Genks Petition Bishops

Fr Dwight at Standing on my Head has an excellent post on the idiotic petition published in The Telegraph calling on The Vatican to allow married men and women into the Holy priesthood.

I agree with Fr Dwight, and would like to add my own snippit. There are no vocations because the failure of the bishops and priests to remain faithful to Rome in most matters of the faith has destroyed the faith of the faithful. Also the seminaries have become hunting grounds trying to root out people who just want to be Catholic, I gave up trying to jump through hoops in the end - I simply couldn't understand why the faith I had been taught, understood from the catechism and proclaimed daily by Rome was being replaced by the protestant nonsense I found in the seminary. One day I remember talking in a class about the presence of Jesus and the Proffessor criticized me for making the point that if I a child asked me where Jesus was then I would point to the tabernacle... He said Jesus was just as present in you or me and that the tabernacle was a symbol.

I made mistakes myself, probably wasn't the best example in seminary, but I did have the faith; because of that I was made to feel like an outcast and a traditionalist... I'm neither, I'm simply Catholic. It was like playing hide and seek and for the bishops to play games like that is simply disgraceful.

Below is from a priest in Rome in response to the petition.

As a Catholic priest ordained 15 years ago and now doing further studies in Rome I would like to:



1. Affirm my wholehearted support for the ancient practice of celibacy for the presbyterate in the life of the Church.



2. Affirm my wholehearted support for the maintenance of clerical celibacy as a necessary sign to the world of the priority of the Kingdom of God and the call of Jesus, of love for Him and for His Church over other earthly ties.



3. Affirm my support for celibacy not just as a discipline, but as a practice grounded in the example of the Lord Himself, as a way of life that expresses the heart of the priesthood as a complete self-giving for the Church, as Christ gave Himself totally for His one bride - and so affirm that there are good doctrinal and theological reasons for this practice.



4. Affirm my wholehearted assent for the Church's definitive teaching concerning the reservation of the sacrament of Holy Orders to men alone.



5. Affirm my wholehearted assent to all of the Church's teachings, not as "Vatican policies", but as the teachings of Jesus Christ who gave His teaching authority to the Church's Magisterium.



6. Affirm my prayers for those who have left the priesthood, but my disagreement that they should be allowed back to active priestly ministry - such a move would be discouraging to those who have tried to maintain the promises they made at ordination and is a sign of a lack of respect to them.



7. Deprecate this petition as an attempt to further the culture of dissent in the Church, a dissent whose real nature is a refusal to believe, and so is opposed to the full act of faith, and so will do no good but will serve to encourage division in the Body of Christ.



8. Acknowledge that there is indeed a crisis in the life of the Catholic Church, but this has been caused by dissent from the teachings of the Church, a lack of thorough Catholic catechesis, a lack of holiness and prayer in the life of the Church, an unwillingness to evangelise culture with the fullness of the Catholic Faith and a growing antagonistic secularism in the world which dissent actually promotes.