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	Pell Fights Catholic Anti-Celibacy Moves By Jill Rowbotham NEWS.com.au [Vatican City] October 10, 2005 ABANDONING celibacy as a condition of priesthood would be a serious error, Cardinal George Pell told the Rome Bishops Synod overnight, weighing into the escalating debate on whether removing the celibacy rule would revive the interest of young men in becoming priests. Addressing a gathering of more than 250 senior Catholic churchmen from around the world, presided over by Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Pell attacked moves in the church to relax the no-sex requirement. Australia's leading Catholic referred to "the ancient tradition and life-giving discipline of mandatory celibacy for the diocesan clergy as well as the religious orders". "To loosen this tradition now would provoke confusion in the mission areas and would not strengthen spiritual vitality in the First World," he said. The decline in the numbers of new priests - from one for every 1797 Catholics 30 years ago to one for every 2677 Catholics today - has been a strong theme during the three-week synod, called by the late John Paul II to examine the eucharist. This ritual, regarded as central to Catholic life, must be presided over by a priest. Bishops including Mozambique's Lucio Muandula and Papua New Guinea's Arnod Orowae have said celibacy must be reviewed. The Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, has also raised the issue, although he maintained support for celibacy. Australia's other representatives are Archbishop Adrian Doyle of Hobart and Bishop Christopher Toohey of the Wilcannia-Forbes diocese. Each bishop is allowed six minutes to address the synod. Cardinal Pell said the Second Vatican Council had brought "brought great blessings and substantial gains" such as missionary expansion, new movements and communities, but had been "followed by confusion, some decline - especially in the West - and pockets of collapse". "Good intentions are not enough," he said. The cardinal said his recommendations to the synod on how to deal with these "shadows" presupposed the maintenance of celibacy. Jettisoning it "would be a departure from the practice of the Lord himself", he said, and would "bring significant practical disadvantages" to the church. "It would weaken, too, the witness to loving sacrifice, and to the reality of the last things, and the rewards of heaven." The expansion of the church in the past 500 years "and the purification of church leadership, imperfect but substantial, were achieved primarily under grace, through the lives of celibate sisters, brothers and priests", Cardinal Pell said. He added: "Recent sexual scandals have not invalidated these gains." Earlier in the week, Archbishop Doyle used his address to the synod to issue a rebuke over the synod's working document, the Instrumentum Laboris. "It occurred to me that there is not a strong recognition of the wonderful contribution of our priests," Archbishop Doyle said. He said many older priests often carried heavy responsibilities for longer than their counterparts in secular society. They had pastoral responsibility for a greater number of people than in the earlier years of their ministry. "Many younger priests face a future which they know already will be very challenging, because of the smaller numbers of priests with whom they will sharing the ministry," he said. Meanwhile, Australia's largest Anglican diocese yesterday proposed a new system for handling sexual abuse claims to encourage more victims to come forward. The Sydney Anglican Synod unanimously passed a motion to introduce a professional standards committee that could lead to the sacking of Sunday School teachers and other Anglican lay leaders for habitual drunkenness and promiscuity and other offences under the new rules.
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