Married Priests Now!

Married Priests Now! (MPN!) is an advocacy group founded and formerly led by Emmanuel Milingo, a former Roman Catholic bishop from Zambia. MPN is a liberal Catholic organization calling for relaxing the rules concerning marriage in the Latin Rite Catholic priesthood. Milingo has said that "There is no more important healing than the reconciliation of 150,000 married priests with the 'Mother Church', and the healing of a Church in crisis through renewing marriage and family."[1]

Automatic excommunication

Milingo gained international attention in September 2006 when he illicitly ordained four married men (George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington, D.C.; Peter Paul Brennan of New York City; Patrick Trujillo of Newark, New Jersey; and Joseph Gouthro of Las Vegas, Nevada) as bishops.[2] Milingo organized 2 meetings in the fall of 2006 many married Catholic priests from the USA, Europe, South America, and Africa in New Jersey. Partly in response to Milingo's initiative a meeting was held in Rome to discuss whether to change the rule of celibacy. It was decided not to change the rule.[3] Due to Milingo’s excommunication and his connection with non-Catholic religious leader Sun Myung Moon, two groups of former Catholic priests who are pushing for a married priesthood, issued warnings against MPN.[4]

According to Catholic canon law, the act of ordaining a bishop without the permission of the Pope incurs an automatic excommunication.[5]

Policy of laicizations

Archbishop Alain Paul Lebeaupin warned in 2009 that Catholic priests who had joined Married Priests Now! could be declared laymen by the Church, which would add a new penalty to Milingo's latae sententiae excommunication.[6] On December 17, 2009, the Holy See announced that Milingo had been laicized, calling him "Mister Milingo".[7]

See also

References
  1. U.S. Newswire: Archbishop Milingo: "Married Priesthood Now"; Healer Missing from Italy Emerges in U.S., Proclaims End to Mandatory Celibacy Archived 2006-09-12 at the Wayback Machine, July 12, 2006
  2. Pope to hold summit on married priests, November 14, 2006
  3. BBC News: Vatican stands by celibacy ruling, November 16, 2006
  4. CNA: Married former priests warn against Milingo's group, December 8, 2006
  5. Holy See: Canon 1382, Code of Canon Law, translat. by Canon Law Society of America, 1998
  6. Married priests may be expelled
  7. Vatican defrocks exorcist archbishop who married
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