By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Pope Francis this week said that he is contemplating allowing married men to be ordained as priests. As many of you already know, I am the product of a mixed marriage – one of my parents was Catholic and the other a Protestant. Despite the differences between those, I am a traditionalist, who has grown comfortable with the way things are to the point that I believe that what has long been with most things is how they should remain. I still have not forgiven Pope Paul VI for removing Latin from the Mass…
Now, Pope Francis, it seems, wants to Protestantize Catholicism even more. I have nothing against Protestantism. Still, there exists a difference between the two religions and I would no more want priests to marry than I would feel it necessary that Lutheran pastors be forced to divorce…
Monastic tradition took hold of the Church at the turn of the First to the Second millenniums, which led to the adoption of a celibacy protocol for priests at the First Lateran Council of 1123. That tradition has held ever since…
Nothing is as psychologically challenging as change. Here is my request of Pope Francis, though I doubt he reads the Sentinel: Let my world be. I am an old man. Wait just a few more years before you make this change. Let me go to my grave, with what little of the world I was born into, so long ago, intact…