Fr. Z--Predictions for 2018

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angel12 said:
Of course, that will depend in part on your definition of “liberal Catholic.” I know quite a few Catholics who are, aside from abortion, well toward what many would call “left” socially (support environmental protections, raising the minimum wage, maintaining safety nets such as medicaid, etc.). Not a single one has any antipathy toward the EF, the rosary, devotion to saints. . .
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Yeah, the people I know are probably all over the map politically.
But everybody is fine with, say, lighting a candle in front of St. Therese, and if they themselves don’t care to say the rosary, they don’t bug me about why I say mine.
 
angel12 said:
” I know quite a few Catholics who are, aside from abortion, well toward what many would call “left” socially (support environmental protections, raising the minimum wage, maintaining safety nets such as medicaid, etc.)
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The left does a bad job with all of these things. @PRMerger @Tis_Bearself
 
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The left does a bad job supporting environmental protections? How so?
 
Sometimes they do bad, sometimes they do good. Sometimes the right does bad, sometimes the right does good. This is why I don’t feel that a party affiliation should mean you are married to supporting every single thing that party does forever.
 
That’s another common misconception of the married priesthood.

The Church doesnt need to pay them a fill time salary or take care of their familied.

In the Orthodox Churches the married priests work and function as priests part time.

All the arguments against married Roman priests strike me as shallow and mere cop outs.

I pray I will see married Roman priests in my lifetime.
 
Too many of them don’t understand incentive and adoption. It’s all about the concept of “saving the world” and results don’t matter.
 
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You may see married Roman priests in your lifetime, but given the sizes of the parish (or multiple parishes) they need to administer, it would be nigh impossible for them to be working a day job for money to care for their families while still fulfilling their duties as a priest. It would be basically asking a guy to take on two very demanding jobs, which is not going to appeal to anybody.

I’m also not sure if there would be expectations for the married priest’s wife to be involved in her husband’s ministry somehow, which might put a damper on her having a well-paying job that could pay the family expenses while husband serves as a priest.
 
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Not really a fan of Catholics trying so hard to be ‘cool’, hence the term hipster. They are not any better than the rest. I follow the author of that book and he’s not fond of trads, to put it mildly. he is in fact rather patronizing. I am not a trad nor a hipster but I like the Montfort consecration as well.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
You may see married Roman priests in your lifetime, but given the sizes of the parish (or multiple parishes) they need to administer, it would be nigh impossible for them to be working a day job for money to care for their families while still fulfilling their duties as a priest. It would be basically asking a guy to take on two very demanding jobs, which is not going to appeal to anybody.
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If it’s nigh impossible, then why do hundreds of married priests do it today in the Eastern Churches in America alone? It may be thousands as well.

The married priesthood functions differently from the celibate priesthood.

I’m getting pretty tired of hearing these arguments against it. They are mere arguments based on ignorance, nothing more.
 
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Can you give a more concrete example of what you mean (as far as the left doing a bad job supporting environmental protections)?
 
I’m almost tempted to post a few pictures of our recently built (within the last year) and pretty liberal parish. It’s actually very beautiful. They did somewhat in the mission revival style - not particularly ornate, but with clean white lines and natural wood accents. The overall effect is quite elegant. We were also fortunate enough that our archdiocese had some stained glass windows from a parish that had been closed down, which were restored and installed.

I expect many newer parishes simply don’t have the funds to match the old ornate parishes. And upkeep is often expensive - we have an episcopal parish in the area that is really struggling, because some old stonework cracked and it’s extremely difficult to replace.
 
There’s so many abandoned old churches around Europe. It’s sad that they are just sitting there collecting dust while other more modern churches are being built.

We once had a married priest in our small town. He was a former Anglican pastor I believe. His wife and daughters would always come to mass with veils on (first time I ever witnessed that, to my confusion) and the sons would be impeccably dressed. I believe he sported a cassock, too. I always remembered him as being very reverent. His sermons were always very thoughtful and taught me something new most every time.

That being said, I personally do not think celibacy should go. What should be done is something to encourage vocations, something like Lincoln, Nebraska is doing.
 
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My Catholic friends and I are pretty hip even though we are way too old (and fat) for the skinny pants (I do have Dad’s old fedoras which I have been wearing off and on since the early 80s) and we all thought the book was hilariously stupid. I did not buy it, I found it in a search looking for a completely different Catholic book on saints.

The Montfort consecration is hardly a “forgotten prayer”. More people are consecrating themselves to Mary than I’ve seen in decades. I’m not sure all of them fully appreciate what they are doing when they do it, but they’re doing it nonetheless.
 
No offense, but a female blogger known as Catholic in Brooklyn has been critical of Father Z. Please be charitable in replying to this post of mine.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m also not sure if there would be expectations for the married priest’s wife to be involved in her husband’s ministry somehow, which might put a damper on her having a well-paying job that could pay the family expenses while husband serves as a priest.
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That’s definitely been an issue in a lot of protestant churches - the pastor’s wife being expected to essentially work for the church without being paid as such.
 
It’s been said before that the Eastern Churches in America do not have the same number of members for the priest to care for. I do not have a source for the numbers but in my town at least that would seem to be the case.

I’ve seen several of the Eastern churches in the area where I currently am, and most of the congregations and buildings are fairly small compared to the numbers showing up at the three Catholic churches in the same area, which also have much bigger buildings to keep up, and in a couple of cases have school buildings attached that are no longer active and the priest is working with the diocese on what to do with the property. There is only one Eastern Orthodox church that is very large - I believe it’s the cathedral for the area.

In the other area where I spend a lot of time, there are literally dozens of busy Roman Catholic churches but very few Eastern churches of any kind, again leading me to think there is a smaller population there.

Again, please understand I am not saying that it is impossible for Roman priests to marry, but simply that I do not see it being possible for any man, married or unmarried, to be pursuing a serious day job while simultaneously serving the current needs of these parishes. The priests currently doing this work have no wives, families or other jobs and can barely keep up. If the Church wants to get married men with jobs to help it can just recruit more deacons.
 
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One problem that comes to mind is that a married man in the US who is doing a good job of supporting a family of 4+ children is generally working more than 40 hours a week and/or has some sort of specialized training. There’s going to be a need for nearly twice as much schooling if a man is following both the priesthood and a career that will support a biggish family. Alternately, the wife might be the primary breadwinner, but then (as people have mentioned) she won’t be as available to the parish, and her need to work full-time without stopping is going to put downward pressure on their family size. If they “only” had 3 children, we’d never hear the end of it from some people…

And no, I think very few of us want priests with less education.
 
We had a married Catholic priest in our diocese, until he retired. He was a former Anglican priest. He worked full time in a parish, not part time. He had a wife and quite a few children. A good priest. It was fortunate that his wife was qualified to work in a department of the chancery. I don’t know how they could have lived on a priest’s salary alone.

We have a lot of parishes and a lot of priests and a lot of seminarians. All the priests are busy all the time. If they were to work only part time for their parishes, we would need twice as many. Even the seminarians work in the parishes when they are home for the summer, and they are kept busy as well. Priesthood is not a part time job.
 
I know many here at CAF hang on his every word, but I’m not a fan.
And yeah, Pope Francis is not keen on making more Monsignors.
Plus, generally, if you want it that bad, it’s held off.
 
The ideal, of course, would be that we could get enough new priests that the burden on any individual priest would be lessened. But it would take a good deal of adjustment.

In practice, many protestant pastors also managed on a lot of donations from the parish. I know our pastor had 2 girls who were a few years younger than I was and that they came to church several times in dresses I had outgrown.
 
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