Thomas Groome | |
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Born | 1945 (age 78–79) |
Nationality | Irish |
Citizenship | Republic of Ireland |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Academic work | |
Institutions |
Thomas H. Groome is an author and a professor in theology and religious education at Boston College. [1] Groome has been critical of the Catholic Church's stance on clerical celibacy.
Professor Groome has a doctoral degree from Union Theological Seminary,Columbia University. [2] He has taught at seminaries in several countries. Books have been published about his teaching in several languages. [3] In 1998–99,Groome was president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education (APRRE). [4] As of 2014,he is a professor of theology and religious education at Boston College. He chairs the school's Department of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry. [2] [5]
In 2012,Groome said that the struggling Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston had made progress by keeping parishes from closing and by reconnecting with lapsed Catholics. He cautioned that the archdiocese would be affected by a coming shortage of priests and said that the church would eventually have to make the decision to allow married men in the priesthood. [6]
Writing a piece for The Boston Globe in 2002,Groome advocated for the inclusion of women in the Catholic priesthood. "What a loss it is when ordained ministry is limited to men,excluding the consciousness and gifts of women;at best we benefit from only half our priestly resources," he wrote. [7] In the same article,he wrote that the priestly requirement of celibacy may have inadvertently attracted a number of gay men to the priesthood. He said that when young men are taught that those with a homosexual orientation must remain chaste,some of those men may choose the celibate lifestyle of a priest. [7]
Groome has written several books,including Christian Religious Education. [8] In that work,he developed the concept of shared Christian praxis,which Neville Clement called "groundbreaking in bringing insights from contemporary educational disciplines,philosophy,and theology to bear on Christian religious education." [9]
He also wrote What Makes Us Catholic (2002). [2] Reviewing that book for Catholic Education:A Journal of Inquiry and Practice,Donna Frazier wrote that Groome was "engaging and personal" but that "readers who have left the Church might not recognize Groome's positive vision of the Church as the same institution that hurt or disappointed them." [10] Publishers Weekly wrote,"Groome's reputation as an author of several Catholic school texts could make his latest book a popular resource for adult educational programs,since each chapter includes questions suitable for group discussion. However,despite the author's claim that he writes for Catholics "who span the spectrum," his views may alienate more conservative members." [11]
Clerical celibacy is the requirement in certain religions that some or all members of the clergy be unmarried. Clerical celibacy also requires abstention from deliberately indulging in sexual thoughts and behavior outside of marriage,because these impulses are regarded as sinful. Vows of celibacy are generally required for monks and nuns in Christianity,Buddhism,Hinduism,Jainism and other religions,but often not for other clergy.
The canon law of the Roman Catholic Church requires that clerics "observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven". For this reason,priests in Roman Catholic dioceses make vows of celibacy at their ordination,thereby agreeing to remain unmarried and abstinent throughout their lives. The 1961 document entitled Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders stated that homosexual men should not be ordained. In 2005,the Church clarified that men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" cannot be ordained. The Vatican followed up in 2008 with a directive to implement psychological screening for candidates for the priesthood. Conditions listed for exclusion from the priesthood include "uncertain sexual identity" and "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".
St. Joseph's Seminary and College,sometimes referred to as Dunwoodie after the Dunwoodie neighborhood of Yonkers,New York in which it is located,is the major seminary of the Archdiocese of New York. Since 2012,it has also been the major seminary for the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
Terrence Thomas Prendergast is a Canadian member of the Society of Jesus who is also a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church and the Archbishop Emeritus of Ottawa-Cornwall. He was formerly an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Toronto and the Archbishop of Halifax. On 6 May 2020 Pope Francis merged the Archdiocese of Ottawa and the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall,naming Prendergast Archbishop of the newly formed Archdiocese of Ottawa-Cornwall. He formally retired in 4 December 2020,and was succeeded by Marcel Damphousse,the Coadjutor Archbishop.
Timothy Michael Dolan is an American cardinal of the Catholic Church. He is the tenth and current archbishop of New York,having been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
In Christianity,the term secular clergy refers to deacons and priests who are not monastics or otherwise members of religious life. Secular priests are priests who commit themselves to a certain geographical area and are ordained into the service of the residents of a diocese or equivalent church administrative region. That includes serving the everyday needs of the people in parishes,but their activities are not limited to that of their parish.
Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders is a document published in November 2005 by the Congregation for Catholic Education,one of the top-level offices of the Catholic Church.
Sacerdotalis caelibatus is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI. Acknowledging the traditions given by the Holy Spirit to the Church in the East and acknowledging some few pastoral exceptions in the West,the encyclical explains and defends the Catholic Church's tradition of clerical celibacy in the West. The encyclical is dated 24 June 1967.
In the years since World War II there has been a substantial reduction in the number of priests per capita in the Catholic Church,a phenomenon considered by many to constitute a "shortage" in the number of priests. From 1980 to 2012,the ratio of Catholics per priest increased globally,with the number of Catholics per priest going from 1,895 to 3,126.
John Michael Miller,CSB is a Canadian bishop of the Catholic Church. He is the Archbishop of Vancouver,succeeding to the position in 2009 after serving as its coadjutor archbishop and as Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Prior to his appointment as bishop,he was a professor and academic administrator at the University of St. Thomas (UST) in Houston.
The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion,who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically,bishops are a priestly order as well;however,in layman's terms priest refers only to presbyters and pastors. The church's doctrine also sometimes refers to all baptised (lay) members as the "common priesthood",which can be confused with the ministerial priesthood of the consecrated clergy.
Clerical celibacy is the discipline within the Catholic Church by which only unmarried men are ordained to the episcopate,to the priesthood in the Latin Church,and similarly to the diaconate. In other autonomous particular churches,the discipline applies only to the episcopate. According to Jason Berry of The New York Times,"The requirement of celibacy is not dogma;it is an ecclesiastical law that was adopted in the Middle Ages because Rome was worried that clerics' children would inherit church property and create dynasties." For several hundred years after the imposition of celibacy on secular (non-monastic/religious) clergy the sale of church offices continued. The first male issue of non-married concubines of celibate clergy became set to continue the dynasty. To curtail this clerical abuse,the Latin Church imposed a ban on the ordination of bastards. This policy ended almost 800 years later in the 20th century.
Malcolm Patrick McMahon,OP,KC*HS is an English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Since 2014,he has been the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool. Previously,he was Bishop of Nottingham from 2000 to 2014.
Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary is a Catholic seminary in Denver,Colorado,dedicated to Saint John Vianney,the patron saint of parish priests. It is located at 1300 South Steele Street in the Cory-Merrill neighborhood of Denver,on the campus of the St. John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization. Founded in 1999,St. John Vianney is run by the Archdiocese of Denver.
Raymond Alphonse Lucker was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of New Ulm in Minnesota from 1976 to 2000. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis from 1971 to 1976.
The debate on the causes of clerical child abuse is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding Catholic sex abuse cases.
In the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church,the term ordination refers to the means by which a person is included in one of the holy orders of bishops,priests or deacons. The teaching of the Catholic Church on ordination,as expressed in the 1983 Code of Canon Law,the Catechism of the Catholic Church,and the apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis,is that only a Catholic male validly receives ordination,and "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." In other words,the male priesthood is not considered by the church a matter of policy but an unalterable requirement of God. As with priests and bishops,the church ordains only men as deacons.
Allen Hall Seminary,often abbreviated to Allen Hall,is the Roman Catholic seminary and theological college of the Province of Westminster at 28 Beaufort Street in Chelsea,London,in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is situated on the site of the house that was once occupied by St Thomas More. Though nothing of the house remains,parts of the 16th-century garden wall exist today.
St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary is a Roman Catholic seminary located in Boynton Beach,Florida for the education and formation of seminarians to the Roman Catholic priesthood.
Saint Philip's Seminary is an apostolate of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri,a Catholic society of apostolic life. It has been authorized to grant degrees by the province of Ontario. It accepts students for the priesthood who are sponsored by their diocese or by their religious order.