IN RECENT days, a group of 11 distinguished veterans of the Catholic priesthood in the German city of Cologne, a stronghold of the church, issued an open letter to mark the 50th anniversary of their ordination. Did they use the occasion to ponder aloud the mysteries of their creed, or the wisdom gained in decades of service to the faithful? No. They simply issued a heart-felt cry of pain over their own solitude, a condition they would not wish on future cohorts of clerics. Imploring the pope to allow priests to marry, they wrote:
"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 in the job. We agreed to this [form of] clerical life because of our job, we did not choose it."
This blogger's suggestion to these eleven bitter old men: quit whining, quit the priesthood and go get married, now! There should be plenty of women (and men) around the world who individually would "for love" be willing to become a citizen of Germany by marriage or by same-sex union under Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft [2] (refer to Section 9 of the Nationality Act) [3], some of whom may already be in Germany and elsewhere in the European Union as refugees.
To think that there is no loneliness in a marriage, they ought to think again. The grass on the other side is not always greener. To say after 50 years of serving as ordained priests that they "did not choose" a celibate life is nonsense. To then claim that serving God was their "job," implying that they had been forced into it because that they had no other job options that did not require taking the vow of celibacy is untenable.
Before they die, before it is too late, these eleven ungrateful men ought to prostrate themselves before the crucifix and meditate on the experience of loneliness that Christ felt throughout His Passion, from where He prayed at the Garden of Gethsemane to where He was crucified at Golgotha, and repent after they have come to the realization that they have lived a pampered and relatively painless life in Köln, Deutschland, in comparison, and thank God with real love in their hearts for having been so blessed. [4]
[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2017/01/fewer-and-lonelier
[2] https://www.angloinfo.com/how-to/germany/family/marriage-partnerships/same-sex-unions
[3] http://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/EN/Themen/Migration/Staatsang/Erwerb_der_deutschen_Staatsbuergerschaft_durch_Eingbuergerung_en.html
[4] For some reason, this blogger is bothered by the thought that perhaps these eleven elderly priests might have been used politically by Bergolio and his liberal faction. Without anywhere to go and any realistic option to start over at their age, they might have been "asked" to pen their letter, similar to the coercing of an innocent person in signing a confession of wrongdoing, to give support to Bergolio's liberal Lutheranesque agenda. Had they refused, they would probably be sent to some distant place for their retirement where they would have neither the necessary medical support nor adequate funds to meet their most basic needs.
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