Celibacy: east vs. west

[Layman]

So those Roman Catholic priests, who are married, are converts? That gives a different picture to saying “The Church has had married clergy since its’ beginning…” As I understand it, the norm is that a Roman Catholic married man cannot be ordained. Nor can he marry after ordination.

As to scandal, having a ‘Mrs. Priest’ would lead to more gossip in the parish e.g. “How are they getting on these days?” “Did you hear about what one of their kids did?” “I hear Mrs. Priest has filed for a civil divorce.” “Our priest is a cuckold” etc.. I don’t want to be reading about Catholic priests the same sort of things that British tabloids used to write about Anglican vicars.

Celibacy gets respect. Even the Orthodox only ordain celibate monks as bishops, so they recognise its value.

Married priests would add more upset added to our Church at a time when we really don’t need any more. I don’t see any benefit to the Church as a whole but it would greatly cheer progressives. I also recall chatting to an Anglican in a pub who took great delight in telling me that we would surely have them in due course, along with all the other Protestant follies; women priests, gay bishops and the like. If you look at what Catholics have done to their practices post-1940, it’s not as ludicrous as it might seem e.g. Who’d have thought priests would be taking sledgehammers to their altars? That the host would be handled by the laity? Yet it happened. And it seemed perfectly reasonable. That’s the kicker.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

Hi JR, That’s fine as far as it goes, but what are we to make of the cases where a person is interested in holy orders but gets refused more than once, then finally finds a home later through dogged persistence? Does the initial refusal (or several refusals) mean God was not calling him? Or does his own dogged persistence mean God actually was calling him after all? I don’t think this idea was thought through very well.

This is easy, God was calling them to where they ended up, not to where they thought they should be.

Then there is the case of the unworthy who have been accepted by the church and given Holy Orders, among whom were heretics and morally corrupt (some of whom eventually became bishops), are we to say God must have called them because the church accepted them? God called Father Martin Luther? God called Archbishop Milingo? God called Father Marcial Maciel?

God Calls, what we do with that Call or after that Call is on us, not God.

Do not forget, Jesus called Judas to be an Apostle.

 

[Hesychios]

This is easy, God was calling them to where they ended up, not to where they thought they should be.

I can’t help but get the impression that this is circular reasoning.

 

[Hesychios]

So those Roman Catholic priests, who are married, are converts? That gives a different picture to saying “The Church has had married clergy since its’ beginning…”

Taken as a whole, east and west together, there has never been a time when the Catholic church has had no married priests, and it really has never brought harm.

If the laity would find a married priest at the altar scandalous, it would seem that they have a personal problem and really deserve better catechesis. Perhaps the allowing of convert priests in the beginning is the first step in a process of familiarizing the community with this ancient and venerable practice. There have always been married priests somewhere in the church (although it was suppressed in the west for a time), these men are and always have been real priests confecting real sacraments of God. It is not actually an east-west thing because the Latin church originally had married priests (the subject of this thread is a misnomer) and it is the older Tradition.

The people’s focus should be on the sacrament, and the church does not distinguish between sacraments confected by married or single priests. To the church standing before the throne of God it is all the same.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

I can’t help but get the impression that this is circular reasoning.

I do not see it as such.

Many people claim a call from God, such as women who want to be priests, but with out the actual Call from the Church there is no call from God.

About those who ended up heretics. God Called them to be priests and such, where they went with it after that was their distorted free will which lead them away from the Church and, in essence, their Call.

 

[notredame_999]

having made the thread and reserached the issue deeply, i just want to make a few points.

1. As much as I would like it to sometimes, the church will never change on mandatory celibacy in the latin rite and this is something I have to deal with. The church is not a democracy and that is a good thing because if it were we would all be arians right now. This is because it has been a nearly 900 year old tradition, and as stated by a previous poster, changing the discipline will be seen as a surrender to the sexual revolution and a concession to the progressives. Another reason that hasn’t really been mentioned is money. Part of being a catholic priest is exemplifying holiness. A married priesthood would mean living a chaste marriage free from artifical contraception. That could mean a family blessed with an abudnace of children. The financial cost for the church would be tremendous unless parishes started tithing similar to protestant congregations.
2. However, what I do have a problem with is how people have stated that celibacy is freely chosen by the priest. It seems like to me celibacy is a condition for ordination that some priests who want to be married have subjected themselves to out of obedience. If priests had the option of being both married and a priest, how many would freely choose celibacy? This is how I would view my vocation if I entered the priesthood. I recently emailed a vocation director and asked him bluntly if I disagreed with mandatory celibacy and instead favored the eastern christian view of it, but was willing to subject myself to it anyway could I be accepted? In addition I asked him if I could be accepted if I believe celibacy was a way of carrying one’s cross? He replied that if I believe celibacy was a way of carrying one’s cross I would not fit in at the seminary. I was perplexed at his answer because how is celibacy not a way of carrying one’s cross? Isn’t sacrificing marriage, children, romance, sex, grandchildren, a way of carrying one’s cross?

 

[GaryTaylor]

Certainly would be interesting to survey a subject group of Catholic Priests. I’d imagine that this differs from person to perosn with age and sexual drive. Lot of variables involved.

 

[Thomas_Casey]

There is a problem on this thread that I’m going to ask everyone to work at fixing. I’m hoping that this will be voluntary.

While there may be many opinions on this subject, there is only one opinion that counts. That is the opinion of the Holy See. As a forum dedicated to the discussion of Catholic Tradition, I am asking everyone to refrain from judging or contradicting the position of the Holy See and Church Law on this matter.

You may explain the differences in requirements, as stated in the title of the thread, how those differences came about, how they influence the growth of the Western and Oriental Churches and anything that is related to the differences and overlaps between East and West on this issue.

Please, limit your comments to statements that reflect respect for and obedience to the laws of the Church as they stand, not as you wish them to be. If you want to discuss what you wish the law to be, do not do it on Traditional Catholicism. This is not the forum for it. I’m asking you to do this voluntarilly before arguments and offensive remarks start to fly, especially offensive remarks toward the Church and her hierarchy.

Part of moderating this forum is protecting everything that is part of the Catholic Church. I would be irresponsible not to do so.

Thank You

Thomas Casey
Moderator

 

[Layman]

Here’s an idea. There are men who:

1. Want to be priests i.e. to serve God selflessly;
2. Don’t want to marry;
3. Are not overwhelmed by lust either.

Folks, it can be done! What’s funny to me is the attitude that it’s impossible, unnatural or a terrible burden i.e. that all men are sex beasts at heart, or something.

*Whisper it: *perhaps saintliness is quite common, too, or even there for the asking, for people who think they can’t possibly be continent.

 

[diggerdomer]

So those Roman Catholic priests, who are married, are converts? That gives a different picture to saying “The Church has had married clergy since its’ beginning…” As I understand it, the norm is that a Roman Catholic married man cannot be ordained. Nor can he marry after ordination.

As to scandal, having a ‘Mrs. Priest’ would lead to more gossip in the parish e.g. “How are they getting on these days?” “Did you hear about what one of their kids did?” “I hear Mrs. Priest has filed for a civil divorce.” “Our priest is a cuckold” etc.. I don’t want to be reading about Catholic priests the same sort of things that British tabloids used to write about Anglican vicars.

Celibacy gets respect. Even the Orthodox only ordain celibate monks as bishops, so they recognise its value.

Married priests would add more upset added to our Church at a time when we really don’t need any more. I don’t see any benefit to the Church as a whole but it would greatly cheer progressives. I also recall chatting to an Anglican in a pub who took great delight in telling me that we would surely have them in due course, along with all the other Protestant follies; women priests, gay bishops and the like. If you look at what Catholics have done to their practices post-1940, it’s not as ludicrous as it might seem e.g. Who’d have thought priests would be taking sledgehammers to their altars? That the host would be handled by the laity? Yet it happened. And it seemed perfectly reasonable. That’s the kicker.

Not converts, strictly speaking, but rather those who joined the full communion of the Catholic Church. “Converts” strictly speaking refer to those not baptized who are initiated into the Christian Church.

The Catholic Church has always had married priests, so there’s not need to think such would cause more upset.

 

[diggerdomer]

having made the thread and reserached the issue deeply, i just want to make a few points.

1. As much as I would like it to sometimes, the church will never change on mandatory celibacy in the latin rite and this is something I have to deal with. The church is not a democracy and that is a good thing because if it were we would all be arians right now. This is because it has been a nearly 900 year old tradition, and as stated by a previous poster, changing the discipline will be seen as a surrender to the sexual revolution and a concession to the progressives. Another reason that hasn’t really been mentioned is money. Part of being a catholic priest is exemplifying holiness. A married priesthood would mean living a chaste marriage free from artifical contraception. That could mean a family blessed with an abudnace of children. The financial cost for the church would be tremendous unless parishes started tithing similar to protestant congregations.
2. However, what I do have a problem with is how people have stated that celibacy is freely chosen by the priest. It seems like to me celibacy is a condition for ordination that some priests who want to be married have subjected themselves to out of obedience. If priests had the option of being both married and a priest, how many would freely choose celibacy? This is how I would view my vocation if I entered the priesthood. I recently emailed a vocation director and asked him bluntly if I disagreed with mandatory celibacy and instead favored the eastern christian view of it, but was willing to subject myself to it anyway could I be accepted? In addition I asked him if I could be accepted if I believe celibacy was a way of carrying one’s cross? He replied that if I believe celibacy was a way of carrying one’s cross I would not fit in at the seminary. I was perplexed at his answer because how is celibacy not a way of carrying one’s cross? Isn’t sacrificing marriage, children, romance, sex, grandchildren, a way of carrying one’s cross?

1. Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see where the Spirit guides us.
2. Those seeking ordination the Roman Rite know the criteria, so yes, it’s freely chosen.

 

[Layman]

Not converts, strictly speaking, but rather those who joined the full communion of the Catholic Church. “Converts” strictly speaking refer to those not baptized who are initiated into the Christian Church.

The Catholic Church has always had married priests, so there’s not need to think such would cause more upset.

• Sorry, I’ve always understood that Protestants who convert to Catholicism are … converts!
• Married Roman Catholic priests becoming normal, not causing upset? It would send a very clear signal that, once again, the Roman Catholic church would be compromising with the World. Celibacy too much for you? There there, we’ll change the rule.

Shall we have married monks and nuns as well?

I very much doubt that, celibacy being esteemed by Heaven, that the Holy Ghost will guide the Church to change the rule, but that other Spirit (of Vatican II), might encourage such ideas amongst some of the faithful.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

Apparently the early church did not see it this way at all, because it was known for bishops to be married and have children. What this points out to me is that the Apostles did not pass this instruction of celibacy on to the bishops. It is more likely that we are reading this charism of celibacy back into past, a conceivable “what might have been” being mistaken for what was.
Absolutely.
In the west, celibacy was optional for hundreds of years, and was only mandated in fits and starts across western Europe over a several hundred year period. In the formative seminal years of Christianity in the west celibacy was not mandatory, so I don’t see how it could be any less Roman if the rules were changed back.

Hesychios,

I picked your post to chime in on because I think it strikes closest to the untouched issue in the whole debate - continence. You point out that the Apostles did not pass on any instructions about mandatory celibacy, but it was certainly the belief of the early West (and, most likely, the early East) that the Apostles had instituted the discipline of perpetual continence for clerics. Cdl. Stickler is only one of several scholars who have made the historical argument that, while both East and West had married clerics, the oldest verifiable practice is for those clerics to pledge perpetual continence within the married state. It was only in, IIRC, the 5th/6th century that the East first allowed its married clerics to exercise only “levitical” continence, whereby they need only abstain from relations for the period of their service at the altar. The reason the West eventually mandated celibacy for its clerics was not the gradual influence of religious upon the secular clergy but the great difficulty of living out continence within marriage. So the timeline of the West is, by our best reconstruction:

1. celibate and married priests, all held to perpetual continence and continuing in their state in life as (otherwise) normal
2. celibate and married priests, all held to perpetual continence, with the married priests required to separate domiciles from their wives to avoid the temptation of violating the required continence
3. celibate priests only, because married priests simply could not, as a group, adequately observe mandatory continence

The present acceptance of Latin non-continent married priests and deacons is unheard of in history (though a search of these forums will reveal a debate over whether our married clerics are not in fact still bound to perpetual continence - the bald meaning of the present canon on the matter).

---

Two other things bear mentioning in the debate over celibacy/continence. First, the OP noted that the idea of sexual relations rendering one unclean for service at the altar as outmoded, but ought to note that the East still holds to that belief, even with their married clerics. Here I mean to assert no particular theology behind the discipline, only to note that the practice still maintains that priests are expected to abstain from relations the night (or several nights? Hesychios might help here) before celebrating the Divine Liturgy.

Secondly, it is also false to consider mandatory celibacy a peculiarity of the West. As has been noted, Eastern bishops are taken only from the monks. The East may have set the bar a bit lower, but it still regards celibacy as the superior condition for priests and accordingly takes its high priests only from those ranks. But what if a married Eastern priest “knows” he is called to be a bishop? Latins have already argued, in part, from the necessity of an exterior call from the visible Church. How would an Easterner reply to the charge that his church is/may be unjustly excluding married men whom God has called to a certain grade of orders? The question of celibacy is not absent from the Eastern context, it is just relocated and, apparently, largely unevaluated.

 

[Shin]

A good book to read on this subject is Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler’s ‘The Case for Clerical Celibacy’. It is short, easy to read, and goes into the true history of clerical celibacy, and so is key towards understanding just how much high regard for it East and West there is. I highly recommend it as a purchase for anyone at all interested in the matter.

 

[Hesychios]

A good book to read on this subject is Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler’s ‘The Case for Clerical Celibacy’. It is short, easy to read, and goes into the true history of clerical celibacy, and so is key towards understanding just how much high regard for it East and West there is. I highly recommend it as a purchase for anyone at all interested in the matter.

Here is an Eastern Catholic reflection on the work of Cardinal Stickler.

 

[Shin]

Here is an Eastern Catholic reflection on the work of Cardinal Stickler.

Link makes a flatly false statement about the written evidence and tries to run with it. I highly doubt the accuracy of a good deal of what else it says too.

‘This therefore I say, brethren; the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none;’

1 Corinthians 7:29

Book is all the more worthwhile for the read I must say to see such opposition to it.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

Link makes a flatly false statement about the written evidence and tries to run with it. I highly doubt the accuracy of a good deal of what else it says too.

‘This therefore I say, brethren; the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none;’

1 Corinthians 7:29

Book is all the more worthwhile for the read I must say to see such opposition to it.

And what is the “flatly false statement”?

And may I also request your creditentials? I am aware of Dr Dragani’s. Just so that I can weigh the comments accordingly.

 

[otjm]

Here is an Eastern Catholic reflection on the work of Cardinal Stickler.

Wow!

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

Cdl. Stickler certainly does overreach by claiming to have proven the Apostolic origins of clerical continence, but Dr. Dragani’s critique is quite weak on certain points. Before hitting those we ought to point out that he concedes the origins of clerical continence in the fourth century - despite having led off the article with the implication that Cdl. Stickler’s deviation from most secular historians’ pegging of celibacy’s high medieval origins ought to make his conclusions suspect. There are, however, more substantive problems.

1. Dr. Dragani points out that the rationale of the late antique requirements of continence would logically extend to extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. He seems not to care that the incoherence of the widely criticized institution of EMHCs is a) quite irrelevant to the history of the practice, and b) but one more ground for many proponents of clerical continence to advocate removing the modern innovation, not the historical discipline.
2. He also pooh-poohs the notion of ritual purity with the help of a feminist theologian, with the implication that clerical continence was an attempt for ecclesiastical elites to maintain control of ritual action, all the while ignoring the fact, as I mentioned above, that the Eastern practice still effectively accepts the notion of ritual purity. East and West agree that clerics must abstain from relations before serving at the altar - the West simply expects its clerics to serve far more frequently.
3. Dr. Dragani seems to be unaware of the historical development of law. In antiquity and the middle ages, the drafting of legislation was not a creative process meant to impose new order for the benefit of a community. Instead, lawgiving was considered the codification of longstanding custom when the details of that custom came to be disputed. In this sense legislation and adjudication were closely related - communities appealed to lawgivers for, essentially, an authoritative interpretation and thus delineation of the custom already in place. It is on the basis of this juridical/canonical phenomenon that Cdl. Stickler - a highly renowned canonist by training - seeks to make his case. Now, it must be admitted that early Christians were fond of ascribing apostolicity where none existed, but the claim at the very least establishes perfect continence as immemorial custom, which even taking the later dating for the specific canon of Elvira would get us to around a.d. 300. Furthermore, from the fact that the bishops make no mention of abrogating a competing custom to their chosen one, it can be assumed that no competing custom (one allowing clerics marital relations) was known to the 4th century bishops of the West.
4. This same argument could be used to show that, since the bishops in Trullo also appeal to apostolic discipline for their own decision, theirs also must be an immemorial custom. But Dr. Dragani’s treatment of the synod in Trullo makes some omissions. First, he fails to mention the earlier Eastern witnesses to continence asserted by Cdl. Stickler - these are admittedly few, but at the very least provide evidence of a competing, even if not dominant, custom of continence in the East. This was not the only discipline they knew. Secondly, he gives no weight to the fact that the Western tradition can be pinned down as immemorial custom a full 300 years prior to the Eastern. That makes a big difference when it comes to claims of apostolic authority. Most importantly, however, Cdl. Stickler deals with one of the prime authorities cited by the Easterners for clerics exercising rights of marriage, namely Paphnutius, the authenticity of which has been disproven. “Paphnutius” was invented to persuade the legitimization of what is now Eastern practice. One would expect Dr. Dragani to take issue with this critical element of the Cardinal’s argument if, in fact, Paphnutius were at least a probably authentic source.

On the whole, then, Dr. Dragani’s critique is underwhelming. It is true that Cdl. Stickler overreaches what his sources can definitively establish. But Dr. Dragani fails even to engage, let alone discredit, the three linchpins of his opponent’s argument:

1. the nature of legislation provides historical evidence that clerical continence was the unchallenged, immemorial custom of the 4th century West,
2. this custom was corroborated by a few Eastern sources (and here since I’m working from memory I can’t tell you just how respectable they are - this is the weakest part of my own presentation),

and 3) the synod that came several centuries after this evidence was persuaded to its position in large part by a forgery.

 

[otjm]

East and West agree that clerics must abstain from relations before serving at the altar - the West simply expects its clerics to serve far more frequently.

If you are saying what I think you are saying, ROFL!

1. the nature of legislation provides historical evidence that clerical continence was the unchallenged, immemorial custom of the 4th century West,

The custom, or a significant custom? It would seem, since this issue at least in the West was periodically surfacing, that while there was a custom of priests being celibate, it certainly would appear that there was a continual and not insignificant number of married priests; else why would the issue surface?

The Cardinal’s work seems to be one of attempting to prove not only the impossible, but the unnecessary. Celibacy for priests and bishops goes back to the earliest times; and it would appear that a married clergy does likewise. Setting aside the issue of continence before Mass, ( and there is a blog concerning the Canon law code as it would seem to apply to deacons in the Roman rite), a general rule is that if something is not broken, most people don’t go around fixing it. Accepting for the moment your comment about how early legislation should be viewed, it still appears that throughout history, there were numerous clergy who were married and not totally continent, and that legistlation was sporadic (and obviously not all pervasive in its adherence).

The Church professes that celibacy in the priesthood is a discipline. The Cardinal seems to want to take it to a doctrinal level, which leads me to ask what the driving force is behind it; that is, he appears not to be researching to find what happened, but rather researching from a polemical standpoint.