A group of senior priests in Germany
has called on Catholic Church to end the celibacy rule (act of absenting from women) in an open letter.
The 11 high ranking clerics, who
were ordained n Cologne in 1967, are of the opinion that every man should have
the right to choose to take the vow or not as other Protestant and Orthodox
Church pastors have.
They wrote the letter as part
of a review of their 50 years in the Catholic Church.
A group member Franz Decker told DW,
“We believe that requiring that every man who becomes a priest to remain
celibate is not acceptable,”
“We think, every Catholic
should be allowed to choose if they would rather be celibate or not, regardless
of whether they want to work as priests or not – just like in the Protestant
Church or the Orthodox church, really, every church but the Catholic Church.”
To the group, celibacy causes many
modern priests to suffer from seclusion and believe the men have little to gain
from church-imposed solitude.
“What moves us is the experience of
loneliness – as elderly people who are unmarried because our office required
this from us, we feel it vividly on some days after 50 years on the job… We
agreed to this clerical life because of our jobs, but we didn’t choose it,” the group wrote.
They also gave a number of
suggestions as to how the Catholic Church could “modernise”, including allowing
women to join the clergy.
However, the office of Pope Francis
is yet to react to the open letter
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Society