Text 11312, 103 rader
Skriven 2005-04-10 15:45:58 av Alan Hess
Ärende: priest shortage
=======================
Is the columnist right that making celibacy optional will attract more to the
priesthood?  I'd think so.
********


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.rodricks10apr10,1,7521843.column
?coll=bal-pe-maryland
Shortage of priests breeds abuse
Dan Rodricks



April 10, 2005

IATTENDED Easter Sunday Mass in a small-town Roman Catholic church. The
celebrant was an elderly, jolly priest who had come out of retirement to fill
in for the elderly, sickly priest who usually serves the parish. The weekly
bulletin reported a "serious priest shortage" and mentioned that a "Tanzanian
connection for extra priestly help" had been established.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It just struck me as quaint, odd and ironic that, all these years after
Anglican and Catholic missionaries went to Tanganyika and Zanzibar to bring
Christendom to the Swahili-speaking natives, here was an American church in a
white-picket-fence town looking to an evangelized Africa for ... a missionary!

This is actually a trend.

"The number of foreign priests has been increasing [and] there could be an
estimated 2,140 foreign priests in the United States in the year 2005," wrote
Joseph Claude Harris, a church financial analyst and author of a book on the
priesthood. "Present trends suggest a decline in the number of active diocesan
clergy from 24,603 in 1990 to 18,544 for 2005, a drop of 6,059 priests. ... The
need for new pastors may well be mitigated but certainly not relieved by
international immigrants."

It would be wonderful to think of this as an effort to globalize - or
denationalize - the American Catholic church, as Pope John Paul II had wished.
But let's be real. It's happening because there aren't enough priests to go
around. In 1999, the American church buried more priests than it ordained. By
2003, there were more priests over 90 than under 30, according to the National
Catholic Reporter.

This shortage has existed for years, and it contributed to the problem of child
sexual abuse, in that the lack of healthy, new blood in the priesthood forced
the church hierarchy for decades to cover up offenses and to recycle pedophiles
and other misfits from parish to parish, station to station.

The priest shortage and the severe spiritual and financial problems it caused
now provide the church good reason to make celibacy optional for priests, to
allow the Catholic clergy to have open, healthy relationships and to take the
vow of marriage. The ordination of women should be allowed as well.

But here I am again, doing what conflicted and foolish American Catholics
typically do: offering opinions as if they matter, as if the Vatican were
something other than monarchy, as if anyone but a white-haired cardinal had a
say.

If the American Catholic voice registered at all in the Vatican, Bernard Law
would not be celebrating one of the mourning Masses for the Pope this week.

Law was one of the men who protected abusive clergy in the Archdiocese of
Boston. He was forced to resign in disgrace two years ago, amid criticism that
he had failed to remove abusive priests from ministry and even commended some
while knowing they had been accused of molesting children.

Law left Boston and lived for a year at the Sisters of Mercy of Alma convent in
Maryland. Then he got a position at the Vatican. He has been given the honor of
presiding over a Mass for John Paul during the nine-day mourning period for the
pope. Law also will have a say in the selection of the next pontiff.

So will the leader of the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, Cardinal Oscar Andres
Rodriguez Maradiaga.

He's had a brush with clergy sexual abuse, too. According to a 2004 report in
The Dallas Morning News, the Honduran cardinal sheltered a Costa Rican priest
who had admitted molesting a 10-year-old altar boy and who was a fugitive from
his native country for a few years. Maradiaga gave the priest assignments in
two Honduran villages in 2003, the News reported. The priest fled the country
in early 2004.

It is not clear if Maradiaga had been aware of the priest's background, which
included stints in New York and Hartford, when he put him to work.

But Maradiaga might have been more concerned with a problem drearily familiar
to his colleagues in the north - the priest shortage. "He has about 150 priests
to serve a Catholic population of more than 1.6 million," the News reported,
"and, like many of his U.S. brethren, sometimes relies on foreigners about whom
little is publicly known."

When the abuse scandal broke in Boston, Maradiaga publicly defended Law and
blasted the media, comparing press reporting of child abusers among the
Catholic clergy to the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. He also
said he opposed pastors reporting abuse allegations to civil authorities. "I'd
be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests," he said.

Maradiaga is frequently mentioned as a candidate for the papacy.

Copyright + 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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