahweh's good pleasure to crush Him with pain; if He gives His life as a sin offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His life, and through Him Yahweh’s good pleasure will be done.” (Isaiah 53:10) We conceive love as pleasure, not as pain. The toilsome hours of our mothers crushed by the domestic responsibilities. As we go to them, each one of us believes that that is the only most important act of love, when I demand it from her. One would almost forbid the mother to care for the brother and sister, and rather pay attention to me. That is how we grow up looking for being loved, when as a matter of fact we were pampered by our mother, who gave in to our selfishness.

“He was bearing the sin of many and interceding for the rebellious.” - (Isaiah 53:12)

My guarantee to go to Paradise is not based on the perfect model of self sacrifice as that of Jesus. I am just coming back on the fact that love is not a soft pedaled fruit of human thinking. Nor should I make my readers believe that it is all pleasure, that is love. We were seven children in our family. I have never seen my mother going to bed before we were all in bed, sleeping and forgetting the entire nuisance we have been during the day. We forgot as we went to bed that we have been a nuisance to our mother. I am using the term ‘nuisance,’ not on the part of my mother, but on our part, as we interfered so much when she was busy with other things.

Jesus did not dwell on the actual sufferings he endured; he saw that it was the only way to grab us away from the chains of the devil. It cost Him His earthly life: “Yet ours were the sufferings He was bearing, ours the sorrows He was carrying, while we thought of Him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God; whereas He was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on Him, and we have been healed by His bruises.” (Isaiah 53:4~5)

My own life has been a painful experience. When I feel lonely, and recall my mother’s mother craft, I see her throughout her life, a life of pain. It is easy to recall her example and then through faith look at Jesus’ life. The life of Jesus is not only admirable, but terrifying. How He controlled Himself without using His Divine Powers to take revenge on those who persecuted Him. Only God, the Son of Man was adequate to the task given Him but His Heavenly Father on our behalf.

How Much He Loved Us

By using the word ‘Terrifying,” looking at the spirit of endurance of Jesus, I am not shrinking into my skin. I am just being honest, that humanly speaking, one cannot dare say that “I can do it,” as easy as a motion of a finger. Neither was it easy for Jesus, unless one looks at the fact that He banked a lot in the treasury of His Father, to that measure He will demand salvation from His Father on our behalf. Hence as He dies He rightly publicly say, loud enough to be heard by all around the cross: “Forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” At the same time He called the attention of His Father to look at Him as He was suffering. How hard, even in our earthly life, could one be, if one just imagines what is being described in the following lines: “He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts; He was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom as if it were, we averted our gaze, despised for whom we had no regard.” (Isaiah 53:2~4) How can one be “familiar with suffering?” This is how we can become Jesuses.

This is the guarantee of my salvation; Jesus banked on it, and put it in the treasury of His Heavenly Father. Whatever He will say or ask His Father on our behalf, he will get it for us. Listen how Saint John Endes puts it: “He tells us that His Father loves us as He, our Lord, loves Him; and that He loves us as the Father loves Him (see John 17:26; 15:9); that He desires that we should be with Him in the heart of the eternal Father and seated with Him on His throne (see Revelation 3:21) – in a word, that we should be one with Him, and perfectly united with Him and His Father (see John 17~23).” Beyond these words of love declaration, one shudders and fails to see if any other dimension of love can be put into better words. No words exist to express love in this way.

What I put at the opening of these paragraphs, - love of God and love of neighbors, Saint John Endes has put it so clearly: “That he desires that we should be with Him in the heart of the eternal Father.” See how much Jesus loves us, as well as His Father. “To Love God and to love our neighbor.”

Our neighbor has no form, when he/she is not loved. He is equal to a stone, a tree, or any noble beast, like a horse or a dog. It is only love that decorates him, and gives him dignity, nobility and respect. If I have no love for him, he can fall at my feet, I move away from him, and leave him in his state, as the story of the Good Samaritan tells us. It is only love which gives value to a human being, and differentiates him from a beast or from any other object.

What becomes of me when I do not love? I do not want to come back to the definition of love. My concept of love is nothing else than self destruction, as long as we live on this planet earth. One who cannot bear suffering will never learn to love. Love is expanding oneself. The deeper the interior life of a man or a woman, the easier it will be to anticipate the weight of forbearance on life. I saw the joy of that Zambian woman who gave birth to fifteen healthy children. In the end she just existed. The weight of child bearing was on her, and it was seen as to how it consumed her. Did she care for her health? She did, but did not give less love and efforts when she gave birth to the last one. Love ought to be stable and steadfast. How I wish I would meet her, and draw as much as I can in order to understand the cost of love. When she looked round the house, she met these thirty eyes, as if they were little electric burbles in the house. The house was full of songs, with the voices according to age, sounding with different tones according to their age. How much the mother already experienced love of neighbor as she dealt with her fifteen children. How I wish women wrote more than they have done so far. We do not know them. Why are they reticent to share real life with us?

“To Love Up To The Extent Of Madness”

No doubt at all Mother Theresa of Calcutta was mad. She was not normal. How could she bow down to the poor of the poorest in the streets of Calcutta and Bombay. Only extreme love of neighbor could drive her to that level of love. It was not just charity, more than that, it was equal to life itself. As I said earlier on, unless she saw in these destroyed human beings, by hunger, poverty, and disease; another figure in them. The Jesus on the Cross, abandoned, left naked, exposed to humanity, despised, and rendered valueless. This is in what consisted the madness of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. In these poor of the poorest, Mother Theresa of Calcutta literally loved God and neighbor. But she had to be mad. What does one get from the poor of the poorest? Even her faith was beyond average. How we wish Mother Theresa of Calcutta should have written her secrets as to how she climbed up such high scales of holiness and love.

Saint Catherine Of Siena On Love Of Neighbor

It is not an imposition or compulsion on the part of God, the love of neighbor. It is to complete the existence of human beings. It is to derive joy from our existence. We ought not to be, if we do not love. We must be convinced that we have no right to demand love from others, if we do not give love to others. Jesus teaches Saint Catherine of Siena the importance of love of neighbor: “You are obliged to love your neighbor as yourself (see Matthew 22:39). And loving him, you ought to help him by praying for him, counseling him, and assisting him both spiritually and temporally. You ought to serve his needs at least with your good will if you have nothing else. Therefore, a person who fails to love his neighbor does not help him and so does himself an injury. He cuts himself off from grace. And he injures his neighbor by depriving him of the benefit of the prayers and of the sweet desires that he is bound to offer to me for him.” (Saint Catherine of Siena: 1347~1380) Being good to my neighbor opens in him/her wells of love of God, learnt from my charitable actions.

Three Persons lose, when one does not love one’s neighbor. We may begin with God. He is the one who expects our prayer and service to our neighbor. He delights in loving our neighbor, expanding ourselves as Jesus did for us throughout His life.

The second person to suffer is the individual himself. Because without loving his neighbor nothing rises to Heaven, as the case of Cain, angry and full of envy against his brother Abel. God could not receive his offering. And God advised him to have control over his instinct of hatred, but he did not heed God’s advice. “Yahweh asked Cain: Why are you angry and downcast? If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high! But if you are not doing right, sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him.” He paid no attention to the words of God and went on doing his thing, murdering his brother Abel. (Genesis 4:6~8)

The third who suffers from lack of love of neighbor is the expectant receiver, to benefit from the services of love from the neighbor. What a pity! So in the end we see Jesus making it so easy, as He explains to Saint Catherine of Siena the importance of the love of neighbor. Love of neighbor joins us into a Trinitarian circle:

• “One who does not love is dead.”

Saint Catherine of Siena, Jesus speaks: “Since a person who fails to love others does no good, it follows that he must do evil. First of all, he harms himself, and then he damages his neighbor. He does not harm me because no evil can touch me except as I count as done to me the evil he does to himself. He injures himself with sin that deprives him for grace….”

Love God and love your neighbor, then you are certain as I am, to go to Paradise, to Heaven. I have before me the madness of charity of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, though I dread just to think of being confronted by the poor of the poorest. I pray that the Lord will continue to sustain me in the endeavors I am doing for the cause of married priests, who are the poor of the poorest in the Catholic Church.

By Archbishop E. Milingo

It is more than a story, on which the Roman Catholic Church is sitting for over a thousand years. They are sitting on the lives of human beings, whose life has been messed up by a mere precept, which became a law encroaching the consciences of priests. History has proved that those in authority have made celibacy “a God of holiness,” which in fact has produced mortal briars. Today, the fruits of celibacy, imposed on priests has made normal human beings become alcoholics, leading a double life, which is hypocrisy. More than that many priests are polygamists, because they don’t go with only one woman, but several women.

 It is a well known, fact that many Bishops have children, and are aware of their priests who are married, but not openly. The faithful are now tired of holding secrets. Hence in silence they with-draw from the Catholic Church, and go out to look for green pastures. Consequently churches are empty on Sunday. They are sold, and still many are on sale.

 The Hope of the Roman Catholic Church

What we have experienced at our symposium on Catholicism today, is something to stick to. The married priests who had been afraid to say Mass, who had been threatened to be laicized, from 14^th to 17^th June, became alive as they contributed to the meeting, and their words were taken seriously. As they fully shared in the concelebrated Mass, their innerself, which was vanquished by a belief that they were put on the shelf forever, came alive with new vigor and enthusiasm. They are ready to be on call for any priestly function. What has happened to them will happen to any Priest, who comes on the open and say clearly that he is a married Priest. Let him contact us, and rest assured that we believe in his eternal priesthood. Having married, and everything regularized, he is truly in the foot-steps of St. Peter, whose feast we are soon celebrating, the first married priest, known together with other married Apostles, the foundation of today’s married priests.

 Is it not a gesture of love on the part of any married Priest to tell the story of the resurrection of married priests. I am certain that many priests have, as years have gone-by, thought that their priesthood has become sterile. It is a false belief of self-condemnation. It is now time to no more dwell on the past. Look to the future, on the other side of the river Jesus is waiting for you. To once more travel with Him, visiting the hearts of those waiting for a message of salvation, a word of God, Just say that you are a Priest. You will see a soul, which has been waiting for you, for many years, finally on your appearance and publicly declaring that you are a Priest, the hope of many will once more dawn in their hearts and homes.

 The Roman Catholic Church is by nature sacramental. It distributes its life through the spiritual steams of sacraments. If it is called a sacrament, it is its true nature, because the Church itself is a sacrament, a sign of life for its adherents. Your hands, which you had folded, hiding what you had from your priesthood, please, now stretch out your hands, dear married priests, and say, “here I am lord, at your service. Once more I am ready to go wherever you want me to go to serve you and your holy people.”

 Please, Father  Serrone, I am going to be in Italy for one month. Share this news with other married priests. Your recompense for bringing together married priests, can be calculated and measured only by the Lord Jesus. If you win one Priest, back into the field, know that you are bringing back many desperate lay people, who due to have lost their priests, will once more be served, and that married priesthood will soon take its stand in the Catholic Church.

God Bless,
Yours Sincerely,

Archbishop E. Milingo