Yes, I am opposed to mandatory celibacy. I have nothing at stake here. It’s just a no brainer to me. You have a priest shortage and a gay subculture. Bring in some good old fashioned heterosexuals.
I think celibacy served a purpose at one time but it’s not working any more. I think the real reason was to avoid problems with property being lost to a priest’s family after he died. Today the Church has to sell off property to pay for lawyers. If you allow priests to be married, those with the gift of celibacy will be content to remain single. There will be many. Trust God with it.
I understand what you’re saying here. But the reality is that celibacy is not a matter of economic expedience or what is culturally appropriate and so forth. It is a matter of a gift that God and the Church give to a man who wants to be a priest. It is a gift that comes with Holy Orders for those in the Latin Rite church, at least for secular men. As I have reminded everyone over and over again, this is non issue for religious congregations and religious orders.
There is also the experience and example of religious congregations and religious orders. Religious have always been celibate. When Pope Gregory made celibacy mandatory for the secular clergy, he was not only dealing with social issues in the Church. He was also very inspired by religious. The number of saints among religious men and women far outnumbers those among the secular clergy. Each of these saints gives testimony to the role of celibate intimacy with Jesus Christ on their journey.
This does not mean that married men and women don’t become saints. There are many. But the fact cannot be denied, the number of religious who are saints is impressive. The goal of the Church is to help people become saints. We have to keep that in mind too. A man becomes a priest to be a saint, not to meet a quota.
The Church understands that the number of priests today is too small to meet the demands of an ever growing Catholic population. The facts are that the number of priests today is equal to that before WW I. The golden era for secular priests was between WW I and the 1960s. Prior to that and today, the larger number of men want to be religious. They do not want to be secular priests. The number of men entering mendicant and monastic orders is on the rise. Look at the following communities: Franciscans of the Renewal, Little Brothers of St. Francis, Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word, Brothers of Charity, Franciscan Brothers of Peace, Brothers of the Poor, Missionaries of Charity, Benedictine Monks, Carthusian Hermits, Dominican Friars, Carmelite Friars.
These communities are reporting an increase in vocations. What is interesting is that the new communities are mostly communities of brothers. The men do not want to be priests. Those brothers who are priests do not work in priestly ministries. In our community, none of our ordained brothers do traditional priestly ministries. They help out in parishes on Sundays, but Monday through Saturday they do everything from pro-life work to janitorial services. Their life is completely dedicated to the community and to the protection of human life. This is the charism of the community.
I recently met a Brother of the Poor who is a priest. He spends his days in the streets of Jamaica feeding kids. He celebrates mass on Sundays and he has never heard confessions in his life and he said that he had baptized two children in his ten years as a priest. His community is committed to the work of the poor and finding Christ in the poor. They are very much like Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Those priests also do very little in parishes.
The issue is not that there is a shortage of priests. There is actually a shortage of parish priests, because religious men who may happen to be priests as well as religious, want to serve God within the charism of their religious life, not in parishes. Very few religious founders wanted their communities to serve in parishes. Parishes have always been the domain of the secular priest. Religious priests volunteered to take over parishes to help the bishops. But those days are coming to an end. The religious men want to remain with their religious community, not the parish laity. The laity will have to respond the the Church’s call to ministry in those roles that do not require Holy Orders. Then we will have enough priests to celebrate the sacraments and perform other ministries that are in keeping with their vocation.
I’m a little confused about what the Church is doing. If they want a celibate priesthood why accept married priests from other denominations? There are also many people within the Church who think it would benefit the Church at this time to allow priests to marry. I see the Church relying more on old habits than trusting in God.
I can see how this is confusing. But in fact, the Church is relying on God. God is sending us these converts. We are receiving them. They come to us with a background in ministry. That’s why we ordain them. They are a gift to the Church.
We have to make sure that we understand that a gift is not the same as the same as the norm. Married men becoming priests is an exception in the Latin Rite.
If you look at the other rites you will find that they do not have that many vocations to the priesthood, even though they can be married before they are ordained. Their monks have more vocations than their dioceses do. It seems that marriage is not a problem for them. Yet, they are not getting the large numbers that they once had.
I hope this helps a little.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
