Archbishop Milingo’s Press Statement in Response to the Vatican Censure

September 27, 2006 at Imani Temple, Washington DC
We cordially thank the Holy Father for his gracious and caring concern about us and Our College of Bishops and the Prelature for Married Priests Now! It is our intention to be faithful to the Church and to honor and respect the Holy Father. We thank him for his brotherly love and we hope to return the same to him.
We do have a grave concern about the lives of our married priests who have been dismissed from service in the church because they have married. And we wish to speak about that injustice.
The purpose of the Married Priests Now! Personal Prelature is to support the priests who have married and to loudly clamor for their return to full ministry in the Church. We have only one goal and purpose and that is the restoration of the Married Priesthood to the Western Roman Catholic Church. To support married priests I, Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, a married Roman Catholic bishop, last July held at a Press Conference in the Press Club of Washington, D.C. to point out the growing crisis in the priesthood. The average age of priests is approximately 74 years of age and the average age of male and female religious is 68 years of age. In twenty years, there will be few priests left. Who is going to provide the sacraments and the Eucharist to the people? Churches are closing at the rate of almost fifty a year in the larger cities in the United States. There is a desperate need for priests now and in the future, but we have almost 25,000 married priests in the US and almost 150,000 world wide who are not being called to service because of a the Medieval church imposed regulation that priests be celibate. The sexual abuse accusations against celibate priests in the United States speaks loudly that something is wrong. And what is wrong is the enforcement of a promise of celibacy on secular clergy. Secular clergy should be married so that they can model what a good family is in the church community and so they can relate to the families they serve. We also pointed out the brutal and unacceptable treatment the Church has imposed on those priests who fell in love and married. That same week a second press conference was held at Imani Temple to accommodate the interest of the international press. Earlier this month we held a convocation with 120 married priests and their wives.
Married Priests Now! is drawing attention to the great need for priests due to the present shortage of priests which is creating a crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. Over 150,000 married priests stand waiting and willing to serve the needs of the church. These men are already trained and experienced in theology and ministry and have many years experience as married men. These are men who have loved their wives, and raised families. They ought to be called back to ministry immediately. The very life of the church is at stake. Without priests, there is no Mass or Eucharist. The Eucharist is the center of the Catholic-Christian experience and faith. No Eucharist, no church.
The church has always had married priests. It was the norm of the church for twelve centuries to have married priests and in the early centuries married bishops and popes. Thirty nine popes were married. In our own day, the Eastern Rites of the Roman Catholic Church have married priests. In the United States, in the last thirty years because of what is known as the Pastoral Provision, there are about 70 married priests who transferred from Anglican and Lutheran churches. The Married Priesthood is already here. We are calling for an extension of this Pastoral Provision for our own married priests.
We celebrate the Married Priests of the Roman Catholic Church. Up to this time the priests who married were punished, penalized and shunned by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. We want the laity to join us and to courageously to call upon the Vatican to remove these unjust penalties and to stop the unchristian retaliation towards married priests. We call on the Holy Father to recall in dignity and honor the priests who have married. Marriage is a sacrament and is a higher calling than celibacy. This is a matter of discernment for the whole Church and the laity must be involved in seeing the need for married priests. We honor and celebrate the Married Priests of the Roman Catholic Church and we will work closely with the Holy Father, the Vatican offices, and other married priest organizations to once again make a married priesthood a normal part of the Church. We celebrate the Married Priesthood. All of our voices need to be one chorus of celebration for the priests who have chosen to find love and marry. They are better priests because of it.
Now we turn our attention to the charges made by the Vatican about the consecration of our four married bishops. When I, as a Roman Catholic Bishop, decided to consecrate four bishops, I meditated and went back to the roots of the apostolic times and reviewed what the apostles had done. They set up spiritual leaders in the church communities by praying and laying hands on them. They did not look for mandates but for the needs of the communities. I have done the same thing. I consecrated these four married men as Roman Catholic bishops in valid apostolic succession. The power and authority of a bishop comes from the very power and authority of his own sacramental consecration. I was consecrated by Pope Paul VI and, equipped with that sacramental power from him, I consecrated four married men in valid apostolic succession. These men are validly ordained Roman Catholic Bishops today and remain so in spite of Rome’s posture of denial of recognition.
The canon cited in the excommunication says I acted without a papal mandate. There have been many times before in Church history when mandates were not required and the current priest shortage calls for emergency action to bring attention and remedy to the problem. The Gospel calls us to do what is right. This may appear to the canon lawyer to be an illicit consecration, but in terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ it is the right thing to do. These bishops are both valid and licit.
We do not accept this excommunication and lovingly return it to His Holiness, our beloved Pope Benedict XVI, to reconsider it and withdraw it and join us in recalling married priests to service once again. We call upon the bishops of dioceses to bring back the married priests because they have long been needed to do the work of the Church. Lay people need to write to the bishops and to the newspapers to tell them to return married priests to ministry.
We are and continue to be dedicated to the unity of the Church. We are calling back those who have been disowned by the Church and providing them with healing and acceptance. This is great ministry and we act out of care for the Church and for its survival. We will continue with our mission and we ask the laity and the married priests to join us.