Pope Warns Priests

◆ Priests and laymen who stray from the doctrinal paths of the Catholic Church were warned by Pope Paul of punishment. “Woe to that man by whom the offense cometh,” said the pope. The church’s law on celibacy should be obeyed, the pope told his listening audience. However, on the same day in Milan, Italy, priest Martino Grimoldi, 43, announced that he planned to marry local kindergarten nun Caterina Zone, 33, who played the organ in his church during mass. Two days later the pope called the declining number of men entering the priesthood a critical church problem.

A Priest’s View

◆ A 30-year-old Roman Catholic priest seeking dispensation from the obligation of lifelong bachelorhood said: “Like the typical candidate for the priesthood, I entered the seminary at the age of 14. For the next 12 years I was isolated from the world. I visited my home for a few weeks in the summer. But I was instructed to avoid the company of young women, never to be alone with one, never to have a date. . . . In what position was I to make a lifelong commitment, abdicating the use of my sexual endowment in any manner whatsoever? People speak about such young men as making a free, deliberate, solemn promise. But how could we be said to be free when we knew virtually nothing about love, marriage, the conjugal life or the joys of parenthood? Weren’t we rather the innocent victims of cradle robbing and brainwashing, which rendered it impossible for us to make a free, intelligent and truly human decision?”