I was reading
a story this morning from the Miami Herald, in which the Archdiocese of Miami's young, attractive head of radio programming (a priest) has been revealed to be violating his ordination vow of celibacy. On one hand, I think the celibacy requirement for priests in the Latin Rite arises from reasons other than eunuchhood in anticipation for the eschaton and may displease God thereby. On the other hand, Roman Catholic priests take a solemn vow to be celibate and if they stray, all catholic Christians should encourage and support them to repent and return to the Lord for breaking the vow. Apparently, Episcopal bishops think otherwise:
On Wednesday, the Episcopal Church, which allows married priests, offered Cutié another option.
''He is welcome in our church,'' Bishop Leo Frade of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida said in an interview. Frade said the church has young priests who date and about five former Catholic priests. ''For us, a single guy on the beach with his girlfriend is no problem. Episcopalians look at this and scratch their heads.'' Experts say violating the celibacy vow doesn't necessarily end a priest's career.
When we have a
supposedly conservative Episcopal bishop taking someone else's ordination vows so lightly, we have a serious problem.
Edited to reflect we confused Bishop Frade with some other bishop.
1 comment:
I agree, and...
This is precisely why Luther reacted so strongly to vows of celibacy. It creates a system of mendacity. Knowing what that sort of system is like, because our own does the same thing for gay people, I want to keep clear that we must not only look at the person, but the society (i.e., Church)--all who maintain the matter as it is. Both sin, and that implicates every member of the society therein. We tend to not hold the society (and ourselves) accountable for it's miseducation of desire/ misformation of affect. And we must--hold it (and ourselves) accountable.
Mendacity for a person usually doesn't collapse all at once or in a straightforward line, but in waves and sputters. It seems the same thing on the whole for a society. Though in both cases, explosions of reform sometimes occur. In the midst of collapse, is a lot of sin, but we often only see that in the after-effects of grace.
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