Catholic Priest-reformer Helmut Schuller Brings Message to Portland
By Nancy Haught
A controversial Catholic priest who was banned from speaking in a Catholic Church in Boston last month will speak at a Protestant church in Portland on Sunday, Aug. 4. The Rev. Helmut Schuller of Austria, a reformer concerned about the shortage of ordained Catholic clergy, will talk about possible solutions from 2 to 4 p.m. at Central Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland. A free-will offering will be collected. Schuller, who was vicar general for Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn from 1995 to 1999, was dismissed because his views were at odds with church authorities. The Vatican stripped Schuller of his title of "monsignor" in 2012. He is pastor now of a small rural parish near Vienna. He was a founder of the Austrian Priests' Initiative and their 2011 "Call to Disobedience." Schuller and members of the priests' initiative oppose the consolidation of parishes, support a greater sacramental role for lay people and advocate new thinking on remarried Catholics and same sex couples. The reformers favor the ordination of women and married men and increased transparency within the hierarchy of the church. "Priests are losing the chance to walk with members of their communities through their daily lives," Schuller said in an interview this week in the National Catholic Reporter. "This is about more than compassion. It is about companionship and solidarity with laypeople." He called for "a new teaching model on sexual relations" to guide pastoral care of Catholic couples. "Our teaching should concentrate on the quality of relationships, not the form," Schuller said. "Rather than condemn remarried Catholics or same-sex couples, we should be asking: How are they living in relationship? Are they respecting one another's dignity? We have to respect that people want to live together, that they feel responsible for one another and that they care for one another." In the United States, the Catholic Church is coping with an ongoing shortage of priests and parish closures, even as the number of Catholic believers grows. Figures from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University show that The number of priests in the U.S. has declined from 58,632 in 1965 to 38,964 in 2012. Meanwhile, the number of Catholics in the U.S. has grown from 45 million to 66 million in the same period. U.S. Catholic parishes numbered more than 19,000 in 2000 and, after a decade, had declined to fewer than 17,800. In the Archdiocese of Portland, the Most Rev. Alexander K. Sample, the archbishop of western Oregon's 415,725 Catholics, ordained eight men to the priesthood June 8. As of June 26, 11 of the archdiocese's 124 parishes shared a priest, according to Bud Bunce, a spokesman for the archdiocese. Four parishes have priest moderators who preside over Masses and celebrate the sacraments while someone else, often a trained lay person, oversees other pastoral duties within the parish. Schuller's first U.S. speaking tour began July 16 in New York City, where 250 people turned out to hear him speak in Judson Memorial Church, a historic Protestant church in Greenwich Village. The following night in Boston, where Cardinal Sean O'Malley had barred Schuller from speaking at St. Susanna Parish, more than 500 people gathered to hear him at a nearby Unitarian Universalist Church. A spokesman for O'Malley told the Boston Globe that it is archdiocesan policy to ban speakers from Catholic sites if their views are "contrary" to official church teaching. The only remaining Catholic setting for Schuller's tour was Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. A spokesman for the archdiocese said the priest would not be allowed to speak at a parish or in an archdiocesan setting. Chestnut Hill College is a Catholic school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. About 350 people squeezed into the room to hear Schuller's speech on campus on July 19. Archbishop Sample did not wish to comment on Schuller's visit to Portland, Bunce said. Schuller's speaking tour, called "The Catholic Tipping Point," is sponsored by several Catholic reform groups, including Call to Action, CORPUS, Voice of the Faithful and the Women's Ordination Conference. The Northwest chapter of Call to Action, which has invited other Catholic reformers to speak in Portland, invited Schuller to speak at Central Lutheran Church, their ordinary meeting place. While organizers expect mostly lay Catholics to attend Schuller's lecture, they are inviting Catholic priests to meet with him informally, according to Nancy Barrett-Dennehy. Schuller will speak in Seattle at 7 p.m. on Aug. 5 at First United Methodist Church, 180 Denny Way. -- Nancy Haught
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