THE SACRAMENTO DIOCESE MAKES HISTORY WITH THE ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD OF A LUTHERAN MINISTER WHO IS A HUSBAND AND FATHER...........

Jeff F. Henry, was baptized a Catholic, and went on to become a Lutheran.  Becoming a Lutheran Minister, Reverend Jeff Henry, began thinking of seeking ordination as a Catholic priest, seven years ago.  A husband and father, Reverend Father Jeff H. Henry, made history yesterday, when he was ordained a priest for service in the Diocese of Sacramento, by Bishop Jaime Soto.  Father Henry, who is 51, is one of about 100 Catholic priests in the United States, who are married, with wives and children, having previously been Episcopalian, Lutheran, or Baptist ministers.  Father Jeff Henry's wife Peg, and 21 year old daughter, Teresa, were present in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacramento on Saturday morning to both witness and participate in the Rite of Ordination to the Priesthood.  At the moment when the newly ordained priests are vested with their chasuble and stole, Fr. Henry's wife and daughter helped the vesting priests place them upon him.  While continuing to live in their family home in Vacaville, instead of a parish rectory; Father Henry's first priestly ministries will include teaching at St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School, in Vallejo, and presiding at Sunday Masses in St. Vincent Ferrer Parish Church, in Vallejo, on Sundays.  A unique first, moment in history for the Diocese of Sacramento, and an occurrence that may well raise a renewed dialogue, about celibacy and married priests in the Roman Catholic Church.  With the Vatican and the Catholic Church in the United States, allowing for the acceptance and ordination of married, non Catholic priests and ministers, into the Catholic Priesthood, many of our own former Catholic priests, whose only disqualification is that they chose to marry and raise families, may most likely renew their request to be reinstated to their priestly ministry.  With an increasing need for ever more priests and married Christian ministers choosing to come over to Catholicism, being permitted to serve as priests, why should those who were born, baptized, and ordained, as Catholic priests, required to remain celibate, be denied the equal opprtunity now to resume serving the, "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, church, most were born into and deicated their lives to.  The dialogue and debate this issue may potentially provide, is well worth having, if assuring the People of God they will have sufficient priests to celebrate the, "source and summit", of our Catholic-Christian Discipleship, the Eucharist, is to be readily maintained..........Welcome Into The Priesthood Of Jesus Christ In The Diocese Of Sacramento, Reverend Fathers Jeff  Henry, Brian Soliven, Jose Beltran,  Rev. Fr.  Troy David Powers