What about them?
‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out
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MikeInVA
Guest
Priesthood is not a job, it is a vocation that men are called to by God. There is an unproven assumption out there that there are thousands of married men who want to be priests. I really don’t think so.
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OraLabora
Guest
- They are Catholic clergy;
- It is a vocation;
- They are allowed to be, and for the most part are, married;
- At least in my area, there seems to be a fair number of vocations, though I admit I have no statistics;
We know that marriage does not prevent sexual abuse. What I would like to know is will a good selection process for married men to become priests likely to result in less abuse (recognizing that no abuse is probably difficult to achieve in any circumstance)? The key to knowing that is probably in the permanent diaconate.
So too is the permanent diaconate.
Maybe, maybe not. With the current discipline, we will never know. I do know that there are many mature married men that feel called to the permanent diaconate. Would they instead feel called to the priesthood? Would the Church be better served allowing, say, married working men to become parochial vicars instead of permanent deacons? The Anglicans do this (non-stipendiary priests). It would allow us to widen the availability of the sacraments to places where this is difficult.
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MikeInVA
Guest
How many of these mature men would be willing to abandon their careers to attend seminary for 6 to 8 years? I don’t think that the formation of priests can be successfully accomplished with evening classes. The deaconate fills a special niche in the Church, I don’t think it is a model for the priesthood.
One of our deacons talks about becoming a deacon in our RCIA program. He always stresses the fact that the first responsibility of a deacon is to his family; in fact, his wife had to give her permission for him to be ordained.
If all a priest had to do was celebrate Mass and baptisms then I suppose a non-stipend priest would suffice, but I think there is a lot more involved with being a priest.
This is not evidence.
Perhaps you should get the actual statistics.
Do you really believe abuse is related to marriage?
I don’t understand this willingness to make drastic changes without knowing they will result in a positive change.
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OraLabora
Guest
A fair point but to which I would ask: is this much theological training necessary? How can the Anglicans manage it? And perhaps more relevant for us, the Orthodox?
Yes I’m aware of that, in fact to become an oblate I had to have my wife’s permission as well.
Yes there is, however current priests are overworked. Where I live, priests are celebrating three Masses every Sunday, over a wide geographic area. It used to be said that a priest’s car made a good used car. Not anymore in my parts. Our new curate is in fact African…
So perhaps priests could use some relief from someone able to celebrate the sacraments as well.
What do married Orthodox priests do? Non-stipend priests could certainly make anoint the sick, bring the Eucharist to shut-ins, provide marital counselling, hear confessions, and a host of other tasks.
Fair request. But hard to find. What I did find is that in the Archdiocese of Sherbrooke (where my schola sings), the diocese neighbouring mine, from 1970 to 2010, the diocese went from 1 to 24 permanent deacons, and the number of diocesan priests went from 307 to 168.
In my own diocese, the number of priests has gone from 259 to 117 and the number of deacons from 9 to 28.
In Montreal, priests from 792 to 584, and deacons from zero to 100.
Lastly in Quebec City, 957 to 418 priests, 26 to 95 permanent deacons.
In short, the diaconate is slowly growing, the priesthood decimated by half. I will try to find seminary stats but have come up empty-handed so far. I might be able to find them in the Catholic Directory at the abbey library next week.
Of course not. The issue with abuse seems to be a problem with men with disordered sexualities. My premise is that while married men are not immune to that, with good screening there is a better chance of excluding men with disordered sexualities, and perhaps more men with well-ordered sexualities would be willing to consider if they have a vocation to be a priest,
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MikeInVA
Guest
This is the normal length for ordination. I could care less how long any orthodox or protestant denomination takes to form a minister.
As our deacon frequently says, his job is to “hatch, match and dispatch.” I know many lay members of my parish who assist (choir, EM, etc) at more than one Mass every weekend. We only had one priest at our last parish, and I think he enjoyed the ability to provide the same homily to every Mass. It made it much easier for him to develop themes over several weeks, something that can’t be done in my parish where the priests rotate in a fairly random way.
Many of these tasks are already accomplished by deacons and lay parishoners. Our deacon conducts pre-marital counseling. EMs take Communion to the homebound, etc. About the only things that aren’t done by other members of our parish are celebrating Mass, hearing confession (twice a week, maybe 6 hours total) and anointing of the sick, which they normally do after Mass.
Clean up the seminaries and the diocese of unworthy men and worthy men will step forward. Well -ordered sexuality is not confined to the married.
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jeannetherese
Guest
Could you expand on this? It seems to apply, if i understand you rightly, to many, men and women, who are not priests, or Catholics for that matter. Heroic and unnatural virtue?
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jeannetherese
Guest
I wonder to what extent these discrepancies might be related to age. The deacons whom I have encountered, are older men who became deacons later in their careers through weekend training programs. Many priests are aging out of the priesthood. These older deacons will also age out of the diaconate.
For comparison purposes, it might be better to compare younger vocations of each group.
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OraLabora
Guest
Well perhaps I’m projecting a bit, but it would take heroic virtue on my part that’s for sure.
I would say thought that monks do not find it easy by any stretch. It takes effort and sometimes years of training to completely master it, even cloistered monks. And they have the support of a community.
I wonder what support diocesan priests get to deal with it? They live in the secular world, often alone.
Many men and women who are not priests indeed are often celibate. I wonder though how many are continent, and how many are in that state by choice rather than circumstance? It seems not all are by choice:
Incel - Wikipedia
Of course I suspect than the “incel” men are celibate for good reason…
I doubt we’ll be able to find statistics on-line. Perhaps someone in the hallways of the Vatican knows…
The news coming out of Australia tonight is not good…
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gracepoole
Guest
Heroic? Perhaps. Unnatural? Not as the Church understands that term.
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JimG
Guest
As to Catholic doctrine on sexual activity, nothing is expected of priests that is not expected of single me and women, of whom there are a lot.
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OraLabora
Guest
And we all know how that works out in reality… for many priests and probably most single men and women these days.
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JimG
Guest
It works fine for both priests and singles (and marrieds.) Trouble inevitably arises when one disregards moral precepts. Admittedly the sexual revolution spurred a lot dissent in thought and in practice, but not everyone participated in the revolution.
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OraLabora
Guest
I can only think of a single male friend in my secular entourage that wasn’t sexually active before marriage (in fact he never married, and is socially awkward), and it wasn’t I. I was out of the Church for 22 years. And I know many of my female acquaintances that have been as well.
FWIW I’m 60, and most of my peers are also late baby boomers.
FWIW I’m 60, and most of my peers are also late baby boomers.
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gracepoole
Guest
You believe that it’s virtually impossible for people to remain celibate when unmarried?
Sounds like you grew up in the quintessential era of sexual freedom while being outside the Church for a long period of time. Perhaps it really shouldn’t be surprising, then, that you see celibacy for the unmarried as you do?
Sounds like you grew up in the quintessential era of sexual freedom while being outside the Church for a long period of time. Perhaps it really shouldn’t be surprising, then, that you see celibacy for the unmarried as you do?
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OraLabora
Guest
Most don’t even want to try, so we can’t know if it is possible or not. They have also, for the most part abandoned the Church or whatever ecclesial community the belonged to.
In my last workplace before I retired, the most respect I got for my faith was from a Muslim woman, which I returned. Certainly not from secular Quebecers.
But then I sympathize with the seculars. The Jansenist Church in Quebec until the 1960s behaved abominably, especially towards women.
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jeannetherese
Guest
We are all recovering sinners. The fact that a person failed to practice continence at one time does not guarantee that this person cannot choose continence in the future. Mitigating factors, such as poor catechesis, may lessen the degree of sin.
On a somewhat different note, you mentioned the Orthodox clergy in previous posts and it is my understanding that married clergy are to abstain from the marital embrace for a period of time prior to their serving in Divine Liturgy.
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