LETTERS to the Editor
Please write to pthorp.ed@votf.org

“ On December 4th, 2005 I attended a parish assembly in my birth town of Schuebelbach in Switzerland. My paternal grandfather had been the chairman of the parish board there for years. Growing up, I heard a lot about the workings of parish politics. In the areas that had voted to remain Catholic after the Reformation, property is in the name of foundations or the parish laity outright. No bishop is able to close up and sell off property. In fact, poor Bishop Haas was prevented from entering some of the churches. Several parishes had some abbots from various abbeys come in to do confirmation, during his tenure. Although I had been a practicing Catholic all those 40 years in the United States, I had no clue that here everything was under the control of the bishops, until the church closures in the San Francisco diocese.

The Catholic Church in Switzerland seems to operate under a different Canon Law than the US, regarding control of property and funds. In the majority there, the laity have decision-making power over assets, not the bishops and priests. The parish boards can go outside their diocese to hire pastors. Pastors have to negotiate salaries with the parish – and much more. About 15 years ago the bishops tried to get control of everything through pressure from the Vatican. However, the Swiss have not complied. I have not heard of interdicts and excommunications, as possible sanctions.

Why has nobody ever looked at that precedent in Switzerland, in order to bring structural changes? If we take power and control that the clergy now have, it will keep some undesired characters out of the priesthood. Do you just want to preach change, or actually take action?” Eva R. Weber

[Fr. Ladislas Orsy has often served VOTF in a consulting capacity on Canon Law. The Structural Change Working Group is one of many VOTF committees who benefited from Fr. Orsy’s insight and direction. I asked Margaret Roylance, SCWG chair, what her group might have gleaned on the subject of the Swiss Church. Her reply follows. Margaret notes that follow-up was not possible but there is interest in pursuing more information about the Swiss practice.]

“When we were consulting with Fr. Orsy, he told us that in one Swiss diocese, the people reserve the right to select their own bishop. He said that when the See is vacant, they send up a name, and the Holy See sends back a letter stating that they do not have the right to select their bishop. The Holy See then announces their new bishop, who is invariably the man they have selected. It appears that the Holy See will tolerate local control, even as they claim that it does not exist. The moral is that we should have jealously guarded the rights of the laity in the American Church early on. If those rights are the status quo, they may well be tolerated, but it is very difficult to take them BACK once they have been given up.” Margaret Roylance

“We are facing a ‘priest shortage’ scenario in beautiful Santa Barbara, too: the University Parish (St. Mark's), which for around 40 years has been served by the Paulist Fathers, is being abandoned by that order at the end of June 2006 for lack of personnel. Many young Paulists have simply left the priesthood because they can't reconcile their lived human and ministerial experience with the discipline of celibacy.

The Diocese of Los Angeles is going to try to find a suitable replacement, but they will have a hard time. The qualifications include (a) the intelligence and flexibility to connect with university students who think for themselves, (b) the wisdom to minister to the ‘year-rounders’ – the disaffected Catholics who are refugees from the surrounding parishes, where they were finding no spiritual nourishment, and (c) the ability (if
possible) to preside at a Spanish-language Mass, because a large Hispanic community shows up at St. Mark's for a Spanish Mass every Sunday.

Many of us in the laity at St. Mark's are ready to step in and minister to each other, but we have no models, and evidently little acceptance, of peer-to-peer ministry in the Catholic tradition. It has always been top-down. Do you think we will be able to redraw the lines of ministry in response to the priest shortage? What a blessing it might be!”
Thomas F. Heck, Voice of the Faithful, Santa Barbara

“There are hundreds of married Roman Catholic priests in the state of Massachusetts who are willing to minister to priestless parishes at little or no cost to the archdioceses. Mandatory celibacy is not a doctrine of the faith. Former Protestant ministers are allowed to minister as ordained married priests. Priests were married for the first eleven centuries of the Church. The sacraments given to us by Jesus are more important than man-made laws formulated for power and control. VOTF says it wants to ‘change’ the Church. Well, let’s change it back to the way Jesus had it when he picked a married man to be pope and married apostles to be priests. It is time that VOTF started advocating for making priesthood available to married men. We have evidence time and again that celibacy is not being observed by many if not most priests. Not only are they not observing celibacy, they are acting out in ways that they would not be if they had normal outlets for their God-given sexuality. Again, this is not a matter of faith or morals. It is a matter of an unjust law depriving millions of people throughout the world of the sacraments.” Terence M. McDonough



In the Vineyard
February, 2006
Volume 5, Issue 3
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