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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]

Automatic excommunication[]

Archbishop Milingo garnered world attention in September 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 planned 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 his connection with non-Catholic religious leader Sun Myung Moon, two groups of former Catholic priests, who are pushing for a married priesthood, issued warnings against MPN.[4]

According to Catholic Canon Law, the act of creating a bishop without the permission of the Pope incurs an automatic excommunication.[5]

Policy of laicizations[]

Archbishop Paul Lebeaupin warned in 2009 that Catholic priests who had joined the Married Priests Now sect could be declared laymen by the Church, which would add a new penalty to Milingo's latae sententiae excommunication.[6] On December 17, 2009, the Holy See announced that Milingo had been defrocked and that he was currently a layman, calling him Mister Milingo.[7]

See also[]

References[]

External links[]

Wikipedia
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Married Priests Now!. The list of authors can be seen in the page history.
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