A group of Australian priests has asked the Synod of Bishops meeting in Rome this month to consider ending mandatory celibacy for priests.
Yes, celibacy for priests of the Latin rite is a discipline, not dogma, but the constant drumbeat that allowing marriaged would solve the priest shortage has become a slogan without any serious thought put into it. There is no evidence that allowing married men enter the priesthood would appreciably increase the number of priests serving the Church. If that were so, you’d expect the seminaries of the Eastern rites to be sofull of married Catholic men that they’d be turning them away. It’s not happening.
I’ve detailed my objections to a married priesthood in the Latin rite before, and in fact, addressed the same call by the same group of Australian priests all the way back in last January. In other words, same baloney, different day.
I’m curious. On the theory that allowing married priests would solve the priest shortage with a snap of the fingers – why don’t we have a half-dozen Deacons at each Parish?
The permanent diaconate would be the obvious place that good, married Catholic men who had a call to to the service of Orders would end up under the current discipline. Now, if we had 3-4 well-trained Deacons per Parish, a bunch more in the pipeline, and a shortage of Priests, and many Deacons who would be willing to step up to the plate, that would make a much better argument.
But, it’s not that way, is it? In fact, the call always seems much more about below-the-belt politics than anything else. The usual suspects calling for priestly marriage also demand acceptance of sexual liberation, homosexual ‘tolerance’ (by which they mean acceptance of it as divinely ordered and promotion of it on that basis), local community over against Universal Communion, and lay control of…well…everything they can get their hands on.
While many, probably most, Catholics would _accept_ a married Priesthood, it seems, most of the ones _calling_ for it are (not to be uncharitable) “liberal” priests, ill-catechized laity who don’t understand the intrinsic value of either priesthood or of celibacy (or, indeed, the dogma and doctrine of the Church in general), oh, and Protestants.
Catholics spout off the married priest theory without knowing what they’re talking about. If we have married priests they are going to have to have hefty salary increases in order to keep their families in comfort. They’ll also need a place to live. Very few women would be willing to live in a rectory setting.
If you have marriage you will of course have divorce. Being a preacher’s wife is no picnic and being the priest’s wife wouldn’t be either. The parish or the diocese will be stuck paying out alimony and child support. And what about the single young priests who would suddenly find themselves being pursued by a horde of desparate women?
Judging by all the flirting and teasing I see in church now I can imagine what would happen if the priest was free to take the parish ladies up on their offers.
The grass isn’t greener on the other side.
No spouting theories!
There are all kinds of married priests, and all kinds of miserable objections to them. Who needs these miserable sanctions? What purpose do they serve?
Wouldn’t a priest himself be in the best position to decide if he should be married? It is reasonably succesful for the Protestants. Despite Dom’s caveats, there is quite a bit of similarity between, say, a Lutheran Minister and an RC Priest.
Why shouldn’t an individual trusted with the great gravity of transforming bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ be trusted with the sacrament of marriage?
JBP
As a married man with children, I know that I can hardly manage a career (which I can mostly leave at the office but still provides for my wife to be home with our children) and give my family the appropriate loving attention they require.
I can’t imagine if my “career” was being pastor of church. That’s even the wrong way to think about being a pastor.
Being a priest and having a family would be a next to impossible task. One or the other would suffer.
I can take a hit in the career and make that sacrafice for my family… in the end it just means less money and few promotions… but how could I choose between being a good father to my biological children at the cost of being a poor father to my spiritual children?
Or vice versa?
Holy mother church’s wisdom is deep and wise. I am convinced she is right to keep this discipline.
John, false analogy.
First of all, it’s not about trust. Red herring. Secondly, transubstantiation doesn’t happen because the priest’s a good man, or because he’s swell at time management, or anything human at all. It happens because he’s been ordained, his soul indelibly marked, and through an absolutely supernatural action in consecration. We cannot equate the priesthood—and especially not the Sacrament of the Altar, which are two different Sacraments, mind you—with marriage, simply because they are not the same thing.
danb,
You sure its a discipline rather than an expression of all 7 of the deadly sins? The Church did just fine for many hundred years with married priests. What changed?
BP,
Last time I checked, Marriage was a sacrament, and quite a holy thing.
Being married, and knowing quite a few priests, I will claim that the complexity of transubstantiation approximates getting 4 or 5 (but not 6) kids ready for school in the morning on the level of miraculous behavior.
Show me evidence one way or another rather than making such bold statements!
JBP
I am very jealous of my husbands time. If he were a priest and a sinner needed confession on “my time”, they would die in their sins. That is my argument against a married prieshood.
You sure its a discipline rather than an expression of all 7 of the deadly sins?
To be celibate is to engage in Lust? Christ did not think so: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matt. 22:30).
The Church did just fine for many hundred years with married priests. What changed?
Actually, there were numerous scandals- particularly in the 7th and 11th Centuries.
Last time I checked, Marriage was a sacrament, and quite a holy thing.
But not compulsory; no one is required to marry, just as no one is required to take up Holy Orders. Both are gifts, given to us by God, and as such the choice to accept them is ours.
It is also the very fact that marriage is a sacrament and a holy thing that makes the gift of celibacy so very important- for only what is good and holy in itself can be given up for God as a sacrifice. To despise celibacy is to despise that which is sacrificed, which is marriage itself.
Being married, and knowing quite a few priests, I will claim that the complexity of transubstantiation approximates getting 4 or 5 (but not 6) kids ready for school in the morning on the level of miraculous behavior.
You can claim what you want, but, to be quite frank, your qualifications are not good enough. The ability to wrangle children is simply a skill, not the result of serving as an instrument of God’s devine power.
I’m with Isabelle. If my husband was getting up in the middle of the night to give someone last rights or if we had to forego vacations, new clothes or a decent vacum cleaner becuase he took a vow of poverty I wouldn’t be a happy camper.
Has anyone thought of what role the priest’s wife would play in parish life? Would she be a queen/first lady like the Baptists or would she be expected to be an unpaid drudge like the Anglicans used to do?
So I mentioned this controversy to a lapsed catholic, now evangelical Baptist friend. Are you ready for his response? It’s a little shocking.
“the Catholics will never allow married Priests because all those gay priests couldn’t tolerate an influx of real men.”
Dennis,
You must have missed the past 30 years exposition of scandal in the Church, which was mostly the 20th century. There was quite a bit of vile lust involved, by “Celibate” priests. And if raising kids is not the manifestation of the culuture of life, we should consider addind the Shakerism to the Catechism.
re dympha,
All kinds of public service workers get called for emergencies, factory workers are called for overtime, store owners take inventories at night, restaurant workers have colleagues calling in sick, all resulting in temporary separation from the spouse. It is managed, and managable within a marriage. Parish priests typically do not take a vow of poverty, that is usually for the monastics.
JBP
The priesthood is a vocation not a managerial position.
It is managed, and managable within a marriage.
LOL. How is it managed?
I know a former protestant minister (Baptist) who’s wife decided to have an affair and leave him and their two children. He tried to commit suicide (took pills) but failed and instead was paralyzed. Is this what you mean by managing?
Isabelle,
So you have one instance of a botched Baptist marriage? There are plenty of Protestants marriages that do work.
I watch a lot of Dr. Phil. The Dr. and I both agree that marriage is a give and take. I am quite sure love conquers all. It is possible to manage to be married successfully. It happens all the time.
JBP
John, I am blessed to live in the very heart of the American Baptist community. You can’t fool me. How many examples would you like?
I don’t know who Dr. Phil is but I would disagree with him. Marriage is a vocation, a total dedication of the self to the wellbeing of the beloved.
Who wants to manage to be married successfully as if it were a job? People want to be married to offer themselves to another in union with love. Maybe that is why there are so many unhappy marriages. People are teaching them it is a managerial position that can and sometimes does work.
Charles,
Just because WYD isn’t your cup of tea doesn’t mean that it is “pointless” for everyone. Many young people are transformed by the experience and find their faith rekindled. It’s a wonderful opportunity for them to discover Christ and his Church.
As I’ve said before, the priesthood is not a job, it is a vocation and a vocation requires the total commitment of self. You can’t commit yourself to two vocations and have it work.
Despite your protestations to the contrary, the life and work of a priest is vastly different from that of a Protestant minister. I know this because I lived in a rectory for three years and saw it up close.
A Protestant minister can set something like normal office hours, with occasional nighttime interruptions. A priest doesn’t have that luxury.
Ministers aren’t called on day and night to administer the sacraments. When it’s the middle of the night and the drunk, suicidal guy is looking for someone to talk to, he doesn’t go to the Protestant church because no one is there. He goes to the Catholic church because there’s a priest sleeping in the rectory.
When a Catholic is dying in the middle of the night, they call the priest to come administer the sacraments. They don’t call a minister for the Protestant because there is no sacrament to administer.
A Protestant minister has one service to plan for every week (two if they do morning and evening services on Sunday.) A Catholic priest has a Mass every day, plus funerals, plus wakes, plus all the Sunday Masses (if he’s not celebrating, he’s dsitributing Communion), plus Communion calls to the homebound, plus chancery meetings, plus deanery meetings, plus every other kind of parish activity, plus he’s usually the business manager, and so on.
I could go on and on. I suggest you spend some time talking to some Catholic priests and ask if them if they would have time to devote to a wife and family. I, for one, know what the answer is.
In other words, our priests are our Fathers. When a child needs his father, he drops everything to go to him.
A protestant minister is not a Father.
Dom,
“You caniests it doesn’t work as well as with unmarried priests. Sorry, but that discipline is an accommodation, it is not the ideal.
Protestant ministry? If the minister is married, then the ministry suffers. It does not get the attention that an unmarried minister gives it. Sorry, but that’s the reality there too. I’ve known and even worked with Protestant ministers in the past (those taking a second job in order to pay the bills; you don’t see priests doing that).
And the rectory of the Catholic parish around the corner of my house rarely has a priest in it in the evening…itp>
Come back when you’re willing to have a rational discussion.
Dom,
I have been around priests my whole life. I have two uncles that are priests. I have heard every story about hard working priests that can be imagined, and always quote my mother, “If they work so hard, you would think they would help out with the dishes”.
Nothing against these guys, I love and respect them very much, but they do have an active imagination as to the nature of their workload.
JBP
Look, I’m telling you that I saw it with my own eyes. I lived in the rectory with them. If you don’t want to believe it or if you want to believe your uncles were lazy that’s your business. But the majority of priests have hard lives.
And for the record, the priests I lived with did the dishes too.; which is a stupid barometer to use. I’m fairly certain that the Marines patrolling Baghdad don’t do their own dishes. They must be lazy and sitting on their butts all day.
Like I said, come back when you want to have a rational discussion.
They were and are not lazy. They just were not as busy as they claimed to be.
I still am around priests every day, and I still hear wild claims like “I didn’t have time to issue the annointing of the sick, I was too busy attending a seminar on suffering”.
I would like to see photographic proof AND to observe with my own eyes the miraculous dishwashing priests. Call me a doubting Thomas, but I must stick my finger in the dishwater.
JBP
Dom,
Maybe the ideal needn’t be the only instance. Certainly, as St. Paul pointed out, the unmarried man can give himself totally to the Lord, while the married man must consider his wife, and is divided. Many places have neither the ideal priest nor the accomodation. When I lived in Colombia, most country parishes got visited by a priest only a few times a year. Having Mass and confesssion only 5 or 6 times per year not the ideal either!
“As our resident deacon, Deacon Mike, pointed out, the deacon are obligated to.
First, we must concern ourselves with our own sanctity and that means we must fulfill our daily duty according to our state in life. Good works are left to our discretion after we have fulfilled our obligations of daily duty. That is why the Apsotles left these material duties to deacons. Their first duty as priests in God’s order is sacred ministry and the care of souls.
My question is, if our first obligation in the divine order is the sanctification of our own souls and the primary means of attaining this is in performing our daily duty in love, according to our state in life, which would a married priest consider his state; The priesthood or marriage?
This is important because if he is to be attending to his married duties which are primarily material or natural, in order to please and fulfill the will of God but is instead tending to his priestly duties, which are primarily spiritual, he will be failing in his daily duty either way.
I think that is why the Apostles seperated the duties.
Melanie, I’d like to see the evidence that the “transformation by the experience” and “rekindling of their faith” has any LASTING and WIDESPREAD effect. Thousands attend – all the ‘joiners’ (which most young people are) through the venue of catholic schools, youth groups, etc.
Yet I am reading that the post gen X Y generations – in the U.S. at least – have the most abysmal statistics in terms of weekly mass attendance … the under 30s are something like 15%.
Isabelle,
Your response is quite poetic, but simply does not follow the traditions of the Church. For approximately 1000 years Priests were married. The question of priorities and duties must have been juggled a time or two in that period.
With all the modern conveniences available to us now, should a hollow assumption of celibacy trump the free will of man?
JBP
“How about day for people who are over 30 and who went wild back in the 80s but recovered our senses and came back to the church? We could call it the Saint Augustine conference.”
Sign me up!
lol
Thank you. I never thought of myself as the poetic type.
You say that for approxomately 1000 years priests were married. First, I would like to know if all of them were married or just one or two and out of that number how many became great saints. This is important to me because it is my contention that our daily duty according to our state in life is the primary means of our sanctification. If these states conflict, how does the priest choose which to serve according to divine order.
If it was juggled by the Church as you say it must have been, I would like to read the document that teaches how it was resolved. You say, I simply do not follow the traditions of the Church but I have given you the example of the Apostles themselves. Doesn’t their teaching and example count in Chruch tradition at all? It seems to me, this is more the mind of the Church than modern ideas of ordaining married men according to the suggestions of dissident organizations such as “we are church”.
It also seems to me that the priest saints and greatest directors of souls lived lives in close spiritual union with God. They were devoted to prayer, sacred ministry and education in the spiritual life. Certainly they conderned themselves with the spiritual welfare of those in their charge and with their temporal wellbeing in so far as it was necessary to maintain peace in families and communities. But this was not something they sought after. They knew they were called to be fishers of men and were primarily concerned with the salvation of their souls for the greater glory of God and the love of their neighbor.
The answer to the priest shortage is priest saints who know their limitations and who accept them knowing they can depend on God’s grace to fulfill the requirements of their daily duties according to their state in an exceptional manner. It might help strengthen marriages too.
Mother Theresa didn’t have any modern conveniences and look what she did. I couldn’t do that with all the modern contraptions in the world.
God Bless you,
Isabelle
Charles,
Are you saying that the Holy Spirit can’t use an event like WYD to enter into people’s lives and change them?
I don’t have any statistics or more than anecdotal evidence. But I do know some people whose faith lives were essentially dead who went to WYD and are now active and growing in their faith. If even 1% of those who attend experience a transformation, isn’t it worth it? If even one soul is saved, then I would say it is. Of course, many kids will go becuase they are joiners and will have an intense experience which will fade and they will relapse. But for some it will remain. I would suggest that rather than trash WYD we work to see that whatever sparks are kindled in the youth continue to be fed. This includes halping young people learn good habits of daily prayer, frequent mass attendence and confession, those things which really add up to a genuine spiritual life. I am not arguing that WYD by itself will do all that, but that it is a chance to open a door, start a conversation, allow young people to have an experience. Don’t discount the experience just because it doesn’t have lasting results for everyone.
The 1,000 years of married priests claim is an urban legend. Most priests were not married after about the 5th or 6th century and even before that, from the time of the apostles, married priests were to remain celibate in marriage.
If we’re going to go back to the apostolic example, why not go all the way? How many married men will sign up for that?
Like Jesus’ parable of the seeds, for some kids a seed is planted and won’t bear fruit for many years. Doesn’t mean that it wasn’t useful.
I know many, many kids who went on WYD and who had life-changing experiences and while the fervor of their faith ebbed and flowed over the next few years, eventually it’s what they experienced at WYD that brought them to a deeper faith.
What’s bothering me on this thread is that everyone seems to take it for granted that celibacy is a burden rather than a gift. It is a divine calling, in fact St Paul says that it is a higher calling than marriage. Who are we to deny the power of this gift?
Celibacy is a sacrifice of the good of marriage in order that all the celibate’s attention might be devoted to Christ and His Church. Why are people so willing to toss out the grace that comes from the celibate’s total donation of self, to treat it like so much dross? So far most commentator seem to only be looking at the material side (duties and priorities) of this total self-donation, seeing it only in terms of time and energy. But what about the spirituality?
Both marriage and celibacy image God’s self-giving love. In both callings the individual gives him or herself totally to another. In the case of married individuals it is a total self-donation to one’s spouse. In the case of the celibate, it is a total self-donation to Christ or to His Church, but the image for the celibate is a spousal image. That’s why nuns traditionally wear a wedding dress before taking their vows. The same hold true for priests, they image Christ’s nuptial relationship with his Bride, the Church (incidentally, the reason women can’t be priests.) The Mass is the wedding supper of the Lamb and Christ’s union with his Church in the Eucharist has an analog in the marital union. In the Mass the priest stands in for Christ at the marriage banquet, the words of consecration are not his but Christ’s.
So a married priest has, in essence, two spouses. The Apostles recognized this by choosing to live celibately with their wives. The Orthodox churches recognize this dilemma and have a rule that a priest should not have relations with his wife the night before celebrating the eucharist. And the Latin rite has traditionally recognized this by choosing to ordain men from the ranks of the celibate rather than from those who are married.
Hard to gauge the actual number/ratio of married priests, but the tradition was to allow priests to use their own good judgement as to whether they should remain celibate.
What is it about the good-sense of priests that requires a Bishop to declare their vast insuitability for marriage? Shouldn’t they be able to determine that on their own (and yes, without the inspired thoughts of Isabelle, Dom, and myself)?
<For not having all-mod-cons, Mother Teresa spent a lot of time flying first class to and from the Riviera to go yachting with Princess Di>.
JBP
And Melanie,
Is the spirituality of Celibacy and greater than the spirituality to (say), only eat peaches for the rest of your life. It has no holy or practical purpose, yet by focussing on eating only peaches, there could be the bizarre coincidence of become also enchanted by Christ, though there is no logical path (or evidence) that celibacy (or peach eating) leads to holiness.
JBP
You must have missed the past 30 years exposition of scandal in the Church, which was mostly the 20th century. There was quite a bit of vile lust involved, by l>clevesdaughter@yahoo.com
http://dymphnaroad.blogspot.com/
205.188.117.9
2005-10-05 20:26:40
2005-10-06 00:26:40
I wish I could go to World Youth Day but I’m too old.
How about day for people who are over 30 and who went wild back in the 80s but recovered our senses and came back to the church? We could call it the Saint Augustine conference.