Leading Catholic academic calls for married priests

A leading academic has said the Catholic Church urgently needs to overturn its centuries-old ban on ordaining married men to ease the shortage of priests and better relate to the faithful.

Writing in The Tablet this week John Haldane, Professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews, states: “The time is overdue to admit married men to (shortened) formation and ordination.”

Professor Haldane, who is also an adviser to the Pontifical Council for Culture, likens the Church to “a vessel battered by rising waves, leaking along its length and undermanned”. He calls for greater involvement of the laity, “not in the guise of para-clerics but because of its education, expertise and experience” because “it is worse than foolish not to call able bodies to the bridge”.

However he said that men already ordained to the priesthood should not be able to marry or remarry, and added that “for reasons of exclusive commitment, only the celibate should be bishops”.

via The Tablet 

Related articles

• Ex-priest calls for married clergy (news.smh.com.au)

Ky. Baptist church ordains openly gay man

An eastern Louisville Baptist church has ordained an openly gay man as a minister with unanimous support from church members.

Highland Baptist Church on Sunday ordained Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard, a local gay-rights advocate who started the church’s gay and lesbian outreach group last year.

Church Pastor Joe Phelps says ordaining Blanchard was “new territory” for the church but in April it moved to support his ordination.

The Fairness Campaign, a Louisville-based gay rights organization, hailed Blanchard’s ordination as 1 of only about two dozen at Baptist churches in the U.S.

–Wave3