Clerical celibacy: Is it time for change? (2)

Last Friday, Pope Benedict XVI concluded the Congress Fruitfulness Of Christ, organised by the Lateran University specially for priests. He insisted that priests must be wholly dedicated to their ministry, as he said to the Brazilian Bishops ad limina and to the English ones.

In a time as our own, said the Pope, "it is important clearly to bear in mind the theological specificity of ordained ministry, in order not to surrender to the temptation of reducing it to predominant cultural models.

"In the context of widespread secularisation which progressively tends to exclude God from the public sphere and from the shared social conscience, the priest often appears 'removed from common sense'."

Yet the Pope went on: "It is important to avoid a dangerous reductionism which, over recent decades has presented the priest almost as a 'social worker' with the risk of betraying the very priesthood of Christ."

The Holy Father concluded "men and women of our time ask us only to be priest to the full, nothing else... The lay-faithful will be able to meet their human needs in many other people but only in the priests will they find the word of God which must always be on his lips, the Mercy of the Father abundantly and gratuitously distributed in the Sacrament of Penance and the bread of new life".

He still insists priests follow the Cure' d'Ars Astheir example.