I don’t think it’s unfair. Marriage & Holy Orders are both sacraments.Both require duty, honor,trust,faith & sacrifice.If you can’t be trusted in one you shouldn’t attempt the other.
As a religious brother, I agree with Father. I’m not a priest, I’m a brother and we make solemn vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.
Men who become brothers and men who become priests are called by Christ to two very different commitments. Both require fidelity, sacrifice, sincerity, and perfect charity. But the expression of these virtues is very different, because the context is different.
A secular priest lives independently. A religious brother is part of a community. The context alone makes the exercise of the virtues different, because the demands are different. A secular priest does not have to put up with a confrere who is difficult or a superior who is inflexible. A religious brother does not have to put up with loneliness, because he lives in community or worry about his retirement as does a diocesan priest. He has the experience of intimacy with those who are called to the same life and he never retires. When he gets old, the younger brothers take care of him.
Given this scenario, most secular priests will tell you that they would struggle as brothers and most brothers would say that they would struggle as priests. Besides the context being different, the call is different. Thus the lifestyle and its demands are different.
The same applies to marriage. The context and the demands are different, even if the virtues are the same.
In each context the virtues are expressed differently, these include the evangelical counsels. A religious brother is bound by vows to live the evangelical counsels. A secular diocesan priest or secular priest in a secular institute such as FSSP does not vow to live the evangelical counsels. A married person does not vow to live the evangelical counsels.
However, all of them must live by the evangelical counsels, but each according to their state in life. For the brothers, the evangelical counsels define his bond with God and man.
This is why the analogy between Holy Orders and Marriage does not work. The context and the vows are different. The relationships are different. The priesthood does not have vows, marriage does. Start there. Secular priest promise obedience to their bishop and celibacy. These are not solemn vows. Marriage has solemn vows that cannot be dispensed, even by the Church.
In fact, marriage has more in common with religious life than it does with the priesthood. Religious do live in families and are called to build intimate communities of brothers or sisters. Like married people, they are not autonomous, but become one with their brothers or sisters in community. Yet, there is a difference between the context of the religious and that of the married person.
That’s why some dispensed priests make very good husbands and fathers as do renegade priests. They are in different contexts with different expressions of fidelity, commitment and perfect charity.
I hope this helps.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
