The Guardian, Saturday 29 April 2017 09.00
BST
Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
Catholic bishops urged to review
celibacy rules amid shortage of priests
Call for commission to reconsider
celibacy as condition of priesthood as number of priests in England and Wales
plummets
Pope Francis has signalled he is open to
the possibility of ordaining married men under specific conditions.
Catholic bishops in England and Wales are
facing a fresh call for a national commission on the ordination of married men
amid mounting concern that the church’s celibacy requirement is contributing to
a shortage of priests.
The call for a review of celibacy as a
condition of priesthood comes after Pope Francis signalled last month he was
open to the possibility of ordaining married men under specific conditions. The
issue is expected to raised at a synod next year on vocation.
The Movement for Married Clergy (MMaC) is
renewing its call for a national commission of bishops, clergy and laity to
discuss ways of tackling the shortage of priests. “We’re asking bishops to
recognise the issue and examine possible solutions in good faith,” said the
MMaC secretary, Chris McDonnell.
A recent editorial in the Catholic Times
endorsed the call. “What has the church got to lose by establishing such a
commission? Or perhaps more importantly, the focus should concentrate on what
the church has to gain from such a move,” it said.
According to Catholic church figures, 25
men entered training for the diocesan priesthood in 2016 for England and Wales
compared with more than 150 in 1985, although the pace of decline has slowed in
recent years.
“We have a very advancing age profile of
serving priests, and low numbers of people going into seminaries,” said
McDonnell. “At the moment, it’s just about manageable. But in five years’ time
it’s going to be very different. We want to use this window of opportunity to
look at what could be done.”
Last year it was announced that a third of
the 62 Catholic churches in north Wales would close by 2020 because of a
shortage of priests under the retirement age. In January, Salford diocese said
more than 20 churches across Greater Manchester would close and about 100
parishes would merge, partly because of falling numbers of priests.
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The MMaC said Pope Francis’s comments
suggested a new openness to the idea of married priests. In a separate
interview, Cardinal Walter Kasper, a German theologian close to Francis, said
the pope wanted to leave the decision up to local bishops’ conferences.
“The [vocation] situation differs so widely
in different parts of the world that a uniform worldwide solution is not
possible,” Kasper told a German church website, katholisch.de. Each bishops’
conference should decide whether it was in favour of married priests and then
submit proposals to the pope. “I have the feeling that if their application is
well-founded, it will be met positively.”
He added: “We simply cannot carry on with
the situation as it is at the present … One cannot just go on clustering more and
more parishes together into ever larger entities.”
Celibacy is a matter of church discipline
rather than doctrine, and Catholic priests were often married up until the 12th
century. In the UK, married Anglican clergy who joined the Catholic church in disagreement
over the ordination of women have continued to serve as priests.
“I think the vast majority of lay Catholics
would accept married clergy – particularly young people for whom it is a
no-brainer,” said McDonnell. “But we want to be very clear that we’re not
rejecting celibacy. If a man decides as part of his vocation to be celibate,
we’d applaud his dedication. Celibacy and the priesthood should not be
considered incompatible.”
Two of the church’s 22 serving bishops, Tom
Burns of Menevia and Seamus Cunningham of Hexham and Newcastle, and three
retired bishops have backed married priests in recent years. However, the
bishops’ conference of England and Wales rejected a proposal to ordain married
men in 2015.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, archbishop of
Westminster and leader of the church in England and Wales, has said he sees no
need for change. “I don’t think we are in a [vocations] crisis in England and
Wales.” he told the Irish Catholic in February. adding: “I personally value …
the celibacy of the priesthood.”
Father Christopher Jamison of the Catholic
National Office for Vocation said he had “no problem” with the ordination of
married men, but “it does not solve the fundamental challenges facing churches
today”. He pointed out that the Anglican church ordained married men and women
yet still faced a clergy shortage and declining congregations.
Pope Francis has said the next synod in
October 2018 will discuss the decline in vocations. Reports have suggested the
pope wanted the issue of celibacy to be discussed but yielded to objections
from his advisers.
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