Married Ex-Priests Pushing for Reinstatement to Duties

Many former clergy dispensed from active Roman Catholic priesthood in order to marry are mounting an appeal to have the church restore them to their regular priestly duties.

Their plea will take on international breadth late this month near Rome at what is billed as the first world synod of Catholic married priests.

“We’re willing to serve the church if the church is willing,” said Frank Bonnike of Chicago, former president of the National Federation of Priests Council and now head of a prison school.

The current shortage of priests is expected to become more acute in the next decade, and several bishops and national hierarchies have suggested that the church may need to open the priesthood to married men.

Some Concessions

There have been some concessions. Former Episcopal and Lutheran clergy, who were married in those churches, have been admitted to the Catholic priesthood.

It seems “somewhat inconsistent” for the church to accept these married priests, but reject those “who have been Roman Catholics all their lives,” Bonnike said. “It’s hard for people to understand.”

CORPUS, an organization of dispensed American priests now married, says about 4,200 in that category want to return to active priesthood. That would be about a third of the 13,000 who left the U.S. priesthood in the last 20 years.

The number of former Catholic priests worldwide is about 100,000, and studies indicate that about a third wish restoration to active priesthood. That would be a substantial pool of trained priests.

A proposed statement that Americans are presenting to the meeting at Ariccia, Italy, about 20 miles south of Rome, appeals to Pope John Paul II and bishops for readmission to “full and active priesthood:”

“Give us once again the greeting of peace as your absent brothers, once thought dead, but now alive. We are here in love. Send us.”

Matter of Discipline

The statement points out that Roman Catholicism had married priests for its first 12 centuries, with the basis for it in Scripture, and that priestly celibacy has never been a matter of doctrine, but a discipline that could be changed.

It has applied only to the Western rite of the church, and not its Eastern rite branches.

Delegations to the meeting in Italy were planned from the United States, Canada and most West European countries, with about 200 expected to attend.

About 10 Americans released from the priesthood were scheduled to take part, including Terence Dosh of Minneapolis, executive secretary of CORPUS, and Bonnike, who now heads Pace Institute, a private school for Cook County, Ill., prisoners.

It says studies show that 80% of the laity in Europe and America “are ready to accept a married priesthood,” and that a worsening “dire shortage of priests” makes a change of policy urgent.