A Belgian bishop has challenged the Vatican to push forward with synodal reforms by announcing changes, including the ordination of married men, in his diocese by 2028. Source: The Tablet.
Carefully quoting guidelines for the Synod on Synodality’s implementation phase, Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny’s 11-page pastoral letter proposed the viri probati reform alongside the naming of woman pastors, a new understanding of parishes, welcoming new Catholics and updating the Church’s message.
The document answers urgent pastoral realities with reforms the Vatican has considered but not taken. Without them, the bishop says, he does not have enough priests to do the tasks the Synod documents call for.
“The initiative is now in the hands of local bishops,” Bishop Bonny wrote in the letter published on March 19. Noting the Antwerp diocesan Synod had proposed several reforms, he said: “What should be done can no longer be postponed sine die.”
He would “make every effort to ordain married men as priests for our diocese by 2028,” he said.
“The consensus on this question is almost total … It is an illusion to think a serious synodal-missionary process in the West still has a chance without also ordaining married men.”
There are “almost no domestic candidates … for ordination” now but many lay Catholics who would make good priests, he said. Priests from abroad are a temporary answer, but “they come to help us, not to replace us”.
Bishop Bonny dismissed arguments against women’s ordination as “theologically weak and anthropologically outdated”. Since the answer cannot be only “non-ordination”, he proposed as an interim step a “sacramental” act opening the ministry of pastor (parish priest in Flemish) to lay people.
Recognising this would meet demands for a new ministry role for both sexes and “honour the vocation that women recognise in themselves”, he said, but women’s ordination would remain “a thorn in the flesh for the Church”.
Among other reforms, consolidating small parishes into ever larger units requires a mission station in each area to bring pastoral agent together in a synodal way. The bishop hoped to see this by 2030.
FULL STORY
Belgian bishop plans to ordain married men to fulfil Synod vision (By Tom Heneghan, The Tablet)
