12/5/2005

by Louise Haggett

Midnight Mass, an annual tradition in the Catholic Church, will not take place in many of the U.S. parishes this year due to an ever growing shortage of priests, exacerbated by recent sexual abuse revelations that continue to become public in major dioceses like Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Rentapriest.com, a free referral service of CITI Ministries (Celibacy Is the Issue) offers married priest coverage in almost every state. From Advent confessions to Eucharistic Liturgy, married and other resigned priests can do it all.

Church law (Canon Law) has provisions for people when no priest is available. These laws, however, are activated only when the request is made directly (without permission from anyone) to a married priest by the people. CITI’s role is to advise the public of their right to call a married priest, and to provide local contacts.

Since CITI’s founding in 1992, over 50,000 individuals have been spiritually served with baptisms, marriages, anointings of the sick, funerals, in-home Mass and other pastoral needs. Married priests have responded to Catholics and non-Catholics alike as well as to churches in vigil. “In a sense, they’ve become ‘priests without borders,’ according to CITI founder/president Louise Haggett. “They just do what Jesus would do. We see our work as an adjunct to the church and have been quietly applauded by several bishops over the years.”

CITI is not a protest organization. It only provides ministry where needed believing that by just doing it, married priests will become the norm in the church, just as the female altar servers who were not allowed in the church in the 1980s. People ignored the Vatican and used them anyway. Now they are “legal.”

For more information on Canon Law and a list of local priests see www.rentapriest.com or call 1-800-PRIEST 9 (774-3789). According to Haggett, “No one should be without a full Christmas Mass. No one has to be. And it’s unlikely that any hierarchical figure will stop the grassroots effort of ‘just doing it without permission,’ because Canon 1752 says, ‘…the salvation of souls…is always the supreme law of the church. ”

Also available is The Bingo Report that links clergy sexual abuse to mandatory celibacy.