Power and Sex in a Renewed Church
We, the North Atlantic Federation for a Renewed Catholic Priesthood, explored the theme "Power and Sex in a Renewed Church and Priesthood" during our Congress in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Sexual love is the most creative gift God gave us. It draws the whole human family into love and gives it life. Life and love are signs of God's presence. We make love and life happen through our sexual commitments.

We regret, therefore, the negative Church teaching of earlier centuries. The New Testament is a better guide. St. Paul notes that the sexual experience of husband and wife is valuable in its own right even without reference to conception and that it is a sign of Christ's love for the Church. Christ focuses on the corruption of power as far more evil than sexual misdeeds.

The condemnation of power may be the best way to sound sexual teaching since it prevents institutions from mandating celibacy and controlling marital life.

The teaching of Vatican Il on authority and sexuality, on collegiality and marriage, is far more liberating and evangelical than much of the teaching which precedes and follows it.

There is sexual dysfunctionality in the ministry and in the world at large. A more enlightened sexual teaching in the Church will enrich the ministry and heal the world. The nobility of sexual love and marriage, the status of women and the future of ministry belong to the same reality.

The Church is truly itself when it follows Jesus. It must, therefore, dismantle its structural abuse of power and sexual repression. It can do this through a new Ecumenical Council. The gifts of all God's people, married and celibate, man and woman, clerical and lay, assembled in Council, will bring the Church of Christ the new Pentecost it seeks.

Participants from 11 Countries
Wiesbaden/Naurod, Germany
August 29, 2004