Friday, July 26, 2013

Anarchist Priest to Speak in Archdiocese of Portland at Ecumenical of Ministries of Oregon Church

Catholic priest-reformer Helmut Schuller brings message to Portland

The Rev. Helmut Schuller, controversial within the Catholic Church because of his support for reform, comes to Portland Aug. 4. (Austrian Priests' Initiative ) 
VOCAL This "reform" means women priests, married Roman rite clergy, same sex everything, etc. abortion if it is considered "woman health".  Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon is not good for the Archdiocese of Portland to belong to.
Welcome in Oregon

By Nancy Haught, The Oregonian





A controversial Catholic priest who was banned from speaking in a Catholic Church in Boston last month will speak at a Protestant church in Portland on Sunday, Aug. 4.  The Rev. Helmut Schuller of Austria, a reformer concerned about the shortage of ordained Catholic clergy, will talk about possible solutions from 2 to 4 p.m. at Central Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland. A free-will offering will be collected.

Schuller, who was vicar general for Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn from 1995 to 1999, was dismissed because his views were at odds with church authorities. The Vatican stripped Schuller of his title of "monsignor" in 2012.  He is pastor now of a small rural parish near Vienna. He was a founder of the Austrian Priests' Initiative and their 2011 "Call to Disobedience."

Schuller and members of the priests' initiative oppose the consolidation of parishes, support a greater sacramental role for lay people and advocate new thinking on remarried Catholics and same sex couples. The reformers favor the ordination of women and married men and increased transparency within the hierarchy of the church.

"Priests are losing the chance to walk with members of their communities through their daily lives," Schuller said in an interview this week in the National Catholic Reporter. "This is about more than compassion. It is about companionship and solidarity with laypeople."

He called for "a new teaching model on sexual relations" to guide pastoral care of Catholic couples.
"Our teaching should concentrate on the quality of relationships, not the form," Schuller said. "Rather than condemn remarried Catholics or same-sex couples, we should be asking: How are they living in relationship? Are they respecting one another's dignity? We have to respect that people want to live together, that they feel responsible for one another and that they care for one another."

In the United States, the Catholic Church is coping with an ongoing shortage of priests and parish closures, even as the number of Catholic believers grows. Figures from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University show that
In the Archdiocese of Portland, the Most Rev. Alexander K. Sample, the archbishop of western Oregon's 415,725  Catholics, ordained eight men to the priesthood June 8. As of June 26, 11  of the archdiocese's 124  parishes shared a priest, according to Bud Bunce, a spokesman for the archdiocese. Four parishes have priest moderators who preside over Masses and celebrate the sacraments while someone else, often a trained lay person, oversees other pastoral duties within the parish.

Schuller's first U.S. speaking tour began July 16 in New York City, where 250 people turned out to hear him speak in Judson Memorial Church, a historic Protestant church in Greenwich Village.

The following night in Boston, where Cardinal Sean O'Malley had barred Schuller from speaking at St. Susanna Parish, more than 500 people gathered to hear him at a nearby Unitarian Universalist Church. A spokesman for O'Malley told the Boston Globe that it is archdiocesan policy to ban speakers from Catholic sites if their views are "contrary" to official church teaching.

The only remaining Catholic setting for Schuller's tour was Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. A spokesman for the archdiocese said the priest would not be allowed to speak at a parish or in an archdiocesan setting. Chestnut Hill College is a Catholic school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. About 350 people squeezed into the room to hear Schuller's speech on campus on July 19.

Archbishop Sample did not wish to comment on Schuller's visit to Portland, Bunce said.

Schuller's speaking tour, called "The Catholic Tipping Point," is sponsored by several Catholic reform groups, including Call to Action, CORPUS, Voice of the Faithful and the Women's Ordination Conference.
The Northwest chapter of Call to Action, which has invited other Catholic reformers to speak in Portland, invited Schuller to speak at Central Lutheran Church, their ordinary meeting place. While organizers expect mostly lay Catholics to attend Schuller's lecture, they are inviting Catholic priests to meet with him informally, according to Nancy Barrett-Dennehy
Schuller will speak in Seattle at 7 p.m. on Aug. 5  at First United Methodist Church, 180 Denny Way.
-- Nancy Haught

6 comments:

priest's wife - S.T./ Anne Boyd said...

ouch...even YOU have 'married clergy' on your list of his evils....

VOCAL said...

Ha Ha. You are married to a Byzantine Catholic Priest. Marriage could be an option for the Roman Rite, but we aren't destined for this, we're confused enough.

Diane said...

I think it is encouraging to see that they didn't even try to set up Mr
Schuller to speak in a Catholic Church. The Archbishop has no comment,
because nothing going on in that Lutheran Church on August 4th technically
has anything to do with the Church he is shepherd of.


VOCAL said...

I agree that they wouldn't have him at a Catholic Church.

My concern is that we have belonged to Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, have nothing to show for it except dissident priests allowed to speak at their member churches and the four "women priests" in the Archdiocese baptizing, marrying confessing in these churches.

What is going on is my take.

Dennis Marcellino said...

Hi! That's funny. Just before I saw your email I wrote this to a friend: my cousin was the whistler on the hit song from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".

That's not deep, just ironic. But what is deep and is tied to your premise here, I just wrote the article below for the Conservative Byte. But before I paste that, here is my latest speech/presentation web page: www.SpreadingGod.com/evangelism.html. It has a video on it too. Feel free to pass it on to any church or group who might be interested in such a presentation.

I think that we now need to take away this trick and change the rhetoric. The new cry from conservatives needs to be based on these words: “standards and values.” And that’s because: if you let freedom run its course, it will topple all of the good standards and values that this country was based on (as liberals have been doing for decades now).

Liberals used to battle cry this damage under the banner of “liberation”. But conservatives would argue against it. So liberals changed that word to a word that conservatives hadn’t worked out how to fight against it because it tapped into one of their main buzz words: freedom. But there is a huge difference between liberal freedoms and conservative freedoms.

Therefore, if we are going to restore good functioning in this nation, the debate has to shift to what our standards and values will be. And in that debate it can be statistically pointed out how the liberal standards and values have caused a degradation in this country that has caused an increasing number of people a LOT of suffering. THAT’S why they should logically, scientifically and compassionately be abandoned. (I’m sure you know a lot of those statistics, but there are too many to be chronicled in this article. But they all can be found in my book The Plague Of Liberalism.) Also, the declines in the health of music, television and movies are good indicators of the bad effect of liberalism. Don’t we wish now that there wouldn’t have been a “freedom” to experiment with those media. And add to that the enormous damage of pornography.

Hopefully the decades-long “racism” trick, that has severely damaged black communities, is starting to be dismantled. Now we need to work on the “freedom” trick by making the cases WHY our standards and values should be the way of the land. I mean even liberals draw the lines against certain behaviors. So it’s not a matter of that there are infringements against freedom, it’s just a matter of where those lines are drawn.

So let the debate begin … but this time without the typical liberal name-calling, like “bigot, prude and censorship.” In fact, the greatest censorship is against the ultimate, perfect source of good values, which is exhibited in college indoctrination and firings of professors who even suggest God, the Bible and Intelligent Design. And yet the Bible is the greatest source of good standards and values that exist, as the founding fathers of this country agreed to and as I statistically prove in my book.

Dennis Marcellino’s book can be
http://www.LighthouseBooksAndMusic.com

VOCAL said...

That is really "cosmic" about the Good,Bad and Ugly. I love those things.

I'm so happy to hear from you, it's been a long time.

It sure seems like your busy making a "mess" like the Holy Father says to do. It's nice that he said that.

Keeping quiet about things that are out of order in the Church just allow error to be perpetuated.

Our world is going so fast that things get too emotional. Instead of thinking we act emotionally.

Slowing down and "Savoring Life" leaves more room for the Creator to work. But you know that. I am mentioning this because this is a lesson I'm trying to work on.



God bless.