From The Telegraph-Recently, I was at a dinner party attended by a distinguished monsignor. The elegant red-haired lady sitting next to me introduced herself. “I’m Gill,” she said. “The monsignor’s wife.”
Gill Newton, a schoolteacher, is married to Mgr Keith Newton, who holds the title of protonotary apostolic – the highest rank of monsignor in the Roman Catholic Church. As head of the Ordinariate, the structure set up by Pope Benedict for ex-Anglicans, he is almost a bishop: he wears a mitre and conducts confirmations. He and Gill have three grown-up children.
The Catholic Church in England has been ordaining married ex-Anglican clergy in significant numbers since 1992, when the C of E voted for women priests. It’s no longer much of a novelty for a parish to have a married man in charge, though he can’t technically hold the title of parish priest. There are well over 100 Catholic priests’ wives in England – and, on the whole, folk in the pews are happy.
The question the Church faces now is: will the next Pope allow married Catholic laymen to become priests? And might he go further, and allow existing Catholic priests to marry (something ex-Anglican priests can’t do after they have been re-ordained)? As events over the past few days have shown, the debate is likely to be an awkward one. Last week, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, told the BBC: “I’d be very happy if [priests] had the opportunity of considering whether they should be married. Many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy … and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family.”
More here-
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100204046/the-next-pope-must-think-seriously-about-married-priests-because-the-celibacy-rule-isnt-working/
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