Thursday, July 17, 2008

Pope urged to ease rules for priests

LIBERALS in the Australian Catholic Church have called for the pontiff's direct intervention to lift the ban on female and married priests.

Two hundred lay Catholics, religious sisters and brothers, married deacons and priests have written to the Pope asking him to change the rules on the ordination of priests.

They want married men to be ordained immediately and have asked the Pope to consider lifting the ban on the ordination of women to address the shortage of clergy.

The shortfall was especially dire in rural areas and priests often had to travel more than 600 kilometres each weekend to provide Mass and the Sacraments.

For the first 1100 years of the church, the group said, most priests, including bishops and popes, were married.

The Vatican banned married priests but they continued to exist in the Eastern Catholic churches in full union with Rome.

The church also accepted married clergy converts from other churches. These were serving in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, the US and Britain.

The movement, Ordination of Catholic Women, has also written an open letter to the Pope saying the ministry of women and men, married and celibate, would make the church "spiritually richer, more open to understanding the challenges that women, men and children experience and more able to bring God's love and wisdom to the complex problems of our world".
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