Question of the Day: Does Grand Rapids Diocese Restructuring Mean the Catholic Church Should Allow Female Priests, Clergy to Marry?

By Garret Ellison
Mlive
April 13, 2012

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/04/question_of_the_day_does_grand.html

Bishop Walter Hurley talks about the Diocese of Grand Rapids' plan to merge and cluster parishes.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — The Grand Rapids Diocese's plan merge, close and cluster Catholic parishes across West Michigan because of an aging priest population was met with calls by some MLive readers to change practices.

The "Our Faith, Our Future" plan, which affects churches in 11 counties, took nearly three years to draw up and involved consultation with priests from all nine deaneries of the diocese and parish lay members, according to Bishop Walter Hurley.

Hurely said fewer and older priests, stretched parish finances and aging church facilities necessitated the restructuring plan.

Some readers saw the plan as proof that the Catholic Church needs to make dramatic changes to long-standing traditions and, among other changes, ditch the ancient discipline that mandates celibacy for those who enter the clergy.

"As Winston Churchill once observed, you always can count on an American to do the right thing, once he's exhausted all other options. The Roman church continues to exhaust its other options," writes Litterateur. "Clearly at some point, the church will allow male priests to marry, allow women to become priests, or make some other accommodations such as allowing the faithful to attend Mass on other days besides Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning, or allowing ordained deacons to preside over a modified service, distributing from the reserved sacrament, previously consecrated by a priest."

"If women are allowed to be priests membership will further tank as it has in all the other mainline Protestant churches who have caved on all the issues the Roman Catholic Church has held firm on. This is because men don't want to be led by women, and the further feminized a church becomes, the fewer men attend and eventually there's nothing left. If your church doesn't have at least 50 percent men, it's dying.

"My wife and I used to be officially registered at our local parish. We have since stopped in the last year or so. We were constantly bombarded with tithing; the annual CSA crammed down our throats (both from the pulpit and weekly bulletin), other pressures to service with time, talent and of course the almighty treasure. We said the heck with it. Now we are free to worship whenever and wherever we feel. It makes no difference to us if they close ten churches or one hundred. We just go wherever we feel like. No staleness from hearing the same boring sermon from the same impersonal priest."