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Podo2005
Guest
Well… you must have at least some desire/interest in order to be called to the priesthood…
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Friar_David_O.Carm
Guest
If you are a Latin Catholic you can not be called to both marriage and the priesthood.
That is fact.
So you are either called to one or the other.
The true calling to the priesthood comes from the Church when the bishop (or religious superior) calls a man to orders, if that call does not come then he does not have the calling.
The call to the priesthood is not only some personal feeling that we have, it must be backed up by the actual Call from the Church.
If a Latin Catholic is married then his calling is to marriage, if he is not yet feels a call to get married and to the priesthood then he needs to get a good spiritual director and work out where the call really lies.
J
JReducation
Guest
I believe that we must be very careful how we use words. To say that there may be more married priests in the future is one thing. To say that the future of the Church is in the married clergy, is quite another. The latter statement is saying that the Church’s future existence is dependent on what man does. If that were true, we would have to rethink everything that we believe about the Church and the promise that the Church will be here when Christ returns. We don’t have to do anything to prolong her life. That is already promised by Christ.
Is there a possibility that more married men will be ordained to the Latin Rite priesthood? Yes. Is it probable? Remotely.
The largest number of Catholic males is not in the United States or Europe. It is in Latin America and probably Africa. I know very little about African cultures, so I won’t attempt to speak about them. But I know a great deal about South American cultures, having been a missionary in South America for 14 years, before returning to the USA. I can say with certitude that the number of South American men with the kind of faith required to be a priest is negligible. These cultures have their roots in Spanish Catholicism. These men have very long memories of Spanish rule in Latin America and little sympathy for anything that they associate with Spain.
In addition, the Spanish have a blended religious heritage: Catholic, Jewish and Muslim. The Jewish and Muslim influences in Hispanic Catholicism are very visible even in the way that they pray. In these traditions, the transmission of the faith is the role of mothers, not fathers. Therefore, Latin American men often view the transmission of the faith as the role of women.
The idea of the priesthood is not attractive to them for many cultural reasons. Those who become priests are considered very exceptional.
The point is that there is not a large pool of married Catholic men to ordain. The Europeans and North Americans have a stronger Protestant connection. Therefore, we also have been more exposed to married clergy (Protestant), than Latin Americans and Africans. But we don’t have the large numbers of married Catholic men who would be interested in the priesthood.
This is not scientific. I’m speculating. I would venture to guess that the largest group of married Catholic men who support a married Catholic clergy are probably found on CAF. This number is certainly not representative of two-billion Catholics around the world. It’s even a very small number of American Catholic men. How many Catholic males do we have on this forum compared to Catholic females? We have almost 25 million Catholics in the USA and look at the number of men represented here compared to the number of women. This tells us something about the number of Catholic men who that invested in their faith.
Given these reasons, I don’t expect the Roman Church to change her discipline any time soon. In addition that the Roman Church has very strong theological reasons for celibacy that even the Eastern Churches support. The married priests in both east and west that I have met resent being used as pawns in this debate. They feel very strongly about supporting the celibate state of their brother priests. They should not be used as poster boys to undo celibacy among secular priests.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
Is there a possibility that more married men will be ordained to the Latin Rite priesthood? Yes. Is it probable? Remotely.
The largest number of Catholic males is not in the United States or Europe. It is in Latin America and probably Africa. I know very little about African cultures, so I won’t attempt to speak about them. But I know a great deal about South American cultures, having been a missionary in South America for 14 years, before returning to the USA. I can say with certitude that the number of South American men with the kind of faith required to be a priest is negligible. These cultures have their roots in Spanish Catholicism. These men have very long memories of Spanish rule in Latin America and little sympathy for anything that they associate with Spain.
In addition, the Spanish have a blended religious heritage: Catholic, Jewish and Muslim. The Jewish and Muslim influences in Hispanic Catholicism are very visible even in the way that they pray. In these traditions, the transmission of the faith is the role of mothers, not fathers. Therefore, Latin American men often view the transmission of the faith as the role of women.
The idea of the priesthood is not attractive to them for many cultural reasons. Those who become priests are considered very exceptional.
The point is that there is not a large pool of married Catholic men to ordain. The Europeans and North Americans have a stronger Protestant connection. Therefore, we also have been more exposed to married clergy (Protestant), than Latin Americans and Africans. But we don’t have the large numbers of married Catholic men who would be interested in the priesthood.
This is not scientific. I’m speculating. I would venture to guess that the largest group of married Catholic men who support a married Catholic clergy are probably found on CAF. This number is certainly not representative of two-billion Catholics around the world. It’s even a very small number of American Catholic men. How many Catholic males do we have on this forum compared to Catholic females? We have almost 25 million Catholics in the USA and look at the number of men represented here compared to the number of women. This tells us something about the number of Catholic men who that invested in their faith.
Given these reasons, I don’t expect the Roman Church to change her discipline any time soon. In addition that the Roman Church has very strong theological reasons for celibacy that even the Eastern Churches support. The married priests in both east and west that I have met resent being used as pawns in this debate. They feel very strongly about supporting the celibate state of their brother priests. They should not be used as poster boys to undo celibacy among secular priests.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Cowfold
Guest
The major obstacle the Vatican sees in allowing its priests to marry is the financial implications.
Consider the financial burden the CoE carries for its married priests.
Find a route around this obstacle and I am sure you will see a ‘sea change’ in the Vaticans thinking.
Consider the financial burden the CoE carries for its married priests.
Find a route around this obstacle and I am sure you will see a ‘sea change’ in the Vaticans thinking.
J
JReducation
Guest
I disagree. John Paul II’s postsynodal Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis clearly and precisely affirms the choice of celibacy for candidates to the priesthood in the Latin Church and in some of the Oriental Churches, explains the reasons for it, and gives an account of its values. The Church does not create truth. She explores it and interprets it using the tools that she has. What the Church has said about priestly celibacy is not a fabrication for the sake of an economic situation.
The teaching on celibacy is not the idea of one man, but a tradition that can be traced back to Christ. As time passed the tradition became a discipline of the Roman Church and some Oriental Churches too. It had to do with faith, not economics. If we truly love the Church we must always search for the truth that is found in her and remember that even though man can be deceptive, the Church cannot.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Cowfold
Guest
And for how long has celibacy been a requirement in the Catholic Church?
K
KCT
Guest
The Church has survived 2000 years and will continue to survive.
Why do we often think the times we are living in are the worst? The Church has faced greater challenges throughout history.
Why do we often think the times we are living in are the worst? The Church has faced greater challenges throughout history.
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JReducation
Guest
The discipline was canonized about 1,000 years ago. But it was canonized because it had been part of the Roman Catholic Tradition from the first century. By the time it gets canonized, it had become a common practice with a fully developed theological explanation.
When we look at something such as celibacy, we don’t start at the point that it becomes law, we look at its development in order to understand how and why it became law and why the law is sustained.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Cowfold
Guest
That’s an improvement!
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Friar_David_O.Carm
Guest
This thread is starting to feel like a game to me.
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Cowfold
Guest
Are not all the threads a game of one sort or another?
I prefer to consider the posts ‘constructive criticism’.
I prefer to consider the posts ‘constructive criticism’.
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free2pray
Guest
Yet the Scriptures clearly state that a deacon should be the husband of one wife… interesting (1 Tim 3:11-12, Titus 1:6)
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JReducation
Guest
This was included in the letter because it was the practice of the Apostles. We often forget that the Traditions came first and scriptures followed. This is especially true of Reformation Christians. That’s why the concept of celibacy is so difficult for them to comprehend.
But the Apostolic College already had some married Apostles and some celibate. Those who were married had only one wife. They did not remarry, if they were widowed and they were married prior to being called to be Apostles. As part of the process of incorporating the diaconate as one of the orders of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the deacons were to follow the same rules of conduct as the Apostles and the Presbyters of the time. Paul writes this, because there was a question regarding the status of the deacons in relation to the presbyters and the Apostles. Paul is writing what the Apostles already believed and practiced.
There were two parts to this belief. One was that those who were married were not to remarry. The other was that those who were not married should not want to be married, unless they beleive that a life of continence is going to beyond their human ability. Paul mentions this in several writings, in writings to widows and to those who were single.
While John did not write specifically about celibacy, the early Fathers who knew him wrote about his chosen state of celibacy as a discipline that he embraced according to the counsel of Jesus that some are eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom, let him who has ears, let him hear.
We see in Titus and other Pauline letters as well as the writings of the Fathers and those of the Desert Fathers the early tradition of celibacy, which took two forms: those who never married and those who were celibate after they were widowed. In the east, the latter became the usual practice, though they have a large tradition of monsticism that was not always religious life as we know it today. The early Desert Fathers were celibate and many, not all, were in orders (not religious orders, those came later with Benedict and Basil). The first Desert fathers were secular men, some ordained and some lay. It is later that Benedict and Basil organize them into the first vowed communities. That’s when we see the separation between the secular priest and religious.
In Mystical Theology we believe that this may have been a direct influence of the Carmelites who already existed as secular celibate hermits, many of whom were ordained. But the Carmelite movement was not well organized. So it takes Benedict to separate the secular from the vowed. Nonetheless, by the time that Benedict creates the first official religious houses in the west and Basil in the east, there was already a celibate tradition in the Church. As I said, Mystical Theology believes that this may have predated the Apostles. It may go back to Carmel, practiced by John the Baptist, by Jesus and later by some of the Apostles and even some deacons. For example, Mystical Tradition suggests that deacons Jason and Stephen were celibate. There is no reference in the early writings of Luke or the Fathers that make mention of family. The references always mention their complete dedication to the service of the bishops. It is possible that some of these deacons were selected from among single men to allow them to travel with the missionary bishops, remembering that the role of the deacon is to be at the service of the bishop.
By the time we finish the first millenium, the discipline is well engrained in the religious life, but also among the secular clergy of the Western Church. What may have happened in the East is not a rejection of celibacy, but that the mystical life took a different course. We can see this in the celebration of the litrugy. The differences in rites certain support the theory that the mystical life of the the different Churches took different routes and different expressions. As we say in Mystical Theology, the mystical experience gives birth the different forms of asceticism and the other way around too.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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free2pray
Guest
*“We often forget that the Traditions came first and scriptures followed.” * Respectfully, this seems to be revisionist history. The scriptures are the “tradition” that the apostles delivered to us and no record of any other tradition is given that is from the original Apostles themselves, merely from individuals who said they had received such from those who had received from the apostles (except for Polycarp, and Clement perhaps) . Others came along and wrote works such as the Acts of Paul and put words into the mouths of the apostles who seemed to preach a gospel that had to do with celibacy as much as the cross, if not more (Acts of Paul 2:5-6). Since we know that the scriptures are inspired and are from God through the Apostles themselves we must weigh all else in light of it especially oral tradition or even recorded tradition. traditions evolve over time and often contradict what was commanded in the Bible. Let us not do what the pharisees did, so foolishly, when they added to the scripture the traditions of men.This was included in the letter because it was the practice of the Apostles. We often forget that the Traditions came first and scriptures followed. This is especially true of Reformation Christians. That’s why the concept of celibacy is so difficult for them to comprehend.
…
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
This is not to say that Catholics don’t have something that is honorable when they facilitate those who wish to give everything they have to God in order to serve him better. Most Protestants have no structure in place to assist those who wish to live a monastic life. However, celibacy is by no means a requirement to serve God completely. I have seen many Christian couples who serve God in ministry, on the Mission field, or in some other work, and have been effective in their efforts to minister the Gospel.
J
JReducation
Guest
There are two points that I want to clarify for you. I think that we’re saying the same thing, but using the words differently. When Catholics say that Tradition came before the Bible we mean that everything that was written in the Bible was handed down by word of mouth from the apostles to their disciples who then wrote. The only original apostles to write Gospels were Matt and John. Mark’s Gospel was written by a scribe named John-Mark, believed to be a disciple of Peter. Luke’s Gospel was written by Luke, a disciple of Paul. Luke also wrote Acts. Paul was not an original disciple either. Christ converted him on the Rd. to Damascus and he learned the faith from the Church through word of mouth. He wrote his letters as he went along. Peter, James, Jude and John also wrote letters. John also wrote the Book of Revelation. Someone else, unknown to us, wrote the first chapter of the Gospel of John. We know that it was added later, but not much later than 10 years after it was written.
The Old Testament was not compiled at the time of Christ’s resurrection and ascension. They were many scrolls scattered all over Palestine after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. But the Jews had many of the pieces and had much of it committed to memory and were able to reconstruct it. Thus by about 100 AD the NT as we know it today appeared. The early Christians, being Jews, had access to these writings as well as these teachings that were taught by word of mouth when the writings were unavailable.
Tradition is the spoken message that came in words and actions from the Prophets, Patriarchs, Kings, and the Apostles which tell us about Jesus Christ. That message was committed to writing by the end of the first century. That’s what we mean when we say that Tradition came first. The bible did not write itself. It was inspired by God. But the words came from the spoken teachings of the Apostles and those who came before them and their own disciples. Some of the NT writings were written by a second generation, as we can see with Mark, Luke and the Prologue of John. It took about 60 years to put together the bible as we know it. And since they did not have printing presses, there was another challenge; the first couple of generations of Christians had to memorize the teachings in the scriptures while copies were hand-made. They could not wait for the monks to copy the scriptures in order to go out and preach.
The early Fathers memorized and taught the faith. But their memory was protected by the Promise of Christ that the Gates of Hell would never prevail against the Church. Thus the early Fathers were able to memorize what they had learned from the Apostles and the written scriptures and were able to pass it along without error. That’s the second half of Tradition. Once things were written, they still had to be memorized until copies could be made. The work of preaching could not wait.
Celibacy is a different matter. It dates back to Christ and some of the Apostles as well as many who followed the apostles. This is tradition with a lower case “t”. The reason for that is as you have pointed out; celibacy is not an absolute need for holiness. In our history there have been many married saints. However, celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, as Christ speaks about it in the Gospels and as Paul speaks in his letters, enhances the spiritual life.
I can say from personal experience that it is a liberating experience where God becomes the only lover and you the beloved. For example, I as a celibate religious live for Christ and find Christ in solitude, silence, prayer and service, whereas the married person finds Christ through his spouse and his children. The celibate person freely gives up the right to marry and have children and seeks to find God without the exclusive love that comes with marriage and family. He finds God in his solitude, as Christ found the Father by being alone. The scriptures often remind us that Christ would go alone to be with the Father. This is what the celibate man does. He lives his life alone with the Father. This is a free choice, not a demand that anyone places on us.
I hope this helps.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Loboto-Me
Guest
Br JR,
I don’t know if it helped free2pray but that surely helped me. You explained it well and I didn’t even have to go do the studies myself.
I’m going to copy and paste your post into my “special catholic folder” to remember your post… and should anyone need to know how the Bible was all put together here, I’ll direct them to your post for sure
Thank you
I don’t know if it helped free2pray but that surely helped me. You explained it well and I didn’t even have to go do the studies myself.
I’m going to copy and paste your post into my “special catholic folder” to remember your post… and should anyone need to know how the Bible was all put together here, I’ll direct them to your post for sure
Thank you
S
spn82756
Guest
Why not? Are not Eastern Catholic Rite priests married? Even if it is before becoming priests?
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spn82756
Guest
I’m not trying to argue…but that statement seems to mean that Eastern Rite Catholics have a different type of calling?
J
JReducation
Guest
That is exactly what it means. That’s the position of the Holy See. Christ calls men to the priesthood in the Roman Church who are called to celibacy.
The Eastern Rites Catholics are not part of the Roman Church. We have to get over the Roman Catholic label. We are Catholics and one of the Churches is the Roman Church. I believe that this is the confusion. Many people think of Eastern Rite Catholics as being part of the Roman Catholic Church. They are independent Churches in union with Rome. That’s a big difference. There are some rites within the Roman Church. That’s another difference. Finally, there aer the Orthodox Churches, which are true Churches that are in sacramental union with Rome, but not physical union.
To each Church Christ calls men according to their tradition and gives them the gifts to exercise the priesthood accordingly. While Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics and Orthodox Christians all share in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ, which is one. There is diversity in the call according to the identity of the Church. There is one priesthood, but men in different circumstances being called.
Even in the Eastern and Orthodox Churches, there is diversity among them. Not all have a married clergy. Some have a celibate clergy. Some have both secular priests and regular priests. Regular priests are always celibate, because they are religiuos. Bishops can be either secular or religious, but they must be celibate. Christ does not call married men to be bishops.
The question is why did he do it once and not now? The answer is, the Church has the power to bind and unbind. Whatever the Church binds on earth, Christ binds in heaven.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF :0
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