Curiosity question about holy orders

  • Thread starter Thread starter victrolatim
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
V

victrolatim

Guest
Suppose a man enters into marriage and his spouse passes away or the marriage is later annulled. Is he free to enter the seminary/be ordained? What if said fellow has children?
 
I know both priests and deacons who have been ordained after an annulment. Up to the local bishop, though. An obligation to support minor children would seem to be a big contraindication to priestly ordination, however. The presumption would be that a married deacon would be supporting children anyway, though. A neighboring diocese will not accept as a deacon candidate someone who has been through an annulment, even if he is remarried in the Church and in a stable marriage.
 
victrolatim said:
Suppose a man enters into marriage and his spouse passes away or the marriage is later annulled. Is he free to enter the seminary/be ordained? What if said fellow has children?
Click to expand...
Yes - provided the children are no longer dependent on him. A friend of mine who is due to be ordained a priest in a couple of months time is a widower with three adult children. Admittedly, it’s not all that common but it does happen.
 
The lack of priests crisis is going to grow - especially here in Europe.

Why not have retired, married men, of good standing etc become priests if they felt they had a vocation?
 
eamonnroma said:
The lack of priests crisis is going to grow - especially here in Europe.

Why not have retired, married men, of good standing etc become priests if they felt they had a vocation?
Click to expand...
Why not indeed?

I think in time - it might be a long time, another generation or so, but definitely eventually - the discipline of celibacy for the clergy will be if not abandoned altogether, but considerably relaxed. I’m not saying this is good or bad, but what is basically a spiralling manpower crisis in the Church on a practical level isn’t helped by ruling out most of the potential workforce!
 
eamonnroma said:
The lack of priests crisis is going to grow - especially here in Europe.

Why not have retired, married men, of good standing etc become priests if they felt they had a vocation?
Click to expand...
Ordaining married men shouldn’t be seen as a “solution” to what is really an identity (or lack thereof) crisis. Granted, I could definitely see a role for older married men to play in ministry but that said, the Western Church basically has no tradition of married priests and so would be in unchartered territory as far as many pastoral and theological aspects go (such as the role of the priest’s wife - which is quite a complex issue in some protestant denomiations)
 
I would rather see a standardization throughout the whole apostolic church community.

Let married men be ordained to the diocesan priesthood. This is the general rule throughout the Catholic/Orthodox world, and only the Latin church is oddball in this area.

Let no married men be consecrated as bishop.

If a man is single when ordained to the priesthood, let him not marry; and

If a married priest’s wife dies before he does, he may not remarry (as is the case with deacons).

There are current variations of course, but these would bring the Latin church’s practice into greater consistency with the praxis of other churches.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top