{"id":721,"date":"2003-09-05T08:34:18","date_gmt":"2003-09-05T13:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/?p=721"},"modified":"2003-09-05T08:34:18","modified_gmt":"2003-09-05T13:34:18","slug":"archbishop-dola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2003\/09\/archbishop-dola\/","title":{"rendered":"Archbishop Dolan’s response to the"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Dolan’s response to the Celibacy Letter<\/a>
\nI admire Archbishop Dolan’s directness and his blunt rebuttals of certain media-driven cultural assumptions:<\/p>\n

…the impression is often given that, as an archbishop and a so-called “Vatican loyalist,” I have to support the church’s tradition of priestly celibacy, but that my heart, as the hearts of most other bishops, is really not in it. This impression is simply wrong.
\n[Celibacy] is not some stodgy Vatican “policy” that has been “imposed,” but a gift savored for millennia. I wholeheartedly support it, not because I’m “supposed to,” or because I reluctantly “have to,” but because I want to, and because I sincerely and enthusiastically believe it is a genuine gift to the church and her priests….
\nthe reports would have us believe that this letter is revolutionary and novel, requiring “courage” in a climate where free discussion on this issue is rare. Courage, I would propose, characterizes rather all our priests — those who signed and the 72 percent who did not <\/strong>— who live their celibate chastity with fidelity and joy; courage characterizes our married couples who generously and obediently live out their vows; courage is found in our young people and unmarried adults who follow the teaching of Jesus, the Bible, and the church on the beautiful virtue of chastity; courage is found in those writers — priests, religious, lay, Catholic and non-Catholic — who defend such a countercultural virtue as celibacy in a world that feels one cannot be happy or whole without sexual gratification.<\/strong>
\n…As one priest wrote me, “The problem is not that we don’t talk about optional celibacy; the problem is that we’ve talked it to death the last 40 years.”
\n…Finally, I worry about the timing of the letter. I’m not talking here about the fact that it was released to the media before Bishop Gregory ever received it, or that it came out when I was on my announced vacation. No. I mean that this is the time we priests need to be renewing our pledge to celibacy, not questioning it.
\n…The problems in the church today are not caused by the teaching of Jesus and of his church, but by lack of fidelity to them.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Dolan’s response to the Celibacy Letter I admire Archbishop Dolan’s directness and his blunt rebuttals of certain media-driven cultural assumptions: …the impression is often given that, as an archbishop and a so-called “Vatican loyalist,” I have to support the church’s tradition of priestly celibacy, but that my heart, as the hearts of most other… Continue reading Archbishop Dolan’s response to the<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}