Several prominent
Roman Catholic politicians have urged German bishops to lobby their
countryman Pope Benedict for a change in Church policy to ordain married
men in response to a worsening shortage of priests.
The group, including the
speaker of parliament and a cabinet member, backed up its call by
quoting a 1970 essay by the present pope where he predicts the Church
"will know new forms of ministry and ordain upstanding (lay) Christians
as priests."
The German bishops
estimate that two-thirds of all Catholic parishes in the country will
not have their own priest by 2020.
As in other countries, bishops have
been merging parishes to have the dwindling clergy minister to ever
larger areas.
Pope Benedict has
firmly ruled out any reform of priestly celibacy, despite calls from
some bishops -- especially in German-speaking countries -- to consider a
change.
The politicians, whose
appeal will be printed in Saturday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
argue that upholding celibacy is not as pressing as "the need of many
priest-less parishes that are no longer able to celebrate Mass each
Sunday".
"A reform of the
Church (parish) structure alone cannot be the response to the priest
shortage," writes the group including Bundestag speaker Norbert Lammert
and Education Minister Annette Schavan from Chancellor Angela Merkel's
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.
The politicians said the Church should ordain "proven men," pious
married Catholics whose wives are beyond child-bearing age. If the
Vatican continues rejecting this option, they said, the German Church
should "consider a regional exception".
The appeal appeared to have little chance of success in the Vatican,
which often urges Catholics to pray for more vocations to the
priesthood, but it reflected a deep concern among German Catholic laymen
about the priest shortage.
Among its eight signatories were also former state governors Bernhard Vogel, Erwin Teufel and Dieter Althaus.
German Catholicism was shaken by the sexual abuse scandals that
swept through Europe last year.
Some critics blame clerical abuse of
minors on celibacy, a link the Church denies.
In the wake of the scandals, polls have found that about a quarter of German Catholics are considering leaving the Church.
SIC: ReutersIndia/INT'L