The president of the German Bishops’ ConferenceGeorg Bätzing, was open on Thursday to end compulsory priestly celibacy and said that the existence of married priests could enrich the Church and the institution of marriage.
“I do not see that marriage and the priesthood cannot be mutually enriching”, Bätzing said at the beginning of a session of the Synodal Way forum aimed at seeking reforms in the Church.
“Priestly celibacy is a form of assume the succession of Christ, is a treasure, I live like this and I hope convincingly. But it is not the only way,” said Bätzing, currently bishop of Limburg (central Germany).
Earlier the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, had said, in statements to the daily Süddeutsche Zeitungthat “for some priests it would be better to be married”.
“Not for sexual reasons, but because then their life would be better and they wouldn’t be so alone,” he said.
The president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Irme Stetter-Karp, said that the ideal is to allow everyone to choose their way of life on the way to the priesthood.
“It’s not about one or the other, but about combining the two ways of life,” he said.
Stetter-Karp said that she has been married for 40 years to a man who wanted to be a priest and currently provides spiritual assistance in hospitals.
The ZdK is a group of lay Catholics that frequently takes critical positions against the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The call Synodal Way It is a forum for dialogue that seeks formulas to overcome the crisis that the Catholic Church is currently experiencing, shaken by scandals of sexual abuse of minors.
The end of compulsory celibacy is one of the Repeated proposals from German Catholic laity, many of whom also call for women to have access to the priesthood. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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