My Marriage is beautiful, says Milingo
My Marriage is beautiful, says MilingoBy Noel Sichalwe
Monday June 02, 2008 [12:55]
EX-COMMUNICATED Zambian Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo has described his married life with Maria Sung as beautiful. In an interview on Saturday, Archbishop Milingo, 78, said he got back with his South Korean wife Sung, 50, in 2006 and that they have been together since then.
"My marriage is beautiful but between a white and black, although this one is not really white but they are Asians; but you know all the same, the task is not easy because all that demands us to surpass a lot of prejudices and ego that everyone of us has. When we surpass these, then we are ready to lead a proper life," he said.
Archbishop Milingo urged priests not to be ashamed of getting married.
"You priests who are not married tell us, there are a lot of women who are not married in the world. After marrying, you will be able to talk about the value of marriage to humanity," he said.
Archbishop Milingo said he knew that people were worried about his whereabouts because in the past seven years, he had been travelling to various countries promoting an organisation he heads, Married Priests Now.
He said he has been frequently travelling to Japan, Philippines, Argentina, United States of America, Rome, Korea and other nations to encourage Catholic Church priests that had suffered after they chose to marry.
"People are asking about my whereabouts rightly so. They are asking that 'is he moving freely or was he forced to move around?' But as a matter of fact, I am moving very freely. The job I have been working for married priests has caused me to visit many places. It is not easy to be indifferent in the situation of married priests.
People believe that when a priest has made a promise, they should be stuck to it," he said. "As the priest matures, the man is obliged to look twice at what he chose when he was under age when he realises they have been cheating him.
"They talk about sex looking on one side without looking about the value of sex to humanity. All they talk about is that sex is something to be ashamed of and that sin started from sex. So, there are all these kind of threats to priests."
Archbishop Milingo said the priests had been living with a lot of prejudice against sex and women because of the teachings they had received.
He said priests did not freely choose celibacy but that it was imposed on them and was against their will.
Archbishop Milingo said the priests who had chosen to be married should therefore not be looked down upon.
Archbishop Milingo said some of the priests that realised that celibacy was not their life decided to join Married Priests Now.
"I didn't change the mind of these priests who chose to get married, but they have just grown. This is also found in the life of people. People grow to make their own decisions and that is what they have done," he said. "What is actually bothering us is the suffering of the married priests, how much they suffer, how much they are mistreated, how much the church looks down upon them, some of whom have become laughing stock, humiliated and abandoned. So that, we find unjust. So these people must be treated properly.
This treatment is not fair at all. Some of them are being told that 'tell your people that you were not aware of your decision, you decided blindly without weighing properly the pros and cons' but I have meditated and I have reflected, I have found myself a fish out of water and I thought that I don't think this is my life and I have decided what I have decided."
Archbishop Milingo said he did not have any regret for deciding to marry after being a priest for a long time.
He said what had amazed him was the attitude of the Catholic Church that claimed to be a mother church.
"But I say if the Catholic Church is the mother church, how is it that they have humiliated us and send them away?" he asked. "For now, we are trying to do the best, first of all to bring these priests back because they have passed through different kinds of suffering but it is not easy.
What we are trying to do is to let them forgive all those people who have treated them badly. We have been trying to tell the priests to forget the suffering they have passed through and try to look at the needs of the church today. Parishes now are being closed like in Germany and big churches are being closed because people don't come to church.
"In Catholic, a priest is very important because he is the distributor of spiritual life. The priest is the so-called soldier in the front line. The number of priests declining is true everywhere especially this which has happened has humiliated the mother church."
However, Archbishop Milingo said his life was not in danger because he was speaking the truth and that the whole world was speaking the same language.
He said some people were even proposing that the new church should start ordaining new married priests that wanted to serve the people.
Archbishop Milingo also said there was nothing wrong with the use of the word 'catholic' in reference to the newly formed Catholic Apostolic National Church of Zambia.
He said ‘catholic’ meant ‘universal’ and that the new church headed by Archbishop elect Luciano Mbewe wanted to embrace people from diverse backgrounds.
"They are dealing with people who are ignorant," he said.
Archbishop Milingo, who is in the country until Thursday, also conducted mass at Lusaka's Masiye Drive Inn along Lumumba Road yesterday.
Briefing the press after conducting mass, Archbishop Milingo said he had not been excommunicated from the Catholic Church but that he had gone back to the original church.
He also said people should not label his group, Married Priests Now, as a cult.
Archbishop Milingo said the Catholic Church was proud with its approach to other religions saying he was trying to promote inter-religious affairs.
Archbishop Milingo, who will conduct another healing session on Wednesday, urged priests to go with their wives.
Archbishop Milingo, who was ordained bishop at the age of 39, was a thorn in the side of church authorities because of his controversial mass exorcism ceremonies. In 2001, he broke away from the Catholic Church and married Sung, then 43, at a mass wedding ceremony organised by the cult of Sun Myung Moon.
After a few weeks, Milingo acknowledged that his marriage to Sung was invalid, and was restored to regular status in the Catholic Church although he now lived under the watchful eye of Vatican officials.
However, in June 2006 Milingo disappeared from Rome and reappeared in the US at the side of suspended Archbishop George Stallings, leader of his own breakaway group, the African American Catholic Congregation based in Washington DC as well as followers of Moon at a press briefing calling on the Catholic Church to end priestly celibacy.
He also proceeded with the unauthorised ordination of four men, including Stallings, at the latter's church.
Archbishop Milingo was subsequently excommunicated by the Vatican in September that year for ordaining the priests without approval from the Holy See.
He then formed an organisation, Married Priests Now, which he heads.
Married Priests Now targets priest that have been excommunicated by the Catholic Church after deciding to break celibacy vows.
And last year, a splinter Catholic Church called the Catholic Apostolic National Church of Zambia was launched with Archbishop-elect Mbewe, calling for more priests to join the church and fulfil their God-given role by marrying.
But the Catholic Church in Zambia said it would take legal action against the break away church which was using its name.
Labels: BISHOP MILINGO
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