Married Priests Now!

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Married Priests Now! (MPN) is an advocacy group headed by Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, a Zambian prelate. MPN is a liberal Catholic organization calling for relaxing the rules concerning marriage in the Latin Rite Catholic priesthood. Milingo believes, "There is no more important healing than the reconciliation of 150,000 married priests with the 'Mother Church,' and the healing of a Church in crisis through renewing marriage and family."^[1]

Archbishop Milingo garnered world attention in October 2006 when he validly but illicitly ordained four married men (Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington; Peter Paul Brennan of New York; Patrick Trujillo of Newark, New Jersey; and Joseph Gouthro of Las Vegas, Nevada) as bishops.^[2] Milingo reportedly plans to hold a meeting in December 2006 of more than 1,000 married Catholic priests, in New York.^[3] Due to Milingo’s excommunication and Moon connection, two groups of former Catholic priests, who are pushing for a married priesthood, have issued warnings against MPN.^[4]

[edit] Excommunication

According to Catholic Canon Law, the act of creating a bishop without the permission of the Pope incurs an automatic excommunication.^[5] When other groups, such as the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), elevated a bishop without the permission of Rome, both the Bishop and Archbishop incurred the same penalty of excommunciation. Interestingly, the Bishops of the Society of St. Pius X had been excommunicated but Archbishop Milingo and the four bishops he ordained were not officially excommunicated but only an unofficial unsigned statement was issued by the Vatican Press Office.