AN AUSTRALIAN PRIEST MARRIES A FILIPINA, AND MY TAKE ON THIS...

A Catholic priest in Australia has made a controversial revelation: he has been married to a Filipina for a year now.
 


According to Yahoo! Australia's 7News, Father Kevin Lee, a priest for 20 years in Glenmore Park, Sydney, admits "living a double life" with his wife Josephina, whom he met in the Philippines.

“So I've fallen in love and I've got married and it's outside of most people's awareness, but I'm sure people within the church could have had a suspicion,” Lee told 7News.

The Australian priest claimed that there are many others like him and that he pitied those “sacrificing” priests around the world who are denying themselves a relationship.
 


“That's one of the reasons that motivated me to make public my admission that I'm one of those people who's been a pretender: To draw to the attention of the public that there are more like me, in fact most of them,” Lee was quoted as saying.
 
“I feel sorry for them, I really do, but I think they need to admit they are not being led properly. I think celibacy has to go as a prerequisite for being a minister in the Catholic religion,” he added.
 


While urging for the abolition of celibacy, Lee also plans to write a book about what he believes is the wider wrongdoing of fellow priests.
 
However, after making a public confession of his marriage, 7News reported that Lee has been removed from his position as parish priest and has been excommunicated by the church.
 


The head of the diocese, Bishop Anthony Fisher, denied Lee's claim that most priests live double lives and that the hierarchy knew of his marriage.
 
“As Father Kevin is aware, by his actions he can no longer operate as a priest and as a result I will immediately be appointing an administrator to Padre Pio parish,” Fisher said in a statement.

 

MY TAKE:

This piece of news doesn’t surprise me: it’s nothing new; this is not the first time that this has happened, nor will it be the last.

No, I’m not shocked, nor will I feign outrage at my brother priest’s remarks. However the guy has said some things that have made me thinking.

First of all it doesn’t surprise me that he’ll end up confessing his “marriage”, an announcement which undoubtedly would sadden not only the community that he had been building up for so long, but would also wound the greater community that is the Church. Such things cannot be kept under wraps for so long. I don’t know how to cook rice, but from what I’ve observed, the contents of a bubbling pot tend to spill out sooner or later (though in most cases, it’s more sooner than later). It doesn’t surprise me; the guy has got the whole package: the girl’s got looks (she’s quite a catch), and she’s Filipina, and that means that stereotypically he’s got someone who’s caring and loving. But most of all because, as he himself admitted, he has been living a double life.

There you got it.

Celibacy doesn’t have to get the blame for that. It’s like saying that, having been caught committing adultery, you blame being married to your wife. That is why I kinda reacted when Fr. Kevin (he is, after all, an ordained priest) said that he pitied those “sacrificing” priests around the world who were denying themselves of a relationship.

I would daresay that this is another misstep that he had committed. I am no judge of the heart, nor would I judge him, but then I was thinking about the way he had been considering his whole priestly life of twenty years: is priesthood not a relationship, and a loving one at that? Was it not supposed to be a life of prayer, and prayer understood as a relationship? When a priest ceases to pray, that is when he feels most alone, and turns around looking for relationships. Now I’m not saying that Fr. Kevin doesn’t pray, however. But intuitively I know that there has never been a priest who took his prayer life seriously who left the priesthood, no matter how tough things were going.

I think a double life in anyone—whether he a priest or a married man—is caused by the fact that he has lost his center of gravity. A married man begins to offer more than just a cursory glance at other women than his wife because his life has ceased to revolve around her. In the case of the priest this is because his personal relationship with Jesus Christ has waned.

“I feel sorry for them, I really do. I think that they need to admit that they are not being led properly. I think celibacy has to go as a prerequisite for being a minister in the Catholic religion”, Fr. Lee says. One could invent a thousand and one reasons against the discipline of clerical celibacy. Priests are supposed to be smart. But in the end one could only be sorry for himself. Fr. Lee may be right in some way when he referred to priests who are still in the ministry living a double life the same way as he does as needing to be led properly (we have also a crisis of episcopal authority and shepherding in the Church), but celibacy is not the reason for the scandal that he has helped in unleashing. If he thinks that it’s time for celibacy to go, I respect for his personal opinion, and am glad that we could agree to disagree on this point. Thank God the Magisterium of the Catholic Church doesn’t depend on personal opinion, or consensus, or majority, or polls.

This piece of news doesn’t shock nor anger nor discourage me. It’s nothing new, as I’ve said; I wonder why they placed this kind of thing in the first place. It all the more bolsters the conviction that much of the media nowadays thrives not on the truth but on sensationalism: the truth doesn’t seem to be so popular nowadays.

But this does move me to something, however. More than anything else, this has moved me to fall on my knees. This guy, and the rest who seem to have their fifteen seconds of fame for leaving the priesthood—Fr. Alberto Cutie, Fr. John Corappi, and now this—were better priests than me. If they were able to let this happen in their life, how much more in my mine? Only God’s grace could save me from the same fate, and my fidelity to that grace. As they say it in Spanish, no somos nada, we’re nothing.

I could sure thank Fr. Kevin for pointing out the root cause of this trouble.

la iglesia de san martín

La imagen de la muerte vaga misteriosamente en nuestro derredor. La vemos misteriosa, , limpia, concreta, despojada de terrores, a lo largo de la escalera de nuestro ultimo baluarte. La dibuja claramente, a pesar de la oscuridad, una pareja de hombres que, sentados en un rellano, muy juntos, parecen dialogar en secreto. Es un cura de falange, y un soldado en confesión; aquel con un crucifijo en la mano, éste ha dejado el fusil recostado en la pared. A poco, el soldado besa el crucifijo y se aleja, y otro defensor de Belchite ocupa su lugar; y hay “cola” de penitentes en la espera de la absolución…¿cuál será el estado moral de ese sacerdote que se halla en idéntico peligro de muerte que aquel a quien confiesa? Solo el poder divino puede otorgarle la serenidad necesaria para cumplir en estos momentos su sagrado ministerio. Es tan hipotética nuestra liberación, y es tan posible la muerte de todos, que ese sacerdote no puede sentirse, como otras veces, mortalmente distanciado del ser que tiene abrazado en trance de morir. Esas veces que, en urgentes llamadas nocturnas, iba a despedirle consolador marcándole el camino del Cielo, para luego volverse a él a continuar su ministerio en la tierra. Ahora habrá de preguntarse, quizá sin alarma, quién de los dos será el que antes llegue a la otra vida, si a los dos tiene la muerte abrazados…

Emilio Oliver Ortiz, Emociones de un sitiado (Belchite Regina Martyrum)

Christmas and Sendong

As of the moment, the numbers continue to rise, with 650 dead and several hundreds still missing. Thousands left homeless, and the local government and agencies trying to respond as best as they could to the drama that continues to unfold. The photos convey more vividly what the papers had communicated: entire communities of shanties and dwellings of the poor crushed by the brutal onslaught of the winds and the rising waters, people wandering about, most half clad, many for whom the clothes on their backs where the only thing they could bring with them in time. however the photo that gave the tragedy a face—and which had done its rounds in the Internet—was that of a disconsolate father clutching his dead child to his breast.

One would think that some evil genius could have crafted this kind of thing to happen, when people were most vulnerable, during the night, in their sleep. Of all the seasons in the year, one may be impelled to ask, why does this have to take place in the threshold of Christmas? I don’t think many would blame God for this, but I am certain that thousands upon thousands of voices are rising to the heavens, not in outrage against God, but expressing that question that has more than once issued from the human heart: WHY?

From my perch, thousands of miles away, despite of the great distance, the news affected us back here all the same. MAS DE 400 MUERTOS POR LAS INUNDACIONES Y LOS DESPRENDIMIENTOS DE TIERRA EN FILIPINAS, the headline in today’s paper read.

But let me go back to the thought that I had earlier tried to develop. I don’t think a lot of people would be seriously angry at God for this. Many would feel disillusioned, but I don’t think they would be seriously angry. The true question would be, both for the affected and the bereaved, why would He permit this to happen?

I won’t claim to know the answer. His ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts like ours. But certainly I do believe that the proximity of the Christmas feast and this tragedy desired by none, not even by God give a new depth to the celebrations for which we are preparing ourselves. For weeks we have been gaily going about with the preparations for the season: buying gifts, planning parties, coming up with charitable initiatives, and doing ourselves spiritually in order to enter more into a meaningful celebration of Christmas. All of this is okay. Sometimes, however, the comfort and amenability of our stable situation could allow us to have a superficial appreciation of the message of the Christmas mystery. Christmas is none other than the mystery of the Incarnation, God-with-us, Emmanuel.

Seeing this entire rampage, wrought by the unfeeling brutality of nature, one may ask: were was God in all this? As one surveys the no-man’s land scenario, one could as well talk about the silence of God. Yesterday I sat down in the confessional in one of the parishes here in Pamplona. In one of the confessions, I remember saying to a particular penitent that in those times that God seems most silent, it is when he is most near. These words, whispered in the dimness of the confessional, came back to me as I pondered over this piece of news. Where was God? Though not immediately evident, one could come to this conviction: God was surely present, and so continues to be even more. He is present in the heart of the father who grieves for his lost child; He is most close to the family who is at a loss to see where they would be spending Christmas, as their shack had been destroyed; He is perceived in the good intentions of many people who sympathize with the affected and the bereaved, and is at the heart of every initiative to aid. In the miracle of the Incarnation, men tried to look for God where He was not to be found; they found Him in the most unexpected of places.

It is my guess that for many this Christmas is going to be very different. Yes, even the most ugly of all tragedies is capable of showing us the face of God, in the face of the pained, of the benevolent, of those who offer their hearts in prayer, of those who seek to be of help in anything. As they say, the darkness makes the light even brighter; this crude reality of tragedy allows us to appreciate Emmanuel even more: God-with-us, a God who is not impervious to our suffering, and has shared our human condition in order to make clear to us that we ought not to feel ourselves alone.

Merry Christmas.

Humility in asking for pardon

What makes it so hard to go down on one's knees (whether literally or figuratively) in order to ask for forgiveness, and mean it sincerely, is that you need to bring down your whole universe down along with you, and place it at the mercy at the one from whom you are asking pardon from. When you do this, you begin to actually feel the added weight not only of your offenses, but also that of the universe which you call yours. What makes it arduous at times is the uncertainty of whether that act of humility would be accepted or not. I am referring of course to human forgiveness. For God this would be enough, seen in His Goodness and Mercy. We men tend to complicate things a bit (if not way too much). 

Pretty much another thing which shows that this world and this life is valley of tears.