The planned visit to the country by renegade former Roman Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Zambia is set to cause ripples within the local church that is grappling with the problem of priests leaving the church to marry.Milingo is due in the country later this month to ordain three former priests as bishops of the Married Priests Now, a movement he founded after being excommunicated from the Roman Church in 2006.
His visit will come less than a month after another breakaway church of the Roman Rite, the Ecumenical Catholic Church, ordained Father Godfrey Shiundu as its first bishop in Africa.
While his visit might do little to change Catholic’s dogma, it will surely reignite debate on the issue of clerical celibacy that has split the faithful across the world right down the middle.
It will reinforce the cause of liberals within the Roman Rite locally who have been advocating for clerical celibacy to be made optional, a proposal fiercely opposed by conservatives within the church.
"We are not going to change our laws to conform to the worldly desires of a few," said Bishop Cornelius Korir of the Eldoret Diocese. "The problem is not the law but those who observe it," he added.
Milingo, as archbishop of Bulawayo, Zambia, caused a stir within the Catholic communion in 2001 when he received marriage blessings from Sun Myun Moon of the Unification Church.
Embarrass church
His marriage at the age of 71 to Maria Sung, a Korean acupuncturist, was a huge embarrassment to the church. He was eventually excommunicated in 2006 for ordaining four men as bishops without papal mandate.
But Karl Raymond Rodig, founder of the breakaway Ecumenical Catholic Church reckons that the Roman church’s doctrine is outdated and not in touch with the realities of human nature.
"We are not attacking celibacy, in fact, we respect it," Rodig told The Standard on Sunday in a telephone interview. "All we ever asked for was for it to be made optional. But no one was willing to hear us out," he added.
Rodig left the Roman Catholic Church in 1995, after serving for nine years, when he was suspended for engaging in a love affair. He described his suspension as painful, but one which he does not regret.
"All my life I desired to be a priest and I also desired to be a family man. It was painful that I would have to forgo one for the other yet Christ did not forbid us from exercising the human feelings he gave us," he said.
Rodig says his church has attracted a million followers around the world since its formation in 1999. He has since ordained 27 bishops and 200 priests, most of them from the mother church.
Other long-standing contentious issues within the Roman church include eligibility for partaking of the Holy Communion, use of contraceptives and practice of charismatic gifts. Some priests have also complained of high-handedness by bishops when dealing with errant priests.
Fr Joseph Njino, a lecturer of Religious Studies at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, said the church ought to be more democratic and lenient when dealing with errant clergy.
Njino, a one-time chairman of the Association of Priests in the country, termed as "inhumane" the manner in which some priests have been suspended and eventually excommunicated from the church.
He reckons the powers of the bishops to make final decisions regarding the fate of the straying clergy should be checked to promote internal democracy within the church. Currently bishops who oversee dioceses have sweeping powers over priests.
But Bishop Korir says they are simply safeguarding and executing the laws set by the church.
Guarding the law
"We shall be failing in our duty if we do not exercise these powers. Furthermore, everyone understands the law and the punishment for erring. The church will simply descend into anarchy if we do not guard the laws," he said.
Vatican last week granted bishops even more powers to summarily punish errant priests including suspending those found to have secret families.
Apart from allowing its priests to marry, the Ecumenical Church is also liberal on who is eligible to partake of the Holy Communion. The Roman Church forbids polygamous men and separated or divorced couples from receiving sacrament.
Njino admitted the church has been harsh in regard to who is eligible to receive Sacrament. But Korir said the church was now considering the merits of each individual case before making a decision.
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