03 | October | 2006 | Blogger Priest

ARCHBISHOP MILINGO – SCHISM OVER MARRIED PRIESTS

Posted on October 3, 2006 by Father Joe

Bishop Seeks to Change No-Marriage Rule
By WILLIAM C. MANN
The Associated Press

Wednesday, July 12, 2006WASHINGTON — Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, whose 2001 marriage caused an international scandal within the Roman Catholic Church, set out on a new mission Wednesday to override church rules and let married priests continue their ministries. / The Zambian archbishop said he was championing the cause of married priests even before his marriage, but his new goal is to end the church’s celibacy rule.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201616.html

[Here is Archbishop Milingo on the left] He begged married priests to “come out of their Catholic prisons and be reinstated, taking once more their pastoral responsibility among the married priests.” He continued: “To those priests who may feel that by marrying they have stepped down or fallen short, unleash your burden of humiliation, exclusivity and shame. Come among your fellow `sinners,’ so considered, who were to be branded, and to be forgotten forever as weaklings.”

Archbishop Milingo was taken aside by Church officials and the late Pope John Paul II interceded to pursuade him to return to the fold and renounce the marriage, which he did four months later in August 2001. The attempted marriage had been conducted by Rev. Sun Myung Moon (Unification Church) and the woman was a South Korean, Maria Sung. Unsure of his stability, he remained in seclusion for a year in Argentina. His supposed wife from the arranged marriage complained bitterly about the situation. Archbishop George Augustus Stallings, chief primate of his own independent African American Catholic congregation (Imani Temple, 1989) also married an Asian woman at the ceremony. He hosted the press conference yesterday, Wednesday, July 12. [See Bishop Stallings here on the right and Archbishop Milingo below]

Now, Archbishop Milingo (76 years old) has gone over the deep end again and is back with Maria Sung. Like other dissenters, he refuses to leave the Church, desiring instead to force her to change. “My position is very clear in my understanding of my ordination by the church. Once a priest, always a priest. Even though a priest can renounce his vows and be defrocked by the church, the church avows that he always remains a priest.”

[Here above is Bishop Stallings with his wife.] The archbishop said there are some 150,000 married priests around the world and about 20,000 in the U.S. who should be returned to ministry.

Here is the text of Archbishop Milingo’s speech at the Washington Press Club:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are dealing with a very serious matter that has affected the Catholic Church for many years. In the last 35 years since the International Catholic Synod of Bishops in 1971, the struggles surrounding celibacy have worsened. If in 1971, the church listened to the appeals of Bishops to offer celibacy as an option to those who would bind themselves to it for their entire lives, but let those called to be ordained priests, yet married, to fulfill their calling, then today we would not be harvesting straw instead of divine graces.

The seriousness of the matter was emphasized once again when the US Bishops raised the issue as we entered this third millennium. Once more the authorities in the Vatican waved it off, to the detriment of the church in USA and around the world.

Married priesthood has existed as early as the time of Moses, as we read in Leviticus that they were all married, the family of the High priest Aaron. Some argue that what was demanded in that priesthood was merely a legal purity. But when God demanded sanctity as a sign of being intimate with Him, this injunction of sanctity was still more applicable to priests: “Be holy, because I, your Lord, am holy.” Sanctity or holiness is the first requirement of any priesthood, married or celibate.
The Apostles ordained priests and bishops, regardless of their marital status. St. Paul ordained Timothy and consecrated him to Bishopric. He ordained the first Bishop of the Island of Malta, who was a married man. As St. Paul said to Timothy, the one condition he imposed upon a Bishop was to marry only once.

“A Bishop must be irreproachable, married only once, temperate, self controlled, decent, hospitable,, able to teach, not a drunkard, not aggressive, but gentle, not contentious, not a lover of money.” (Timothy 3:2-3)

Some people will be surprised to hear of what became of Zacchaeus, the short man whom Jesus called down from a sycamore tree and then visited his house. He truly was converted with his whole family, and ended being consecrated Bishop of Caesarea Philippi. (History of the Church: Venturi).

Jesus shared fully with all his apostles, both married and non-married, all that was required to be an Apostle. He did not show favoritism to any of them. Even as He gave them responsibilities, He looked to each one’s capacity, and relied on each of them. The question of celibacy was not His preoccupation. I think that the demands presented by St. Paul to a candidate to Bishopric are more than sufficient for the life of a Bishop. Looking back to priesthood from which rank a Bishop comes the same demands are applied to the priesthood.

We hereby appeal to those Bishops who have been sent to the monasteries, condemned forever, never to appear any more to their faithful. Let them come out of their Catholic prisons and be reinstated, taking once more their pastoral responsibility among the married priests. Please let us know where you are, be in contact with us.

To those priests who may feel that by marrying they have stepped down or fallen short, unleash your burden of humiliation, exclusivity, and shame. Come among your fellow “sinners,” so considered, who were to be branded, and to be forgotten forever as weaklings. Come in, but never come with lamentations. Your burden has been loaded off, you come light, released from any weight of sinfulness. Become a Magdalene, a Paul, a Peter or Augustine, or one of the many others who never looked back to their struggling past. They all became outstanding saints, in spite of their former weaknesses.

To our beloved “Mother Church,” we beseech you to open your arms to these prodigal children who have longed to return home and have so much to offer. There is no more important healing than the reconciliation of 150,000 married priests with the Mother Church, and the healing of a Church in crisis through the renewing of marriage and family. The Church has nothing to lose by allowing priests the option to marry. Historically, out of holy marriages have come priests, popes, saints, and loving servants of God and the Church.

It is out of our love for our Faith and deep concern for its future that we proclaim this day, the end of mandatory celibacy, and the option for priests to sanctify the family as it was intended in the Garden of Eden, even as they fulfill their calling and ordination.

Sponsored by Stalling’s AACC, the archbishop is going to spend six months traveling the U.S. spreading his dissent and witnessing to his breech of promises made to God and to the Church. He is a disgrace and proof that the Church must be more careful in the future about who is made bishop.

Archbishop Milingo goes every which-a-way. He made promises of perpetual celibacy and obedience. Then he broke them and attempted marriage, making a promise he was not entitled to keep to a woman. Shortly thereafter, he put her aside and reaffirmed his promise of celibacy and pledged obedience to the Holy Father. [See the statement below] Now, he has renounced his promises to God and the Church again and has returned to his so-called spouse. What they might do in bed is not something about which I would speculate; however, he has joined himself to heretics and in Stallings, an excommunicated priest who likes to masquerade as a bishop or patriarch (his own pope)!