Mexican Standoff

After a bishop south of the (EE.UU) border reported the results of a pastoral consultation among his flock, Rome took issue with one finding. CNS has the story:

A Mexican bishop is bucking Vatican orders to erase a phrase in his pastoral plan that notes the desire among his indigenous communities that married permanent deacons be ordained priests.

The phrase is not fanning the hopes of a married priesthood, but simply reporting the feelings of many indigenous Catholics, said Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico's Chiapas state.

The phrase remains in the pastoral plan "because the faithful have the right to be heard by their pastors. To listen is not the same as to approve," he said, in a Jan. 24 statement posted on the Web site of the Mexican bishops' conference.

Bishop Arizmendi said he does not support a married priesthood.

He issued the statement after several Mexican news organizations reported on a Sept. 26 Vatican letter complaining that the diocese still had not eliminated the phrase nor had it made changes in its program for training married men to be permanent deacons.

The Vatican made the letter public in mid-January. It was signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. It said that the phrase, which is found in the Diocesan Pastoral Plan and the Diocesan Directory for the Permanent Diaconate, can no longer be used by the diocese.

The Vatican suspended the diaconate program in 2002 and no permanent deacons have been ordained since 2001. Bishop Arizmendi has been trying to get Vatican officials to reinstate the training program.

The cardinal's letter was a follow-up to an Oct. 26, 2005, letter in which the Vatican official denied the bishop's permission to reinstate the diaconate program. The 2005 letter said problems forcing the 2002 suspension had not been resolved. It said it is "feeding in the faithful" the expectation that a married diaconate is a step toward married priests and an "underlying ideology" promoting an autonomous church.

Bishop Arizmendi, in his Jan. 24 statement, told Vatican officials that "we sincerely ask your forgiveness for the headaches we give you."

He noted that he is not the only bishop reporting requests for married priests from Catholics and added that popes have made exceptions to the celibacy rule to allow married priests....

The phrase to which the Vatican objects is in paragraph No. 58 in the Diocesan Pastoral Plan. It initially said:

"Enlightened by the Spirit and guided by the universal church's magisterium, we listen with attention and we evaluate the request of some communities that married indigenous deacons be admitted to priestly ordination after adequate formation and disposed to accept in faith the decision of the Holy See."

The 2005 revision said: "We listen with attention to the request that some communities are making so that married indigenous deacons can be admitted to the ordained priesthood. And we help them evaluate their request, enlightened by the Holy Spirit and the universal church's magisterium, clearly cautioning them that there is no hope that the church changes its practices, which come from the gospel and many centuries of tradition, and that it will continue to admit only celibate men to the priesthood."

In somewhat related news, a Michigan permanent deacon denied permission to remarry resigned his ministry last week.

Following the reinstatement of the permanent diaconate in the 1970s, married men who entered the order were barred from remarriage after a spouse's death except if they met each of three extraordinary circumstances. Unmarried candidates may not change their status following ordination, at which they take the added promise of celibacy. In the last decade, the protocols for permitting a second marriage for deacons were relaxed, to allow a greater flexibility given the presence of young children, elderly parents and the quality of the deacon's ministry when exercised in the married state.

After Deacon Timothy Renaud's wife died of lung cancer, he entered a new relationship. The couple are not engaged, but with the possibility in mind he petitioned the Holy See for the required permission to remarry. The request, forwarded to Rome by Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit, was turned down in late December by the Congregation for the Clergy.

In light of the Vatican's last word, "this becomes a matter of giving scandal by continuing the relationship and being a deacon who cannot be remarried" Renaud said in a letter to members of his suburban Detroit parish published in last week's bulletin. After his wife's loss to a four-month battle with lung cancer, the deacon said that he "wasn't looking, I wasn't shopping" for someone else, but that the new relationship "is another gift from a Big God Who loves me."

"I am not turning my back on Jesus or the Father," Renaud said of his decision to resign, "I am accepting the gift of this wonderful woman He has put into my life." He judged that his continuance in active ministry "would at this point give scandal to the church and the diaconate which I love."

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