Citing "punitive denials of earned retirement benefits", a group of priests who have left the ministry are calling on US bishops to "reach out" to them during the Year for Priests. "The members of CORPUS, a National Association for an Inclusive Priesthood, join with you in responding to Pope Benedict XVI's call to observe the Year for Priests in our Church and each of us in our own ways are doing that," President Dr. William J. Manseau writes in an open letter addressed to the USCCB.
"We were particularly encouraged to learn from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone that the Holy Father intends to include 'those priests who have been put to the side in pastoral ministry.'"
"According to Cardinal Bertone this is to be a time for a 'renewal of contact, fraternal help, and if it is possible, a reuniting with those priests who for various reasons have left behind their priestly ministry,'" the letter continues.
"We rejoice that at long last a time has come when we priests who 'for various reasons have left behind their priestly ministry' may share with our brothers in the episcopate as brother priests in this 'renewal of contact' what is in our hearts.
"We hope to share the faith and love which has sustained us as pilgrims in this painful time. We are not ignorant of the pain which our departures have caused and the part they may have played in your decisions to close so many parishes. Yet it was not for nothing that we made the painful decisions we did. It seems that all of us have suffered in this transitional period.
"It is hard for us to read in Caritas in Veritate that 'charity begins with justice' when many of us struggle as a result of punitive denials of earned retirement benefits after years of faithful and generous service," Dr Manseau writes.
"Perhaps at the heart of Pope Benedict's outreach to us is the conviction that all of us priests share 'a sacramental configuration to Christ' as a result of the gift of our ordinations. That deeper bond of grace calling for ever more effective service to the Church may be the factor which will enable the presbyterate to grow adaptively beyond the strictures of an earlier discipline and assist our church to experience a new springtime.
"As you gather in November for your annual fall meeting with your brother bishops in Baltimore you may decide to reach out to us. This is an historic moment in the life of the Church," the letter concludes.
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