Married Priests are Longing to Serve Through the Church
It is very clear that the Roman Catholic Church has a great need of priests. The Bishops worldwide have brought their concern repeatedly to the Vatican. In addition priests are needed to bring the Eucharist to those Catholic people who do not have a resident priest. The Eucharist is the essence of Catholicism.
Currently on the sideline, there are approximately 150,000 validly ordained priests. But these priests are married. The majority of these priests are ready, and willing to return to the sacred ministry of the altar.
It is our mission to find a way to reconcile these married priests with the Church and to reinstate them in the public sacred ministry, working in every way possible with the Church.
It is evident that the “care of souls” demands a new pastoral provision to make this vision a reality.
No lesser apostle than St. Paul himself demonstrated his theology of the priesthood and the episcopacy when he wrote to Timothy:
“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)
Married priests are longing to serve God and the people in the Christian community through the church. The new association of married priests called “Married Priests Now!” is calling for those priests who are currently married, and all national and international married priest organizations to unite in an open call to the Roman Catholic Church to reconcile married priests to active service. Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo feels that he is an apostle called to bring married priests back to full service in the church due to the current priest shortage and the need to bring the Eucharist to every Catholic.
Archbishop Milingo wants to see a priest in every parish. He feels it is the Will of God to bring priests back as full, vibrant and active ministers of the word and Eucharist.
Married Priests Now! seeks to value the ministry of married priests and reconcile them to public sacred ministry. It is not only a benefit to the church but to all of humanity. The role of the married priests in the family is essential. The family is the nucleus of the church and of society. The priest’s ministry to his family gives him the experience and relationship to see the gospel differently and practically.
The charisma of married priests is needed now. St. Peter was a married priest and so were the other apostles. It is the right of every human person to freely be accepted and given in marriage. This right must be returned to priests in the Latin Roman Communion. It is not only a matter of justice to the priesthood but a matter of the survival of the Church in the future.
For further information about Married Priests Now!
please call 202-577-3544.
Where there is no Eucharist, there is no
Catholicism
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
NCRonline.org
Posted Friday July 14, 2006 at 4:22 p.m. CDT
Zambian archbishop breaks with Rome
Wants to help reconcile married priests with the Catholic church, he says
By John L. Allen Jr.
Washington
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo says he has no intention of launching a new
sect in Africa funded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon as a rival to Roman
Catholicism, and charged that his latest break with the Vatican is the
result of "intolerable restrictions" imposed on him over the last five
years, as well as a deep "lack of appreciation" for his spiritual gifts as
an exorcist.
Now, Milingo says, he wants to help reconcile married priests with the
Catholic church, as well as to promote better understanding between
Catholicism and Moon's Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Milingo spoke to NCR July 14 in an exclusive interview in a hotel room in
Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington.
Earlier in the day, Milingo took part in a press conference announcing the
formation of a new group, "Married Priests Now!", which will agitate for
the return of roughly 150,000 married priests who have left the church in
recent decades.
Milingo, who was made a bishop by Pope Paul VI in 1969 at the age of 39,
has long been a thorn in the side of church authorities because of his
controversial practice of mass exorcism ceremonies.
In 2001, he broke away from the Catholic church and wed a follower of
Moon, a then-43 Korean acupuncturist named Maria Sung. After a tempestuous
few weeks, including a surprise meeting with Pope John Paul II at his
summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, Milingo returned to obedience.
He was allowed to resume a limited form of his healing ministry outside
Rome.
Two weeks ago, however, Milingo disappeared from Italy and reappeared in
the United States at the side of Archbishop George Stallings, leader of
his own breakaway group, the African American Catholic Congregation, based
in Washington, D.C., as well as followers of Moon.
Milingo rejected fears, frequently voiced in Rome, that if he were ever to
fall back under the spell of Moon, the charismatic 76-year-old Zambian
prelate might lead a breakaway congregation in Africa offering a married
priesthood and drawing on traditional African religious practices,
especially healing and the casting out of demons. Such a movement, some
Vatican officials worry, could hobble the Catholic church on the continent
where its recent growth has been the most dramatic.
"We have no ambition at all, in any way, to do anything of that kind,"
Milingo said.
Milingo added that he was "very surprised at how the Catholic church has
spread so much evil against the Rev. Moon," and that he would like to be
an "intermediary" between the two religious bodies.
Milingo claimed that Moon's vision for global peace and the family are
consistent with recent papal teaching. He said he has been fishing three
times with Moon, and was "very, very surprised" at Moon's "simplicity" and
his spirit of "living for others."
"I've seen what he has done," Milingo said.
In a 2002 memoir titled Fished from the Mud, Milingo was quoted as hinting
that Moon's people may have drugged or brainwashed him, prompting his
marriage and eventual break with the church.
In his NCR interview, however, Milingo insisted that he had said no such
thing, and that it was church authorities who insisted that he had been
brainwashed.
"All my problems come from the lack of appreciation [by the authorities of
the Catholic church] for the spiritual gifts I have," he said.
"It was too much for them to believe that in the modern world, I can
simply say 'let this happen,' and it happens," he said.
Milingo offered several examples of his alleged spiritual prowess,
including a recent phone call from a woman in Modena, Italy, who
complained that 20 days after the birth of her child she could not produce
mother's milk. Milingo said he instructed her to draw a glass of water,
which he blessed over the phone. He instructed the mother to drink it, and
immediately afterwards she began to lactate.
"They can't believe such things are possible," he said, with respect to
Vatican officials and bishops who were reluctant to have him in their
dioceses.
Milingo told NCR that for the time being, he intends to establish a base
of operations in Washington at Stallings' Imani Temple. Eventually, he
said, he will return to Zambia and resume his ministry of preaching and
healing. Milingo said Sung, whom he insists he has always considered his
wife, is with him in Washington and the couple will make a home together
there.
He said that he has written to Benedict XVI to inform the pope of his
whereabouts and his intentions, but that at present he sees "no reason"
for requesting a meeting with the pope, as he did with John Paul.
Milingo had nothing but affection for the late pope, who, he said, had
appealed to Milingo as his elder, with "beautiful words" of
reconciliation. Yet he told an at-times harrowing story of his subsequent
treatment, beginning with what he called his "violent separation" from
Sung after his return to the fold in the summer of 2001.
"The shadow of Maria Sung always hung over me, it was very strong," he
said. "It was dangerous for me to even be talking with any woman at all."
"I found myself literally surrounded by spies," he said. He said these
"spies" were primarily priests and sisters who claimed to have the
authority of the Vatican, including what he called some "enthusiasts of
Medjugorje," the site of alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the
former Yugoslavia.
At one stage, Milingo alleged, three different groups, whom he declined to
identify, planned to "kidnap" him from his residence in Zagarola outside
Rome, to use him for their own purposes.
Apparently realizing the extraordinary nature of his account, at one point
Milingo exclaimed, "I am not drunk!"
The kidnap plots led him, he said, to "rebel" and to leave Italy for
Zambia in December 2004, not to return until early February in 2005. Upon
his return, he said, the Vatican agreed to get rid of most of the people
around him.
Shortly after the election of Benedict XVI, Milingo said, the new pope
received him and said he was glad they had been able to "take away these
stumbling blocks that are stifling your work."
Yet, Milingo said, he was still required to travel with a Vatican
bodyguard, at his own expense, wherever he went.
Milingo said he decided to make a definitive break now for two reasons.
First, he said, he had lived through five years of "doubts and
difficulties," wondering if he had made the right choice. During all that
time, he said, he thought of himself as married to Sung.
Second, he said, the resistance to his preaching and healing gradually
became more and more intolerable.
"People knew my gift was beyond doubt," he said. "But the dioceses didn't
want me. Some bishops jumped so high at the mention of my name, it was as
if the church had springs."
This led him to ask God, he said, "Why do you have such a structure that
separates itself from humanity?"
In the last two weeks, Milingo said, he gradually planned his escape. He
called a private friend and asked her to make his travel arrangements,
avoiding local travel agencies and well-known carriers. He said when the
morning came, he celebrated Mass, ate lunch, and then when people in the
residence were expecting him to nap, he simply walked out into a waiting
car.
"We had to leave without arousing too much dust," he explained.
He said he left the key to his room on the altar in the chapel.
Those who have watched the ups and downs of the Milingo story over the
years will be hesitant to say that its last chapter has now been written,
or that the mercurial Zambian prelate doesn't have other surprises in
store.
[John Allen is NCR Senior Correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org
<mailto:jallen@ncronline.org>.]
July 14, 2006, National Catholic Reporter
"Then
he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority
over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the
kingdom of God, and to heal the sick."
-
Luke 9:1-2 KJV
"After
a lifetime of devotion to the Church and to my priestly vows, the Lord
has called me to take a step that will change my life forever, which will
enable me to be a vehicle of His grace and blessing to Africa and the
world..."
-Archbishop
Emmanuel Milingo, May 26, 2001
"There is no more important healing than
the reconciliation of 150,000 married priests with the
