August 03, 2006.
Right Rev. Bishop George Lungu,
Today, on 3rd August, 2006, we have come across your sermon on the occasion of priestly ordination, and conferring of diaconate on August 1st 2006. I sincerely thank you for your prayers, and of those present whom you invited to pray for me. Acknowledging your disappointment, I would like you to change the prayers to married priest, not so much for me.
I will share with you something which you and I did not know up till now. What I am only superficially sharing with you, needs a full thesis to be put to the Catholic Church, and they may not give an answer. Let me just ask you: “How much does the Catholic Church deserve the title, ‘Mother?’” If you will listen to the stories of the married priests, as to how they have been treated, certainly if you have any humanity in you, you will not accept that the Catholic Church deserves the title, “Mother.”
Let me bring to your knowledge the concept of sex in the Western Christian Churches. Those who have influenced the Western Christian concept of sex are St. Augustine, St. Jerome and Tertullian. To all the three sex was anathema, and St. Augustine was afraid to become a priest because of celibacy. St. Augustine wept like a child over the fact that in order to embrace Christian religion, he had to abandon his sexual waywardness. His change of life was a bitter change of attitude towards sexuality. Let me share with you what Karen Armstrong says of St. Augustine in relation to sexuality.
“Augustine left us with a difficult heritage. A religion which teaches men and women to regard their humanity as chronically flawed can alienate them from themselves. No where is this alienation more evident than in the denigration of sexuality in general and women in particular. Even though Christianity had originally been quite positive for women, it had already developed a misogynistic tendency in the West by the time of Augustine.” (Karen Armstrong: The History of God).
Priests in the Western Christianity during their life time, live on holding to their cherished celibacy, while considering women as the thieves who may rob it away from them. Even their love for women remains platonic, since it should not be manifested in the form of emotions, sensation or sentiments. The love of a celibate priest for a woman is surrounded by precautions not to touch the unholy, a woman the cause of man’s fall.
Speaking of St. Jerome, who went as far as scratching himself with stones in order not to fall into temptation from the sexual urge, Karen Armstrong writes as follows: “The letters of St. Jerome teem with loathing of the female which occasionally sounds deranged.”
But there was no woman around him. He was dealing with the words of God, translating the Bible into Latin from Hebrew and Greek. So as St. James says:
“No one experiencing temptation should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God is not subject to temptation to evil, and He Himself tempts no one. Rather each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.” (James 1:13-15)
The celibate priest finds it hard to appreciate even innocent gestures of love from a woman. We have all become the disciples of Tertullian, whose fury against women we have inherited, and has been ingrown in us. Here is what he says about women. “Do you not know that you are each an Eve?” what an address to women! He goes on to say:
“The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age. The guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devils gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are ‘she’ who persuaded him (Adam) whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You so carelessly destroyed man, God’s image. On account of your desert, even the Son of God had to die.” (Karen Armstrong: The History of God).
Can the Catholic Church go away with it as easily as that? My Lord Bishop G. Lungu, respect me as you have so far done. I am not out of wits. The
positive response from our first document have been such that we cannot
turn back. We are not asking for abolition of celibacy. Our future married priests will not look down on women, but consider them as a fulfillment of mankind in the divine plans. They are the essence of the totality of humanity. Thus says Karen Armstrong: :A religion which looks askance upon half the human race and which regards every involuntary motion of mind, heart and body as a symptom of fatal concupiscence can only alienate men and women from their condition. Western Christianity never fully recovered from this neurotic misogyny, which can still be seen in the unbalanced reaction to the very notion of the ordination of women.
May I ask you my lord to analyze the following words of St. Augustine: “What is the difference,” he wrote to a friend, “whether it is a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman.”
According to St. Augustine, he does not agree with God for having created a woman as a companion to man: “it would have been much better arranged to have two men together as friends, not a man and a woman.” He forgot procreation to fill the earth with holy souls, from a pure couple, Adam and Eve. Adam as the first born failed to question “flesh from his flesh,” when he saw her with an evil proposal. It was all in his hands to say no “to my own child whom I bore from my ribs.” He failed God, he did not take his responsibility. He is the one who is a lot more at fault. God had strongly whispered into his ears, as to the way to live in Eden, in the midst of such
possible attractive fruits. He disappointed God the more. That is why first God looked for him, and questioned him on the matter.
Consequently the more celibacy stands out as a man’s victory over sex, while looking down on women, it has no merits. The humiliations from the defaulters of celibacy should teach the Catholic Church the normality of a human being. Sex is no more a bitter fruit. There is no one-sided condemnation by pointing fingers to women.
They are made in God’s image, as such they deserve respect and dignity. They are not just sex objects, they are persons, the indwelling of God, the Triune God. Please, my lord Bishop, understand us.
We wish the best for the Church.
Yours Most Respectfully,
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo.
Right Rev. Bishop George Lungu,
Today, on 3rd August, 2006, we have come across your sermon on the occasion of priestly ordination, and conferring of diaconate on August 1st 2006. I sincerely thank you for your prayers, and of those present whom you invited to pray for me. Acknowledging your disappointment, I would like you to change the prayers to married priest, not so much for me.
I will share with you something which you and I did not know up till now. What I am only superficially sharing with you, needs a full thesis to be put to the Catholic Church, and they may not give an answer. Let me just ask you: “How much does the Catholic Church deserve the title, ‘Mother?’” If you will listen to the stories of the married priests, as to how they have been treated, certainly if you have any humanity in you, you will not accept that the Catholic Church deserves the title, “Mother.”
Let me bring to your knowledge the concept of sex in the Western Christian Churches. Those who have influenced the Western Christian concept of sex are St. Augustine, St. Jerome and Tertullian. To all the three sex was anathema, and St. Augustine was afraid to become a priest because of celibacy. St. Augustine wept like a child over the fact that in order to embrace Christian religion, he had to abandon his sexual waywardness. His change of life was a bitter change of attitude towards sexuality. Let me share with you what Karen Armstrong says of St. Augustine in relation to sexuality.
“Augustine left us with a difficult heritage. A religion which teaches men and women to regard their humanity as chronically flawed can alienate them from themselves. No where is this alienation more evident than in the denigration of sexuality in general and women in particular. Even though Christianity had originally been quite positive for women, it had already developed a misogynistic tendency in the West by the time of Augustine.” (Karen Armstrong: The History of God).
Priests in the Western Christianity during their life time, live on holding to their cherished celibacy, while considering women as the thieves who may rob it away from them. Even their love for women remains platonic, since it should not be manifested in the form of emotions, sensation or sentiments. The love of a celibate priest for a woman is surrounded by precautions not to touch the unholy, a woman the cause of man’s fall.
Speaking of St. Jerome, who went as far as scratching himself with stones in order not to fall into temptation from the sexual urge, Karen Armstrong writes as follows: “The letters of St. Jerome teem with loathing of the female which occasionally sounds deranged.”
But there was no woman around him. He was dealing with the words of God, translating the Bible into Latin from Hebrew and Greek. So as St. James says:
“No one experiencing temptation should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God is not subject to temptation to evil, and He Himself tempts no one. Rather each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.” (James 1:13-15)
The celibate priest finds it hard to appreciate even innocent gestures of love from a woman. We have all become the disciples of Tertullian, whose fury against women we have inherited, and has been ingrown in us. Here is what he says about women. “Do you not know that you are each an Eve?” what an address to women! He goes on to say:
“The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age. The guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devils gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are ‘she’ who persuaded him (Adam) whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You so carelessly destroyed man, God’s image. On account of your desert, even the Son of God had to die.” (Karen Armstrong: The History of God).
Can the Catholic Church go away with it as easily as that? My Lord Bishop G. Lungu, respect me as you have so far done. I am not out of wits. The
positive response from our first document have been such that we cannot
turn back. We are not asking for abolition of celibacy. Our future married priests will not look down on women, but consider them as a fulfillment of mankind in the divine plans. They are the essence of the totality of humanity. Thus says Karen Armstrong: :A religion which looks askance upon half the human race and which regards every involuntary motion of mind, heart and body as a symptom of fatal concupiscence can only alienate men and women from their condition. Western Christianity never fully recovered from this neurotic misogyny, which can still be seen in the unbalanced reaction to the very notion of the ordination of women.
May I ask you my lord to analyze the following words of St. Augustine: “What is the difference,” he wrote to a friend, “whether it is a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman.”
According to St. Augustine, he does not agree with God for having created a woman as a companion to man: “it would have been much better arranged to have two men together as friends, not a man and a woman.” He forgot procreation to fill the earth with holy souls, from a pure couple, Adam and Eve. Adam as the first born failed to question “flesh from his flesh,” when he saw her with an evil proposal. It was all in his hands to say no “to my own child whom I bore from my ribs.” He failed God, he did not take his responsibility. He is the one who is a lot more at fault. God had strongly whispered into his ears, as to the way to live in Eden, in the midst of such
possible attractive fruits. He disappointed God the more. That is why first God looked for him, and questioned him on the matter.
Consequently the more celibacy stands out as a man’s victory over sex, while looking down on women, it has no merits. The humiliations from the defaulters of celibacy should teach the Catholic Church the normality of a human being. Sex is no more a bitter fruit. There is no one-sided condemnation by pointing fingers to women.
They are made in God’s image, as such they deserve respect and dignity. They are not just sex objects, they are persons, the indwelling of God, the Triune God. Please, my lord Bishop, understand us.
We wish the best for the Church.
Yours Most Respectfully,
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo.
