On Sunday, we came across futurechurch.org, a website based in Ohio. Like us, they believe in an open letter to
their Bishops. We are pretty well on each others wavelength, and we thought you might like to see it.

Dear Bishops,
On a trip home from Tel Aviv, Pope Francis stated:”Celibacy is not a dogma of faith, it is a rule of life
that I appreciate a great deal and I believe it is a gift for the Church. The door is always open given that
it is not a dogma of faith.” And in a recent conversation with Bishop Erwin Krautner, Pope Francis discussed
the priest shortage and future of the priesthood in Brazil, urging the bishop and all local bishops to be
“courageous” and to make concrete suggestions on the possibilities available to assist in this crisis, including
expanding the priesthood to include married men.
Now we are looking to you, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to follow Pope Francis’s
call to be courageous in seeking solutions to our growing priest shortage and to present these solutions
to Rome.
(there follow two paragraphs on the specific needs of the Church in the USA).
Following Pope Francis’s model, we urge the USCCB to undertake a fresh examination of our early church tradition
of a married and celibate priesthood, a diaconate served by women and men, and invite priests who have married
back to ministry. Please encourage local bishops to open this important dialogue at a diocesan level
particularly in the areas most affected by the priest shortage.
We also ask the USCCB to open a discussion of these issues at their general assemblies with a view to
presenting concrete suggestions for opening ordination to Pope Francis.
We call on you, our bishops and brothers in Christ, to to encourage discussion of the genuine reform
so essential to the future of the Church. We have an opportunity to save our church from a future
wrought with priest-less parishes and Mass-less Catholics. ; we urge you to take action now.

We have written to them,and hope to hear from them soon.

It is not clear whether they have sent their letter yet, and we hope they have better luck
than us. It will be interesting to see if the custom of ignoring letters from the flock
has crossed the Atlantic.