Catholic Priest Ordination Quotes

Yet sadly we hear little about compassion these days. I have lost count of the number of times I have jumped into a London taxi and, when the cabbie asks how I make a living, have been informed categorically that religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history. In fact, the causes of conflict are usually greed, envy, and ambition, but in an effort to sanitize them, these self-serving emotions have often been cloaked in religious rhetoric. There has been much flagrant abuse of religion in recent years. Terrorists have used their faith to justify atrocities that violate its most sacred values. In the Roman Catholic Church, popes and bishops have ignored the suffering of countless women and children by turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse committed by their priests. Some religious leaders seem to behave like secular politicians, singing the praises of their own denomination and decrying their rivals with scant regard for charity. In their public pronouncements, they rarely speak of compassion but focus instead on such secondary matters as sexual practices, the ordination of women, or abstruse doctrinal formulations, implying that a correct stance on these issues — rather than the Golden Rule — is the criterion of true faith.

But what about the popes? Did they not steer the Church away from slavery? The answer is: they did not. They too believed and taught that slavery was part of Catholic doctrine. Understandably perhaps, popes consider themselves first and foremost guardians of tradition. And tradition is judged by what has been done in the Church throughout the centuries, without examining the credentials of the practice... In AD 362 a diocesan council at Gangra in present-day Turkey ex-communicated whoever dared to encourage a slave to despise his master or escape from his service. Although this was a purely local event, it was a dangerous precedent. In AD 650, acting on this precedent, Pope Martin I condemned people who taught slaves about freedom or helped them escape. A number of Church Councils imposed slavery as a form of punishment. It was used with a twisted sense of justice against priests who transgressed the new law of priestly celibacy. The ninth council of Toledo (AD 655) imposed permanent slavery on the children of priests — yet how could these poor boys and girls be held responsible for their father's violating a rule of Church discipline? The Synod of Melfi under Pope Urban II (AD 1089) inflicted unredeemable slavery on the wives of priests — again, a cruel form of misguided justice that betrayed every human right under the sun. But in terms of ecclesiastical bonding, it added weight to presumed tradition. The Church itself imposed slavery. So it can be done. Therefore it must be right!

Some of my friends tell me that the ordination of women is an issue that can wait. 'Rome has decisively turned against it,' they say. 'Change may come, but only in the future — under another Pope, when the heat has died down.' They point to a vast majority of bishops and theologians who have decided to keep their mouths shut, even though they realise Rome is wrong. Tact is needed, they argue. There is a time for speaking and a time for silence... I disagree. Yes, for years I too thought that wisdom would slowly prevail in the Church and that the issue of women priests would ripen in the course of time. That is why, until three years ago, I too had adopted a strategy of wait-and-see. But now I have changed my mind. For the Roman authorities force us to take sides. They impose their own view so strongly as the truth, that by keeping silent now, we would compromise our own consciences.

This Roman view is, moreover, imposed on bishops, theologians and parish priests by its incorporation in routine oaths of loyalty. It causes great anxiety to theologians who cannot admit the validity of Rome's arguments. 'I use mental restriction', one lecturer at a theological faculty told me. But are we allowed to compromise with truth? What if we know Rome is wrong? Does complicity with non-truth not undermine everything we are trying to do, as the community of Christ, as priests, as theologians? I believe it does.

The Archbishop of Cincinnati said that, in Rome itself during the Synod: "It is clear that the priest has lost his identity." What does that mean? The priest no longer knows what he is. So then, we want to form priests who know what they are, who know that they are made for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to carry the Gospel and proclaim the Gospel, that is to say, to proclaim the catechism which we all learned, which our parents learned, and our grandparents and our ancestors; that is, Faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and in His reign. (ordination sermon of June 29, 1977)

Cardinal Wojtyła and one of his auxiliary bishops, Juliusz Groblicki, clandestinely ordained priests for service in Czechoslovakia, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that the Holy See had forbidden underground bishops in that country to perform such ordinations. The clandestine ordinations in Kraków were always conducted with the explicit permission of the candidate’s superior—his bishop or, in the case of members of religious orders, his provincial. Security systems had to be devised. In the case of the Salesian Fathers, a torn-card system was used. The certificate authorizing the ordination was torn in half. The candidate, who had to be smuggled across the border, brought one half with him to Kraków, while the other half was sent by underground courier to the Salesian superior in Kraków. The two halves were then matched, and the ordination could proceed in the archbishop’s chapel at Franciszkańska, 3. Cardinal Wojtyła did not inform the Holy See of these ordinations. He did not regard them as acts in defiance of Vatican policy, but as a duty to suffering fellow believers. And he presumably did not wish to raise an issue that could not be resolved without pain on all sides. He may also have believed that the Holy See and the Pope knew that such things were going on in Kraków, trusted his judgment and discretion, and may have welcomed a kind of safety valve in what was becoming an increasingly desperate situation.

The lying was killing me! But I have high pain tolerance, especially self- inflicted pain. As I nearly emptied the bottle, I swore I saw Satan in the shadows of the darkened room. His voice dripped with sarcasm as he taunted me. “Congratulations on your diaconal ordination, Stephen.

It has become routine for Catholics today to denounce clericalism — the supernatural status claimed for priests. Clerics themselves denounce it. But what is suspect, finally, is the priesthood as such. It's an illusion to pretend that "clericalism" exists apart from the entire culture defined by the sacrament of holy orders, which is the formal name of the priestly ordination rite.