Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the letter reported here, one imagines that this news item will give rise to the next media storm about the Pope, with advocates of doing away with priestly celibacy screaming 'GOTCHA!' gleefully....
In 1970, Joseph Ratzinger signed a petition
by nine German theologians calling
for an examination of priestly celibacy
by Anna Arco
28 January 2011
As a young priest, Pope Benedict put his name to a document calling for the Church to seriously investigate the obligation to priestly celibacy.
Joseph Ratzinger was one of the signatories of a 1970 document calling for an examination of priestly celibacy which was signed by nine theologians.
The memorandum was drawn up in the face of a shortage of priests, and other signatories included Karl Rahner and the future cardinals Karl Lehmann and Walter Kasper.
The German newspaper
Die Sueddeutsche reported about the document today.
The memorandum, which was sent to the German bishops reads: “Our considerations regard the necessity of a serious investigation and a differentiated inspection of the law of celibacy of the Latin Church for Germany and the whole of the universal Church.”
According to the
Sueddeutsche, the document said if there were no such investigation, the bishops’ conference would “awaken the impression that it did not believe in
the strength of the Gospel recommendation of a celibate life for the sake of heaven, but rather only in the power of a formal authority”.
If there weren’t enough priests, the document said, then the “Church quite simply has a responsibility to take up certain modifications”.
The signatories who had drawn up the document acted as consultors to the German bishops’ conference in a commission for questions of Faith and Morals.
The document’s release coincides with a renewed debate on priestly celibacy after prominent German politicians called for the Church to change the teaching on priestly celibacy in the face of a serious lack of priests.
[The report does not say what action, if any, the German bishops' conference took on the recommendation. And if it did conduct a 'serious investigation' as recommended, what did it find out?... I expect someone from the Schuelerkreis who is familiar with the circumstances of the letter (at which time Fr. Ratzinger was already in Regensburg) - or perhaps Peter Seewald - will come forth and shed light on this episode... In any case, the crux of the joint letter signed by Ratzinger must be weighed against everything else he has been documented to say or write about celibacy in his 60 years as a priest.]
P.S.
I was thrown off by Anna Arco's citation of her source as the newspaper Die Sueddeutsche which I presumed to be something other than the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. But a Google search for 'Die Sueddeutsche' turned up the SZ itself, which does have a lengthy article about the letter, under the title 'RATZINGER HAD DOUBTS ABOUT PRIESTLY CELIBACY', proclaiming in its lead paragraph that the contents of the letter constitute something 'truly sensational'!. It looks like a difficult piece of work, but I will try to translate it later, While it quotes a lot from the letter, preceding each citation with the writer's interpretation or spin, he fails to quote the entire letter in full....
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/01/2012 16:28]