FutureChurch executive director, Sr Christine Schenk, says that her organisation welcomes the Vatican's flexibility in allowing married priests for Anglican converts but wants the option extended to Latin rite priests. "Parishes in Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom are closing, while thousands of Catholics in the developing world have virtually no access to Mass and the sacraments because of too few celibate priests," Schenk said in a statement.
"According to a 2007 article in the New York Times, 80 percent of all Sunday celebrations in Brazil are led by lay leaders because there are no priests."
"I think this may be painful news for married Catholic priests who are not permitted to serve the Church, said FutureChurch board member Bill Wisniewski, himself a married Catholic priest.
"I'm just wondering how its going to work to have Catholic seminarians who cannot marry, study next to Anglican seminarians who will presumably be able to marry," said Mary Lou Hartman, a FutureChurch board member from Princeton, New Jersey.
"I'm guessing more than a few Catholic seminarians may just decide to join the Anglican branch."
Four years ago, FutureChurch lobbied the Vatican's International Synod on the Eucharist asking for open discussion of mandatory celibacy and women deacons.
Four of the synod's twelve working groups wanted to study married priests.
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