Respect and obedience to the Holy Father and to their Bishop, is amongst the many obligations of the clerics which like all other obligations, should be esteemed. The rights and obligations of clerics were highlighted to Christians of the our lady of Lourdes Parish Gardens-Limbe, during a catechetical session by the chief catechist Bishop Michael Bibi this 26th day of January 2024.
our lady of Lourdes Parish Gardens, Limbe
Speaking on the rights and obligations of the clerics, the prelate noted that clerics among other responsibilities, are obliged to carry out assignments given to them by their bishop, to avoid the company of persons found capable of making them to compromise their vow of living a life of chastity, to assist the lay faithful in carrying out their mission and to live a life of holiness by making sure that they carry out the different spiritual activities assigned to them by the church. They are equally not allowed to take up political positions .
Christians in attendance
However, the clerics in the exercise of their vocation are accorded the rights to form associations, to improve on their academic career and to receive remuneration for work done among others.
Before highlighting these obligations and rights of clerics, the teacher noted that once you are ordained a deacon, you become a cleric. He further made a distinction between incardination and ex-cardination in which the prelate said that incardination takes place during a deaconate ordination during which a deacon is “married” to a diocese , becomes a member of that diocese, and vows to show obedience to his bishop while in the case of a religious, they are incardinated into a religious institute, where they take a vow of obedience to their superior.
Teachings by Bishop Bibi
On the other hand, excardination he explained, happens when the cleric for one reason or the other, decides to leave his diocese of origin to another diocese. In this process, there must be a bishop willing to accept the cleric and once this is ascertained, the two bishops in official communication , allows for the excardination of the cleric.
Christians pose questions to the Bishop
Nourished by these teachings, the informed Christian community, had an opportunity to ask faith based questions to Bishop Michael Bibi, who in his usual style clarified their doubts according to the church’s teachings.
