Priestly Celibacy Gerry O’Shea The name of Charles Scicluna is unlikely to resonate with readers, yet he is playing a major role in deciding whether the Catholic Church should change its regulation on priestly celibacy. Alone among the main Christian denominations, the Vatican insists that at ordination, its ministers must pledge to remain single and chaste. Scicluna serves as the Archbishop of Malta, and, more importantly, he has Pope Francis’ ear. With advanced qualifications in civil and church law, he was highly regarded by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who appointed him as the principal investigator of clergy sexual abuse crimes. So, he has heard the stories of the dark side of human nature. The most coherent institutional argument for ending this celibacy requirement comes from the parishes, which are understaffed and struggling to provide presbytery services comparable to those available as late as fifty years ago. The number of priests in the United States
Decision time in Ukraine Gerry OShea When Ukraine’s top military commander spoke last November of a stalemate in the war, most people understood this to mean that the conflict was frozen, with neither side capable of advancing. The Russians couldn’t plunder any further, and the Ukraine liberation drive was at a standstill. This standoff situation invited talk about a declaration of truce a la Korea or Cyprus and a call to the United Nations to facilitate some kind of treaty that wouldn’t please either side but would end the war that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of fighters as well as large numbers of civilians. However, there was no serious talk about a truce, and negotiations of any kind were not on either side's public agenda. If, somehow, an end to the war was proclaimed, Russia could claim to have grabbed tens of thousands of square miles of rich farmland, and millions of Ukrainians in the captured territories would be forced to bow thei