What happened?
Pope Francis said on Monday that priestly celibacy was “a gift” and that “I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy”.
But there could perhaps be exceptions for “pastoral necessity” in “far-flung places” such as the Amazon, where there might be a place for viri probati (older “proven men”) to celebrate Mass and hear Confessions.
Francis called this idea “interesting”, but said it was for theologians to study and that he needed to think about it more deeply.
What the media are saying
News sources varied in their emphasis. While one major news agency, Reuters, headlined their story “Pope says he will not change priest celibacy rules”, another – Associated Press – went with “Pope reaffirms priest celibacy but makes case for exception”. In truth, Francis had explained, rather than “made”, a possible case for new exceptions. But he appears to be in two minds, and most reporting at least gestured towards the point.
The Pope has expressed a very similar ambivalence before. In 2017, for instance, it was reported that he had discussed the question with Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, and had asked for proposals to be made. In March 2017, the Pope told Die Zeit that there might be a case for viri probati “where priests are needed. But optional celibacy is not the solution”.
What Catholics are saying
There was – perhaps surprisingly – little instant reaction from Catholic news sources or blogs. Partly this is because the debate has rumbled on in the background for so long. More attention was given to some of the Pope’s other remarks: LifeSiteNews, for instance, noted Francis’s comments on sex education. While denouncing “ideological colonisation” – a term which Francis has previously used to refer to novel theories of gender – he also told reporters: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools.”
Catholic News Agency, meanwhile, drew attention to the Pope’s comments on this month’s sex abuse summit in Rome. Francis warned of “inflated expectation” ahead of the meeting, but said that “protocols” would be established.
What happened?
Justin Welby, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, was asked about Anglican clergy converting to Catholicism. “Who cares?” he told the Spectator. “I don’t mind about all that. Particularly if people go to Rome, which is such a source of inspiration.” He said that, when a friend told him he was converting, he replied: “How wonderful!”
Why was it under-reported?
The most senior cleric in the Anglican Communion expressing joy at people leaving Anglicanism seems like a remarkable story. Yet, outside the British Catholic press, it was barely reported. The story provoked little reaction, perhaps because most Anglicans agree with the archbishop and no longer regard denominational boundaries as important. The archbishop said the main thing was to be “a disciple of Jesus Christ” and that he doesn’t “care whether it’s the Church of England or Rome or the Orthodox or Pentecostals or the Lutherans or Baptists.”
What will happen next?
The archbishop told the Spectator that the decline of the Church of England is “flattening” and that priestly vocations will soon be at a 40-year high. Meanwhile, his equanimity about Anglicans crossing the Tiber may meet some resistance. Theo Hobson, writing at spectator.co.uk, said: “Sorry to sound sectarian, but the Archbishop of Canterbury should really be able to articulate a preference for Anglicanism over other variants of Christianity … A Church is in trouble if it can’t say why people should stay within it.”
Pope Francis will land in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on Sunday night. It is the first time a pontiff has set foot in the Arabian peninsula. The three-day trip will culminate in a papal Mass attended by 135,000 Catholics. The Mass, at Zayed Sports City, will be broadcast live in churches. Nearly a million Catholics live in the UAE.
The cause of Fr Pedro Arrupe, superior general of the Jesuits from 1965 to 1983, will be formally opened at the Basilica of St John Lateran in Rome on Tuesday. He survived an atomic bomb and is set the order on a new path.
An exhibition of cartoons by John Ryan, the Catholic Herald’s late cartoonist, is being held at the Maughan Library, King’s College London. The exhibition, entitled Sink or Swim? Catholicism in Sixties Britain through John Ryan’s cartoons, runs until April 13. Ryan drew weekly front-page cartoons for 43 years. They often featured his comic character, Cardinal Grotti.
For evidence of Satan, look at social media
‘‘Literally satanic’’: that is how Bishop Robert Barron, writing at his Word on Fire site, described the outpouring of vitriol against the Covington school student who appeared to engage in a stand-off with a Native American protester after the March for Life.
Scrolling through comments, he said, he found dozens “urging retribution against the boy” and dozens more giving contact details for his parents and school.
The bishop cited René Girard’s ideas about the scapegoating mechanism – how, when tensions arise in a group, people cast about for someone to blame.
Girard’s “profoundest influence”, wrote Bishop Barron, “was the Bible, which not only identified the problem, but showed the way forward.”
The story of the woman caught in adultery revealed what Girard saw as “both sin and solution”, Bishop Barron wrote. Social media is a “particularly pernicious breeding ground for Girardian victimising”, Bishop Barron wrote. “When looking for evidence of the Satanic in our culture, don’t waste your time on special effects made popular by all the exorcism movies. Look no further than your computer and the twisted ‘communities’ that it makes possible.”
The writer who gave a piano to a saint
Kathy Schiffer recalled the connection between Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson and an Australian saint.
The writer, on a tour of the South Sea Islands, spent eight days with St Marianne Cope and her community looking after lepers on the island of Molokai in Hawaii.
So inspired was he by the Sisters’ example that he wrote a poem about them – “Even a fool is silent and adores” – and later had a piano shipped to Sister Marianne, in order that “there will always be music.”
How repetition forms us –for good and ill
Repetition of prayers and readings helps fix stories in our mind, wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review. It helps us, for example, to understand the depths of Scripture: we identify at different times with the Good Samaritan or the victim or the hypocritical priest, because the story is so familiar: “The Scriptures work by typology.”
But so do other areas of our lives and our thinking: “We train our heart, our gut, and our mind to react a certain way as our lives unfold”.
For instance, Dougherty wrote, people misunderstood the March For Life controversy because they interpreted it according to known “types”. When they saw photographs of a youth in a Make America Great Again hat, inches away from a chanting Native American, they saw the boy’s smile as a smirk. A Buzzfeed journalist wrote of “how deeply familiar this look is. It’s the look of white patriarchy, of course, but that familiarity – that banality – is part of what prompts the visceral reaction.”
The writer saw the youth, Dougherty said, as “archetypical of entire structures of oppression. The smirking MAGA boy is the boy who insulted me: he is every misbehaving boy, and every misbehaving man, and every form of historical oppression too.”
✣ An Italian grandfather who quit seminary half a century ago has become a priest. Fr Giuseppe Mangano’s ordination at the age of 71 was witnessed by his son and three grandchildren. His wife had died 10 years earlier.
He told the television network TV2000 that he resisted the call to the priesthood as a young man. “I always say, joking, that the Lord called me, that he grabbed me by the hair, but I ran away,” he said. He left the seminary in Molfetta, Bari, aged 21 and moved to Bologna, where he married.
He explained that his wife encouraged him to become a deacon but she died before he was ordained. “She had already been sick for a long time, and when she was dying, she also told me that I could become a priest,” he said.
Speaking of his ordination, he said: “My wife would have been happy.”
✣ Another clergyman with a remarkable story is Deacon Lawrence Girard. Girard was born in November 1918, just after the end of World War I. Now aged 100, Deacon Girard serves eight Masses a week at St Sebastian Church in Michigan. He told the National Catholic Register: “We have good genes in the family … Our ancestors were from France and had escaped the French Revolution.”
“The message of mercy is for everyone”
Pope Francis on aborted children and their mothers
In-flight press conference
“Excommunication should not be used as a weapon”
New York Archdiocese, after questions about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s abortion bill
Press statement
“He was a man of great humanity”
Pope Francis on journalist Alexei Bukalov, who died in December
Vatican News
“We want the Church to be a full partner in building this nation”
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda
Africanews.com
6,600
Deaths from euthanasia in the Netherlands in 2017 – up from 2,000 in 2007
Source: The Guardian
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.