Amazon missionary bishop: Synod plans miss the real problems

[EnglishTeacher]

Very interesting article by Bishop José Luis Azcona.

Amazon missionary bishop: Synod plans miss the real problems – Catholic World Report

 

[jack63]

While people are entitled to their opinion, I can’t say I agreed or liked what this retired Bishop had to say at all.

“Recognizing that the venerable institution of priestly celibacy belongs to the disciplinary area of the Church and therefore subject to changes, I considerate it disadvantageous, even dangerous at this time for ecclesial unity, to open up the possibility that the document is asking for,” Azcona said.

“And also, and principally, deciding this issue is something completely inopportune in a context in which the current trends of large groups of Catholics, the so-called conservatives, are questioning the Magisterium of the Church, specifically in the Supreme Pontiff himself. Some are publicly calling him a heretic demanding his immediate resignation. Others are demanding his resignation for the lack of consistency on the issue of pedophilia in the Church! Let’s not entertain a discussion on the legitimacy of these questions. What is certain is than an affirmative response would open up the risk of a division, of a real schism in the Church.”

So because some people have threated schism in the church, in part, over the changes to the discipline of celibacy, the church should automatically back down. I strongly disagree.

While I genuinely believe celibacy is a blessed discipline and has tremendous value in some cases, it is and has always been a “discipline”.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

That wasn’t the only reason, nor the heart of his argument. He argues that ordaining married men in a Church in crisis is like putting a piece of new cloth on an old fabric; the tear is only going to worsen. In other words, it’s a band-aid solution and isn’t addressing the reasons why there is a vocations crisis. And so the problems that caused a vocation shortage will continue to fester in the Church, even if a married priesthood temporarily helped the numbers game; and those problems will manifest themselves in other ways if they are not addressed.

He says: “the problem is not just the lack of enough priests, but the examination, discernment of this great shortage for a realistic solution. The fundamental root of this shortage of vocations in the Church and also in the Amazon, including the evangelized indigenous peoples, is due to an alarming lack of faith or the absence of faith that works in practice through love and necessarily in history and society.”

He does also argue, as an additional practical reason, that whisking away the centuries-old tradition of celibacy (which, at its best, is a beautiful and radical witness in a world obsessed with sex) would cause a schism, the risk of which should give the non-celibacy proponents reason to pause before they try to push their agenda through.