The Black Madonna

Gee, as long as you are on the topic, i wonder if you could clarify something for me.

let me say,f irst of all, that i do not disagree with your statements. i do have a question pertaining to the detail on why celibacy was enacted. i am currently copy editing a book on the subject and the point the author makes is that celibacy was enacted in part to guard against the inheritance of property to offspring. i guess this would be around the age of Trent. do you know if this is true? if so, in your opinion, is this a valid point for today?
you can answer, if you please, here or email me and delete this comment if you'd like.
thanks!

Celibacy goes back much further than Trent. The Catholic Encyclopedia has an extensive article on celibacy. For a much more brief and conversational description, check out the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India site. Neither goes into much detail about the allowance for married men to take Holy Orders in the Eastern Church. I don't find this entirely coincidental.

Though there is a severe shortage of priests in most areas right now, I don't think that allowing priests to marry (though it is a matter of practice, not doctrine) is going to fix that problem. Here is the explanation that my pastor gave me: There is an order of obligations as a husband/father and as a priest. As a husband/father, the order goes God, family, work, Church. As a priest, order is God, Church, work, family. It would be incredibly stressful for a priest, who has so many things to do in the Latin rite (though in the Eastern rites they may have to do as much, but I think the duties are more delegated) to also fulfill the duties of a husband and father. It's kind of like serving God and serving Mammon: it can't be done effectively. Using Protestant ministers is also not much of a comparison due to the fact that Protestant ministers do not have to administer the sacraments and be totally available at any time for the needs of a parishioner. Indeed, being a priest is a full time job, whereas being a minister is often part time, as they have other jobs that they work during the week.

Also, the problem with a lack of vocations is not a result of "more men wanting to get married" or something of that nature. I am currently in the Diocese of Lansing, MI though my permanent residence is in the Archdiocese of Detroit. If memory serves me, Lansing ordained two men last year as priests. TWO! Detroit, which serves a diocese of over 2 million people, ordained between five and fifteen I believe. Compare those with Lincoln, NE, who two years ago I believe ordained nearly 30 priests, in a much smaller diocese than Detroit. The big difference between those two dioceses, and the number of vocations, is the orthodoxy. The Diocese of Lincoln is renowned for its orthodoxy under Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz. In fact, Fabian Bruskewitz even threatened to excommunicate an auxiliary bishop from the Detroit diocese, Thomas Gumbleton, for a variety of liturgical abuses and other offenses, such as founding Call to Action, a group that promotes the homosexual agenda within the Catholic Church.

The real answer to the vocations problem within the Church is a return to orthodox Catholic teaching. This might offend a lot of people, but will lead to a true spiritual renewal within the Church. A large number of Catholics may choose to leave the Church if such a return were to be made, as a large number of people are already getting upset about the promotion of Catholic orthodoxy regarding the Eucharist by such bishops as Bruskewitz and Raymond Burke of St. Louis. I for one find it unofortunate that people are so uninformed about their faith that they would leave because they don't know the truth, but the promotion of orthoxy would finally end that kind of thing. I believe that a smaller, more faithful Church is better than a large, lax, and in some cases, heretical one. The key to this whole situation, and to a better Church in America and the world, is effective orthodox catechetics.

I know that it was a kind of rambling post, but I really don't agree that allowing married men to be ordained is the right thing to do. Allowing orthodox lay people to help out with some of the duties in the Church, such as teaching and catechetics, is certainly in order though.

Kenny

Be careful, Kenny. The first time you mention it, you said, "I don't think that allowing priests to marry..." I've never suggested such a thing, and I do not believe that is either wise or doctrinal. (Contrary to married men becoming priests, I think priests getting married would be a doctrinal error, especially if the priest had already taken the vow of celibacy.)

But frankly, the reasons your pastor gave you strike me as rather lame, especially now. The suggestion that there would be problems when priests had to make time for their families strikes me as odd when any time given up by a married man to priestly duties would be helpful, both to the faithful as well as the other priests. It sounds suspiciously like "the perfect being the enemy of the good", and since only Christ Himself was perfect, can't we just get on with doing the best we can?

Besides, as with the preparations married permanent deacons go through, we would be asking both the man and the wife to each enter into these new, special vocations - vocations that have been managed in the Eastern Rites for centuries. If there is a different kind of delegation in the Eastern Rite, why can't we study and adopt, or at least modify their practices for Latin use? It seems so very odd that we use as an excuse for depriving ourselves of productive vocations, the excuse that we can't handle what is essentially a time-management problem.

I do believe that for those who embark upon the journey, celibacy is a special gift. I've been living the life myself for ten years now, and while I consider it more expediency (and involuntary ;-) ) than a gift, I can see how much of a blessing it must be for those who choose it. But for the very reason that I've seen both perspectives, I cannot understand why we in the West should exclude those who our Oriental brothers have proven can bring different gifts to the table - and quite useful and necessary ones too.

Yes, I did allow a slip of speech. I'm sure it would be the same way as it is with permanent deacons.

While I admire permanent deacons, and it is a laudable vocation, there is a very large difference in performing of those duties compared to those of a priest. A priest must be "on call" at all times to deal with any sort of problems that a parishioner may have (or, those relating to sacramental things), while a deacon's sacramental jobs are quite limited. It is thus a difficult comparison.

The problem with a priest being married is the fact that a married priest cannot fully serve his family or his Church. For instance, the married priest has a sick child when he gets a call to perform last rites on someone in the hospital. What does he do? He cannot simply abandon his child to perform his priestly duties. It is impossible to reconcile the duties of a married man with that of a priest, when Western rite priests have such a wide variety of tasks that need to be performed.

And then what of other things, things like baseball games and dance recitals? Would a priest rather fulfill his duty to perform the sacrament of Reconciliation, or to be present for his child's important events? The priest has to do his duties to the Church before he can fulfill his duty to his family. It is part of the vocation, in my opinion. The calling to the priesthood does not call the man to abandon everything else, but it does call the man to put them in a different order, to know that he is shepherding a community that is depending on his presence and his being available for the various crises that arise. That is his family that he must care for. To create a new family, a familythat he must put before others, would severely curtail his abilities to effectively administer the duties of his vocation.

That being said, I think it is possible to have priests be married, though these priests would have to be part-time if you know what I mean. They could administer sacraments, say Mass, etc. when it is necessary, but it would be nearly impossible to be able to count on them as a full-time priest. To make a married priest a pastor would be impossible. As I have said before, being a priest is a full time job, and then some. If it were possible to have married priests make the same kind of time commitments as, say, a permanent deacon (which in my experience with full time deacons, is not a very large commitment at all, mostly imvolving assistance at Mass and some other liturgical duties) then that would be an excellent way to counteract the shortage of priests to perform sacramental duties.

But then, what happens when all the priests are married? What of the pastorship of the parish?

And what of bishops? Would it be possible for a bishop to effectively lead a diocese if he had the commitments of a family?

And what about the future possibility of a married pope? Could he really lead the whole Church if he had his own family to look after first?

I'm sure there would be some, if not many, priests who would choose to be celibate. There would also be priests whose wives have passed away, and possibly even some who (through no fault of their own) fall victim to civil divorce. In each of these cases, the priest would be expected to maintain celibacy (in the first two cases) and chastity (in the last) for the rest of his life, just as they do now. There could be allowances that the celibate priests be relied upon for more or most of the "on call" situations your hypothetical situations rely on.

But what you're suggesting is that the celibate priests we have now be given no aid whatsoever because a potential married priest might ask them to sometimes do what they must do now. That's ridiculous. What happens when our aging priests now get sick, or in those parishes around the country where one priest must support multiple parishes? There's no one at all there now to help them. Many times, the one celibate priest is busy in one county saying mass when he gets a call from another county that a parishoner needs last rites. What does the celibate priest do? Are you going to tell us that this situation is better than having several married priests there to help the pastor, that not having married priests is better just because they may have to attend a personal matter? What happens now, for example, when a celibate priest breaks his leg? Is he expected to not go to the hospital when his beeper goes off? Other priest cover for him, just as what happens in any walk of life.

If you've got too much work to do and your boss asks you if you'd rather have no help at all, or help from a dedicated coworker who might possibly someday have to go home and take care of his sick kid? Do you say, "No, I'd rather do the work of three men than be forced to pick up the slack when that guy's kid is sick!"? That doesn't sound very Christian. I know my coworkers have to deal with that from me on occasion, just as I have to deal with it from them. In fact, most of my coworkers are my friends, and we gladly support each other when we have problems. Should we expect less from priests? Since I'm no longer married and my children are well taken care of by their grandmother, I actually get asked to tow the line more often than any of my coworkers, all of whom are married. I don't resent this, and I have a much less important job than a priest. Would a celibate priest who is overworked now consider it a burden to do more work less often after he's given the assistance of married parochial vicars?

Reasonable restrictions could be maintained, requiring that priests who were not celibate from ordination could not be bishops, or even pastors if that is the will of the church. And I have to stress again, this happens right now in the Oriental Tradition. How do they deal with it? Is it such a terrible thing for them? And what about the married Anglican ministers who have been given special dispensation to become priests after converting to Catholicism with their parishes? How do they deal with it? How does our Church survive with married priests right here in the Western Church? How is it that everything west of Rome hasn't fallen into the sea already?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to rant. But your arguments are so oddly defensive, when there's nothing to defend. Should we not we seek out "problems" like you pose, in our effort to better help the needy? Isn't the Catholic tradition that we're supposed to cherish our suffering in our attempts to be more Christlike? Does that mean the Church as a whole and our apostolic mission to the world should gladly suffer because we don't ask more of married men? Or does that mean that we ask married men to take on more responsibility and risk suffering in their lives and the lives of their families when they have to do the Lord's Work?

Lastly, who suffers more, the community who cannot hear Mass every week because there is no priest at all in their parish, or the person who does not get last rites because the married priest might be looking for his lost child? Answer: both are hurt equally by our current system, because there is no priest there in either case.