Cup 4 Change

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Wed02222012

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Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Joseph Addison

If men and women cease to sit in judgment on evil deeds it is not because they are tolerant, but because they are defeated.

Ben Hecht

The church worships God and serves mankind, it works for the transformation of this world and waits for the consummation of its hope in the next. “Faith, hope, love abide; but the greatest of these is love”―love, and not faith, and certainly not doctrine.

Jaroslave Pelikan

Perhaps the time has come to recognize that Christianity was never meant to be about religion; it is to be about life. The achievement of personal security is the goal of religion. The ability to live with integrity in the midst of the insecurity of life is the goal of Christianity. Religion seeks to control life with guilt. Christianity seeks to free people to be all that they can be. There is a vast difference. . . For the purpose of Jesus was not to make us religious but to make us fully human.

Bishop John Shelby Spong

GEORGE has a worthy mission. It is a correction-and-fulfillment of biblical tradition―optional celibacy. Since 1963, George has advocated with academic tools of reason, in the forum of debate, the return of the married priesthood to the Roman Catholic people. For example, Jesus accepted married Apostles and disciples as an unquestionable, normal human right, and Paul continues Jesus’ attitude. Paul, a celibate by choice, testifies that “all’ celibates have a “right” to change their mind and marry―to love in a different, but equal way: “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other Apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Peter?” (1 COR 9:5). Again Paul testifies to married priest, in his first letter to Timothy, and letter to Titus that priests be “a man with one woman.” This tradition from Jesus continued for 1,139 years―popes, bishops and priests married. The Roman Catholic leadership in 1139 legislated mandatory celibacy that castoff marriage as an indignity―for its priests. However, exceptions (legal dispensations) to the law began to creep into this negative thought of a married priest. Pope Pius XII initiated exceptions and it was expanded by Pope John Paul II. They permitted converted Protestant ministers into the Roman Catholic priesthood with their wives and families. Some estimate that over three thousand “married” Protestant ministers worldwide have been ordained Catholic priests.

The Vatican Council II exhumed this authentic, valued tradition of the married priesthood but only in academic terms. With the aid of history and Vatican II, George began to question mandatory celibacy and his “intrinsic right” to marry. George was not alone; over 150 thousand celibate Catholic priests worldwide, in recent years, left the priesthood, and like George, the overwhelming majority of that number married.

After the death of his wife, Ann, George had an inquisitive thought. Academic, intellectual advocacy for a married priesthood, presented to the Catholic people, was ineffectual as a standalone form―facts are mind-numbing. Something was missing. He realized the academic approach needed a complementary imagery for the heart. His advocacy needed a married love story―between a Priest and wife. To his astonishment, he recognized that he and Ann had that living, harmonizing story to attach to the lifeless, academic approach. His story inserted a soul into the rational argumentation. His love story with Ann added human, marital feelings in matters such as faith, hope and love, and framed marital moods of humor, joy, doubt, and anxiety as well as courage, resolve, and resiliency.

But there is more. George’s hero in his story is Ann. She “uncentered” his “seminary training,” an exclusive biased, masculine priestly worldview. Her love created a new, human priest-husband, a real breakthrough, a real “defining” moment for George and you―the people.

Therefore, George’s book is not about a standalone intellectual argument for returning to the biblical tradition of a married priesthood. His book “uncenters” the debate from an exclusive approach of “human logic” to his complementary position on the “right to love” that no law can cast away. Love is the biblical tipping point, for wellbeing, for every member within the Christian community. George spent 5 years writing his and Ann’s beautiful, positive tipping point―a historical love story in order to build a bridge back to the lost tradition of the biblical married priesthood in Roman Catholicism and in your parish.

I believe this is the first book of its kind that a priest welcomes you, to “come inside” and make yourself “feel at home” with his and Ann’s 31 year love affair.

I believe the law of mandatory celibacy has robbed, from the Catholic people, young and old, the joy of witnessing a biblical love tradition relived again and again, by a priest and his wife, in a time when we need them the most.

The author’s rub―after your acquaintance with George and Ann’s historical love affair would you be ashamed to accept Ann as his wife and George as your pastor? Log onto his Web site www.cup4change.com and email your assessment, advocacy and proposal.

In times of “emergency,” George, as a married priest, justifiably used his servant-priesthood to witness the vows of marriages, hear confessions, baptize, and say Mass for the laity. He lectures and preaches, and lives in Sonoma, California with his daughter, son-in-law, and first grandchild, Addison Ann.

“Eyes Wide-Open”―History

Popes who were married:

St. Peter, Apostle

Felix V 1439-1449 (1 son)

St Felix III 483-492 (2 children)

St. Hormida 514-523 (1 son)

St Silverus (Antonia) 536-537

Hedrian II 867-872 (1 daughter)

Clement IV 1265-1268 (2 daughters)

Popes who were the sons of other popes, other clergy

Name of Pope Papacy Son of

St Damascus 366-348 St. Lorenzo, priest