Reactions
But Harris said she sees the problems caused by small, rural parishes closing due to a shortage of priests as having grave consequences for U.S. Catholic religious life.
"The people of God in the Catholic communion are starving because of the want of Eucharist," she said.
"Why is it that the people of God have to starve while the institution is holding to clergy celibacy?" said Harris, who lives in Schoharie County, about 150 miles north of New York.
"I have to place the excitement of the pope's visit next to the fact that there are now only a few churches in my county," she said.
...The pope remains a symbol of a hierarchy "that has failed the victims," Kirk said, adding that he believed media coverage of the pope's visit was focusing too much on Pope Benedict's pastoral image rather than on what Kirk said was the pope's potent political symbolism.
"If the pope had gone to the nearest soup kitchen after arriving and (President) Bush had been the third person, rather than the first person, he had met, I'd be happier," said Kirk.
Catholic students are a minority at Union but one of the largest single denominational groups at the predominantly Protestant school.
Although Union is still perhaps best-known for being the midcentury intellectual home of such leading Protestant theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, since the 1970s the school has been known as a leading center of study in the United States for black and feminist liberation theologies. The prominent black theologian James Cone, for example, has taught at Union for more than three decades.
But Union also has had a long tradition of hosting well-known Catholics. Liberation theologians such as Peruvian Dominican Father Gustavo Gutierrez have taught for short terms at Union, which has ties with Columbia University. Catholic scholars not associated with liberation theology, including the late biblical scholar Sulpician Father Raymond Brown, have also been permanent faculty at Union.
Of the current five full-time Catholic faculty members at Union, three are women. Union's current Catholic faculty includes Jesuit Father Roger Haight, whose book, "Jesus Symbol of God," was sharply criticized by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when it was headed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. The Vatican has banned Father Haight from teaching at a Catholic institution.
Another Roman Catholic theologian who has had trouble with the Vatican is Paul F. Knitter, currently Union's Paul Tillich professor of theology, world religions and culture.
Kirk told [??????????] April 20 that Union was lucky to have scholars like Father Haight and Knitter on the faculty, adding that the student view of Pope Benedict at Union is colored in large part by the pope's relationship with them, with figures like Father Sobrino and by Pope Benedict's past criticism of liberation theology.
For her part, Harris -- a Catholic who used to be Presbyterian -- said her concern about church reform, specifically the need to expand the eligibility for clergy to include noncelibate men and women, is coming out of real and "lived experience."
Catholic women at Union share a commissioning service as a tribute to their work and also as a formal recognition that they cannot be ordained as clergy within their church.
Harris said she would like to be ordained if she could be, though she doubts that her ineligibility will change in her lifetime. Still, she added, "We never thought we'd see altar girls and now we do have altar girls."
So is the above a typical New York Times article? Or perhaps Newsweek, AP, or some other typical outlet looking for the negative side of the Pope's visit?
No we owe this article to Catholic News Service the U.S. Bishop's news arm. Surely going to an extremely liberal Protestant seminary is the best place to get reactions to the Pope's visit. Surely you wouldn't want to actually highlight the largely positive response from Evangelicals such as in this post.
It is also pretty ironic for those from liberal Protestant congregations that each year have less and less attendance being concerned over the availability of Catholic priests. Anglicans and other allowing pretty much anybody into leadership roles has only lead to splits and smaller congregations and yet this is the cure they would thrust on us. Maybe miserly loves company. There is also an irony of Protestants worried about Catholics not having access to the Eucharist. Why exactly are they worried about access to "just a symbol." Protestantism has been the larger force ever for denying people the Eucharist and while the majority in good conscience don't realize this, it is rather silly for them to lecture us on access to the Eucharist.
American Papist has a good roundup of reactions to this article.
Known as 
((Pre-post clarification: I'm unsure where I stand on the Eucharist. Obviously if I come down on the Transubstantiation side I've got to go Catholic or EO.))
BUT:
I don't think it's the silliest thing in the world for someone to raise concern that a particular church may not be fully providing its members with something that church believes to be way more than a symbol. It's a valid point to make because it's about what the Catholic Church does with its beliefs, not what the Catholic Church does with Union's beliefs.
I can't think of a good example ATM, partly because of my current lack of identity as a part of a particular church, but if Free Methodism honestly did not seem to be taking its own beliefs seriously in practice, and a Catholic called them out on it, I would hope it would respond by seriously evaluating the criticism.
Now that said I'd be hard pressed to believe that that was really the crux of the criticism, because again this is Union Theological Seminary. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the criticism but it pokes a fairly large hole; it does seem fairly likely that the real complaint is a lack of non-celibate and women priests.
The problem is that the priest shortage has waaaaay more to do with the spiritual problems in the church. Everywhere you find traditional parish communities, traditional bishops, etc, you will find tons more seminarians. Tomorrow I will go to morning mass in Latin at St. Michael's Abbey, a very faithful Norbertine monastery. ( www.abbeynews.org ) There are usually about fifteen of the priests present along with about a dozen deacons and seminarians. (Whoopeee!!!!)
All one needs to do is look at the top ten dioceses for numbers of seminarians. The list carries no resemblance to the number of Catholics actually living in the US, but plenty of of correlation is found between seminarian numbers and faithful bishops, as well as availability of the TLM.
If all the people who wanted (or wanted to become) female priests simply started praying for an increase of vocations (without adding "and make 'em womyn" or something) instead of ranting "We need to ordain women!", they'd probably discover than when a community fosters vocations, they increase their chance of actually getting vocations.
Now, I am no expert on diplomatic niceties, but I think that when the leader of one country ( as the vatican is a country ) visits an other country, it is polite to see the head of that country first. Esp. when the head of said country is driving out to the airport to pick you up. While it would have been nice to see the Holy Father go straight to the homeless shelter, I think that the gesture would have been lost because people would focus more on where the Holy Father wasn't than where he was.
does anyone know how this group gets its funding?
First, I think Harris is wrong to think that if celibacy was lifted, we'd suddenly have an influx of good, holy priests.
Is there really a contingent of men who are burning with a vocation for God's holy priesthood, except, oops, they got married? Really?
and this:
"If the pope had gone to the nearest soup kitchen after arriving and (President) Bush had been the third person, rather than the first person, he had met, I'd be happier,"
I think Kirk would do well to remember that Bush is also a poor sinner, who lacks the fullness of the Faith as well. In addition, the Pope never visits a country without the approval of that country's government, so it was appropriate to be greeted by our secular leader on behalf of the people, IMHO.
I'm still processing the fact that this article came form the USCCB's news office, the Catholic News Service.
Why would they publish such a poorly written, poorly explained, anti-papal visit -- indeed anti-Catholic Church -- piece?
I think having altar girls was a well intentioned idea, but when you see the sort of ideas that it perpetuates it does deserve to be reconsidered. Have vocations to orders of sisters increased since we have had altar girls, or have their numbers also fallen?
I speak as someone who comes from a small rural county whose ONLY Catholic Church is in no danger of closing because there are enough regular Mass-goers and volunteers to keep the church open. There's only ever one priest on hand. My elder brother, who lives in a neighboring community, has had Sundays at which there was no Mass - only a service at which a deacon or extraordinary minister brought the Eucharist. But now they have regular Masses again, because people kept going and they were assigned a priest.
In contrast, I live in an area now where several churches have been reduced to chapels and a few historic churches have closed. Not enough Catholics go to Mass regularly at those churches.
I also see that Catholic families are smaller, so when a boy thinks about becoming a priest, it's not encouraged. (Especially if he's the only boy to "carry on the family name.") I heard one grandmother tell her college-educated granddaughter, "Why did you bother to get an education if you're just going to throw it away by becoming a nun?"
I think that there might be some influx of married men into the priesthood, based on the growing number of permanent deacons and also of converts. I don't however think it would be the giant tidal wave these people seem to expect. Whatever else, I know that the wisdom of the Church beats the wisdom of the world and am content.
All they have to do is get in their car and go to the next parish. Duh. They'll drive for miles to get to the mall.
These people just want to remake the church in their own image. I think they'd ought to be tarred and feathered. At the very least.
"If all the people who wanted (or wanted to become) female priests simply started praying for an increase of vocations (without adding "and make 'em womyn" or something) instead of ranting "We need to ordain women!", they'd probably discover than when a community fosters vocations, they increase their chance of actually getting vocations."
Great suggestion, there! When you consider that entire orders were formed to pray for certain blessings for the Church, and God granted them and more, then gathering to pray for more vocations and for the Holy Spirit's guidance in fostering those vocations surely makes more sense than complaining and trying to impose merely human solutions. We're not usually as smart as we think we are.
Ah, Union. Where Catholic theologians go when they're fired.