The Milingo Meeting - Details

From this morning's VIS:

"As announced earlier, this morning in the Vatican, the Holy Father met with heads of dicasteries of the Roman Curia in order to examine the situation that has arisen following the disobedience of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. The order of the day also included an examination of requests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy, and requests for readmission to the priestly ministry presented by married priests over the course of recent years."

I'm trying to get some useful nuggets out of the AFP's coverage:

The former archbishop of the Zambian capital Lusaka [[Milingo] wrote an open letter to the pope early this month asking that married priests and bishops be gradually "reinstated into the fabric of our Church."

"A new Catholic Church is forming with or without your blessing," he warned.

Now that's a quote I haven't heard before. The article goes on to say that a statement about the meeting will be released later today (though they could simply be referring to the VIS which I posted above).

Reuters has Milingo claiming that "over 150,000 married priests stand waiting and willing to serve [the Church]," which seems like an outrageously-overblown figure to me.

I like Bloomberg's headline: "Pope Holds Emergency Meeting Today to Discuss Priest Celibacy". That's like saying "Pope Holds Emergency Meeting Today to Discuss Next Saturday's Lunch Menu."

The AP's coverage is probably the most balanced and informed, and makes it clear that the Vatican has continually insisted that removal of priestly celibacy is not anywhere near the table.

Rather, the actual questions being discussed are "requests for dispensation made by priests wishing to marry and requests for readmission by clergy who had married in recent years."

In effect this meeting is addressing the situation of two groups: men who were laicized and now are requesting a second, seperate permission to be dispensed from their vow of celibacy (in order to marry). I'd imagine this category is very small since most priests who left the priesthood don't normally bother to ask the Vatican's permission to marry.

The other larger group of men consists of those who, having left the priesthood or having undergone laicization (and even gotten married, without or without being dispensed from their vow of celibacy), now may wish to be readmitted and serve as priests again. This is the more interesting and significant question, and probably the one that merits a curia meeting.

Update: Pope & Curia discuss Milingo, priestly celibacy - CWNews

Update 2: "Pope 'Re-Affirms' Celibacy, Ends Possibility of Married Priests" (... AGAIN). One wonders how many times a Pontiff will have to "end the possibility" before the press admits it has actually ended. I'm sure we'll see the question brought up again in a few months, like clockwork.

Anyway, here's the only quotation taken from the statement the Vatican sent out:

The participants of the [curia] meeting "re-affirmed the value of a priest choosing to be celibate in accordance to the Catholic tradition,'' the Holy See said in a statement sent by e-mail.

While News.com.au puts it this way:

"The importance of the choice of priestly celibacy according to the Catholic tradition was reaffirmed," the Vatican said in a statement

Now, I've heard Dom complain about this before - and I have to completely agree with him - why aren't these e-mail statements made available to Catholic press agencies at the same time as the secular ones? (Are they?) In other words, why does the secular news media always get to beat Catholic news agencies to the punch on Catholic topics involving Vatican press releases?

Am I missing out on some e-mail listserve that everyone else knows about?

Update 3: Vatican reaffirms the value of priestly celibacy

[photo: AP Photo/ L'Osservatore Romano]