Doncevic:Prevent Church Closings By Letting Priests Marry

Steve Doncevic is upset about The Allentown Diocese' decision to close nearly fifty churches. He recently submitted an op-ed for publication in The Morning Call, suggesting it's time for The Catholic Church to permit its priests to marry ... again. For whatever reason, the paper declined. So I'll publish Mr. Doncevic's op-ed here.

As a lifelong Catholic, I look at the photos (The Morning Call, Sunday June 8, 2008) of the nearly 50 churches that the Archdiocese of Allentown will close and sell and I want to cry. I want to cry because I think of my Yugoslavian grandparents and the thousands like them of different ethnic groups who sacrificed and gave so much to build these churches in order to worship and praise their loving God. These are the churches of great-great grandfathers who dug foundations with pick and shovel, lifted timber with their backs and built walls brick by brick and stone by stone with their hands.

These are the churches of immigrants who worked the night shifts, middle shifts and day shifts in the damp, dusty and dangerous coal mines, the noisy hot and hazardous steel mills and the endless toil and drudgery of the factories. Many were buried alive, crushed, severely injured or disabled by lung diseases. They came to a new country with very, very little, worked very hard and gave to the Church.

They, their sons and grandsons went to war and they continued to give. They endured the Great Depression, recessions and unemployment and still they gave.

Their wives, daughters and granddaughters cleaned, volunteered, baked and cooked for the Church and they gave. Baptisms, marriages and funerals were celebrated in those churches and they gave and they gave and they gave.

And now, the Archdiocese of Allentown would close these 47 churches – churches nearly 100 years old and older, erected to the glory of our Heavenly Father.

Not only are the closures of these churches sacrilegious, they are contemptuous of the work of God and his children - blasphemy! Is this what is meant by Pope John Paul II’s call for “new evangelization in the church”?

While our Protestant brothers in Christ are planting and building churches around the world and in our own neighborhoods to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Diocese of Allentown is closing churches, in response, it says, to a growing shortage of priests.

A shortage of priests? Is it impossible for the Diocesan hierarchy to seek the ordination of its Deacons or to embrace its brother priests who left for the sacrament of marriage – a sacrament the church extols? Are these priests any less holy or less dedicated to the ministry of the church than their celibate brothers? Is mandated celibacy so important to the Diocesan hierarchy that they would destroy 47 churches named after saints whose works, dedication and sacrifice would shame the hierarchy?

According to Donald Cozzens, Ph.D., priest, writer and lecturer at John Carroll University and author of Freeing Celibacy, 2006, Liturgical Press, clerical celibacy did not become the norm until the 12th century. In fact, since the earliest centuries, it was normal for the clergy to be married.

As Father Cozzens so eloquently explains in his highly praised and thoroughly referenced 105 page book, “Clearly, the tradition of married priests, bishops and popes of the first millennium and the current practice of receiving Anglican and other married ministers into full communion with the Catholic Church (there are hundreds) dispels the claim of some traditionalist Catholics that celibacy is essential to the priesthood.”

Will the Most Reverend Edward P. Cullen, D.D. do everything in his power to continue the work of the Holy Spirit in these 47 churches or will he please Satan and his minions who wring their hands in glee as 47 churches that stand as bulwarks against the forces of evil in our society are to be relegated to the dust bins of history? This, the same Reverend Edward P. Cullen D. D. who was appointed vicar of administration under Cardinal Anthony Bevilaqua for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1988. This, the same Reverend Edward P. Cullen, D.D. who, according to the 2005, 423 page grand jury report on priest sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (The Morning Call, September 23, 2005), helped Cardinals Anthony Bevilacqua and John Krol hide the deviates, molesters and rapists who destroyed the lives of hundreds of children and devastated their families.

After his complicity with the celibate brotherhood of Catholic hierarchs in enabling these sexual horrors against children and covering them up (The Morning Call, October 1, 2006), Reverend Edward P. Cullen was installed as Bishop of Allentown in 1998 by his mentor Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

Will Bishop Cullen now also add to his legacy the destruction of 47 churches and the devastation he has wrought on the churches’ families?

Perhaps Bishop Cullen should contemplate the three words he has chosen as his motto, “Christ, Church, Compassion” which are articulated on the Diocesan website.

The churches he and his hierarchs would destroy belong to God and His children.

They do not belong to those who worship at the altar of mandatory celibacy supported by the pillars of absolute power and financial unaccountability.

They do not belong to those who ensconced themselves in the warmth of the rectories feasting on the gifts of ethnic foods from the women of the church while their husbands worked in the mines, mills and factories.

They do not belong to those inebriated with the absolute power that mandated celibacy affords them, those that would sooner extinguish the churches of the children of God rather than allow married priests into their domain.

And these 47 churches do not belong to men who portend to be men of god. Men of God do not close churches. Men of God pray and endeavor with every ounce of their being to fill and keep their churches.

That the children of God must appeal to the Diocese to keep their churches open, churches whose mortgages their fathers paid off generations ago, is an outrage! Where are the financial records? Who absconded with the deeds?

As Christ went into the temple (Matthew 21:12) and drove out the money changers, would he not go into the Diocese and drive out those who mock the financial sacrifices of His children?

May God bless, keep and strengthen his children in their resolve to keep the churches of their Heavenly Father and earthly fathers open. And may the good priests of the Diocese who worship at the foot of the Cross and not at the foot of the Diocesan hierarchy join with them. Amen.