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Contents
n The
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Diocese of)
Savannah
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News 1-3
Commentary 4-5
Vocatio Dei, 1999 6-7
Faith Alive! 8-9
Notices 10-11
Last But Not Least 12
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Vol. 79, No. 27 $.50 per issue
Thursday, August 5, 1999
More priests on the way for diocese
Father Brett and ten seminarians take a relaxing trip on a 46-foot
boat leaving from Hilton Head, SC. The trip was possible through
the generosity of boat owner O. C. Welch.
By Sam Alzheimer
Macon
hat is Georgia famous for?
Peaches... the Masters... the
Olympics... Newt
Gingrich... And this fall, something
else: Priests.
Or, more accurately, future priests.
Just as the nation looks toward
Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship as a
national model for college funding,
people may also be looking South for
some pointers on how to promote
priestly vocations. That’s because this
year promises to be a bumper crop for
seminarians in both the Archiocese of
Atlanta and the Diocese of Savannah.
Atlanta will have 61 seminarians,
while our own diocese will send 18
men to the seminary, seven for their
first year.
Amazed? What’s even more impres
sive is the ratio of seminarians to
Catholics in our small diocese of
75,000. While not having the largest
numbers of seminarians (Arlington,
Virginia and Sioux Falls, South Dakota
have more, for example), we have
more seminarians per Catholic than
most other dioceses in the country!
While grateful for the optimistic
outlook our seminarian numbers sug
gest, there are other statistics to con
sider. The fact is, as most people
know, we need priests badly. In the
five or so years before this new wave
of seminarians can be ordained, our
diocese faces dwindling numbers of
priests and the grim prospect of priest
less parishes.
There are several reasons why we
need new priests:
1) The average age of our priests has
risen steadily in the past years to 52.
2) At least 40% of our current
priests will reach retirement age
before 2015.
3) In the past ten years, the number
of religious order priests serving our
diocese has substantially diminished.
4) For a 10-year span beginning in
2004, we will have to ordain at least
3-4 men per year to maintain the ratio
of priests to people.
5) For the past 60 years, we have
ordained on average one priest per
year.
Whatever the reasons for the world
wide decrease in priestly vocations for
the past 30 years — some point to cul
tural change or post-conciliar confu
sion after Vatican II — it looks as
though the Savannah Diocese may be
reviving the trend toward vowed and
ordained ministry. One day, if men
continue to enter the seminary at the
current rate, Georgia could have as
many priests as peach farmers!
Vatican ends controversial U.S. gay-lesbian ministry
By Jerry Filteau
Washington (CNS)
he Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith has permanently barred Father Robert
Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick “from any
pastoral work involving homosexual persons.”
In a public notification released at the Vatican
July 13 it said the two Americans, who have been
engaged in joint gay and lesbian ministry since the
early 1970s, advanced “doctrinally unacceptable”
positions “regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexu
al acts and the objective disorder of the homosexu
al inclination.” They have been under a Vatican
investigation since 1988.
. Father Nugent in a statement said his superior
general called him to Rome and informed him of
the decision before it was published. “As a son of
the church, a presbyter and a member of a religious
congregation with a vow of obedience, I accepted
the decision of the CDF and expressed my inten
tion to implement it accordingly,” he said.
The congregation said its public notification, per
sonally approved by Pope John Paul II, was neces
sary “for the good of the Catholic faithful.”
The “errors and ambiguities” promoted by the
priest and nun “have caused confusion among the
Catholic people and have harmed the community of
the church,” it said.
It also declared the two “ineligible, for an unde
termined period, for any office in their respective
religious institutes.”
Father Nugent, 62, is a Salvatorian priest. Sister
Gramick, 57, is a School Sister of Notre Dame.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the doctrinal
congregation, and Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, its
secretary, signed the notification.
Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-
Houston, president of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops, in a separate statement July 13
stressed that the Vatican ban was imposed because
of “serious deficiencies in their writings and pas
toral activities ... not because it was a ministry to
homosexuals as such.”
He said the U.S. bishops “share a commitment to
this ministry. ... All Catholics facing serious moral
questions deserve our care and respect as brothers
and sisters in the Lord. Those with homosexual
inclinations deserve this care and respect no less
than any others.”
Bishop Fiorenza also expressed a “personal hope
that Sister Gramick and Father Nugent can find the
way to express their acceptance of the church’s
teaching on homosexuality.”
"This decision was reached after nearly 12 years
of dialogue with Sister Gramick and Father
Nugent,” he said. "This dialogue began with a
commission, appointed in 1988 and chaired by
Cardinal Adam Maida (of Detroit), to examine crit
icism that, in their ministry to homosexual persons,
they did not fully and accurately present the teach
ing of the church on homosexuality.”
He said the long time taken to reach a decision
on the case “indicates that these disciplinary meas
ures were not taken lightly.” It is the obligations of
church authorities “to discern what is or is not
faithful to the teaching handed on by the Lord to
the apostles,” he added.
Father Nugent and Sister Gramick first became
(Continued on page 3)