 |
| These are rumored to be urinals at the Vatican. OK, it's probably photo shopped, but they do say one picture is worth a thousand words. |
I have some thoughts about the issues Cardinal Pell of Australia has articulated in this homily on lack of vocations. Pell gave these thoughts during an ordination ceremony for five priests for the Archdiocese of Melbourne. Here's his pertinent thoughts:
WHEN there are no vocations of any type for decades we need to examine the priorities of the Catholic community itself, said the Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell.
“Some Catholic communities unfortunately are not life giving,” said the cardinal in his homily as five young men were ordained to the priesthood in an “historic celebration for the Church” at St Mary’s Cathedral last Saturday.
“Some Catholic communities can be contraceptive, even while Catholic life seems on the surface to continue vigorously.
“This phenomenon of different growth rates deserves examination and discussion, although focusing energies on the promotion of faith, on encouraging the recognition and love of
Jesus as the son of God as well as the son of Mary (‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me’), on regular prayer, Catholic orthodoxy, and an explicit and regular explanation to young people of the need of priests and Catholic leadership and service in many areas is essential; and sometimes missing or obscured.”
I got to thinking about this different growth rates thing and the contraception thing and the fact he as a single celibate male is castigating others for not having enough orthodox children to support his life style choice, and it dawned on me there is a solution. Pope Benedict could mandate polygamy for the priesthood. After all there is far more biblical justification for polygamy than there is celibacy. And even if some of the sister wives were engaging in illicit contraception, this wouldn't matter as a priest could just add more wives to compensate for the 'dry' wives. And speaking of 'sister' wives, they could literally be sisters in the convent sense. This is already rumored to be happening in Africa, and the West has hundreds of unused convents not yet taken over by orthodox new orders of nuns that would be available for use as communal homes. Imagine it, one priest could be personally responsible for literally creating dozens of new priests. Laity would then only have to keep a keen eye out for the 'incest' thing which seems to be sort of endemic in these kinds of situations--at least I noticed this when living in Salt Lake City. Those traditionalist Mormon polygamy practitioners did seem to be in jail for incest quite frequently. I suppose the solution would be to just transfer those too attractive young female relatives to another parish.
Speaking of incest, I think Maciel was kind of on this track of polygamy rather than celibacy. He just didn't have it fully thought through. He was pretty polygamous in his actions, but didn't have the courage of his convictions to come out and show JPII and Benny how advantageous his solution to the vocations crisis could be. Plus he screwed the whole thing up, which put the Legion way off track in following Nuestro Padre's total example. The Legion really could have been legion. I guess some other orthodox cult leader will just have to make a better attempt to get it right. Obviously this whole idea would not appeal to feminazi heretical progressive women, so we can't expect this church shaking idea to be embraced from the left---well maybe some of the men. Men like John Edwards for example.
If Benny proposed this, imagine the numbers of priests it would attract. If secular society has a little bit of a problem with this, the sister wives could have legal contracts in place in lieu of secular marriage licenses. Kind of like the Church already thinks about gay marriage. What's good for gays is good for priests. Besides, the tax issue could be solved by declaring each extended family a religious organization, which is after all, exactly what the Vatican already thinks a family should be.
So there you have it, the perfect solution to the priest shortage. Can't wait to hear from the Vatican about my solution. Why I might even get a preferential job cleaning the gold urinals in the Vatican. What more could a post menopausal Catholic woman ask for?
