Putting the U back into CHURCH

VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL

Putting the U back into CHURCH

Action Step: Ask Your Bishop to Support the New Pastoral Provision to Ordain Married Men
Since 1980, a Pastoral Provision granted by the Vatican to U.S. bishops has allowed Roman Catholic ordination of Episcopal priests who wished to become Catholics. The same pastoral provision was then extended to married ministers of other faith traditions. Since then, hundreds of ministers (many, if not most, of them married) have become Catholic priests.

Recently, Voice of the Faithful sent a petition to U.S. bishops asking for a New Pastoral Provision that would allow the ordination of mature Catholic married men to the priesthood.

Doing so provides a sensible solution to the problems we face as fewer and fewer priests are available to serve our parishes.

Now it's your turn.

We encourage you to follow up by requesting a meeting with your local bishop to discuss how ordaining married Catholic men helps address problems we experience as the number of priests declines.

To help you set up that meeting, we provide several resources:
Action Steps provides a one-page summary for your effort.
Tips for Meeting with Your Bishop provides information on how to set up such a meeting.
The sample letter is a model you may adapt for use when requesting a meeting.
 
Talking Points has suggestions for the meeting and discussion with your bishop.
Please send information about the results of your request to our Executive Director, Donna Doucette, at the national VOTF office so that we may track those results: dbdoucette@votf.org.

Together we can keep this critical project in front of the bishops.