Get Rid of the Celibacy Requirement

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MikeInVA said:
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PickyPicky:
Is there scope for the laity to shoulder more of the burden?
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I wouldn’t want to be the priest who had to decide between saying Mass and attending his daughter’s ballet recital or sports tournament.
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Mike, these are decisions that are simply part of human life. No amount of hand wringing will make them disappear. Every vocation has it’s difficulties.
“What if…it is difficult?”
Well I dunno, What if…?

The right thing is always difficult. And the first right thing in the face of evil is to repent, and repent means to at least consider “changing your way of thinking” about the way things are. Repentance doesn’t mean walking Pike’s Peak on our knees. It is actually much harder than that, it means challenging assumptions and entrenched ways of seeing things, and at least giving a hard look at alternatives. It’s the only path to conversion.

If we can’t even consider repentance out of fear of difficulty, then don’t expect anything to change.
 
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In everyday life, we all face challenges to our time, attention, and energy. A priest is no different, and we shouldn’t hold priests to this utilitarian standard “how can the priest efficiently do this and do that”.
We are human beings, not human doings. And if a priest were to faithfully carry out his state in life, and at the same time have a vocation to the priesthood, then that is good.

Even now, a priest must decide between various family obligations in his parish family. In my own life, I have had to forgo summer vacations, ballgames, etc…because my work doesn’t always allow it. Choices have to be made. It’s just part of life. And I think God loves faithfullness and will allow it to multiply in the Church, and that could include the faithfullness of married priests.
 
goout said:
In everyday life, we all face challenges to our time, attention, and energy.
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The issue is that priests need to focus on service to God and his flock first and foremost. They must be able to drop everything and serve their flock at all hours of the day or night.

It reminds me of a cough syrup commercial where the sick dad goes in to his child’s room and says, “Sorry son, I’m too sick to be your dad today,” and the announcer goes on to say that parents don’t get a day off.

Maybe I’m a weak person, but I couldn’t be both a priest and parent at the same time and I don’t see how anyone could.
 
MikeInVA said:
The issue is that priests need to focus on service to God and his flock first and foremost. They must be able to drop everything and serve their flock at all hours of the day or night.
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so what? there are many married priests in the Eastern Catholic Church, and even in the Latin Catholic Church, so they are bad pastors?
Frankly I find arguments to justify absolute celibacy for priests, not convincing.
 
On the other hand, you can find a single person with already large family responsibilities inherited from his origin family, just as you can find a retired married man who has no more children in charge, and who is financially self-sufficient.
Therefore, it would be better to look at the actual availability of the candidate to priesthood and not his marital status.
 
I think that there is something to be said when a person is unencumbered by a family. I think it can be like a rubberband and being pulled in two directions. Hard on family members and hard on the pastor. I remember hearing of a time when teachers were preferred to not marry or weren’t allowed to marry? I don’t think that was a bad idea either; students for (teachers) and (clergy)for priests, become your family, they are your highest priority, and if abortion didn’t become legal, I think the slippery slope that we’ve traveled down as society, has lost it’s notion of the highest calling of serving others.
My 2 cents
 
MikeInVA said:
The issue is that priests need to focus on service to God and his flock first and foremost. They must be able to drop everything and serve their flock at all hours of the day or night.
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I’d love for a priest on CAF to weigh in here and tell us how often they “drop everything” in the middle of the night. From my personal experience with priests, yes they’re busy, but 90% of their appointments are scheduled in advance. And believe it or not, they’re allowed to say “no” when they just can’t do something.
 
The elephant in the room (besides “Married abusers don’t let marriage stop them”) is “continence.” Not having sex.

The Jewish priesthood didn’t serve at the Temple all year round, and was divided into different shifts over the different months of the year. Why?

Because nobody who had been having sex lately, or even touching a woman, could serve in the Temple. (This comes into the story when David brought his starving men to the priests to ask if it was okay for them to eat the Lord’s Bread of the Presence, and the priest asked if they’d been with women lately.)

It’s also true that the wives of Jewish priests were also of priestly lineage, and also had to obey a host of priest-regulations to keep themselves holy. But yeah, they had to be okay with their husbands leaving them for a certain time every year, and not having sex, whenever there were priestly duties.

In early Christian times, it’s true that we had some married bishops and priests. But it’s also clear in all the surviving literature that, just as today in the Eastern Catholic churches, and the Orthodox churches, and all the other ancient ones, that if Father is having Mass tomorrow, he’s not allowed to have nookie the night before. Sometimes the period of fasting and continence is longer.

This doesn’t seem as strange to their congregations, who are used to having both fasting and continence on all fasting days and during all fasting periods. We in the West got a relaxation of lay continence regulations during the Early Modern period. The Church is not enforcing it on our Roman/Latin Rite married priests, because they are all special cases.

But if we had large-scale married priests, either we couldn’t have daily Mass, or we’d have to go back to Father and his wife abstaining from sex every day and every night. (Or the wife moving out with the kids and becoming vowed religious, which was also a popular choice in both East and West, in early Christian times.) All married bishops were always obliged to observe perpetual continence, and usually their people insisted on her moving out.

So which one is better?

Perpetual continence, or just plain celibacy?
 
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Possibly this has already been mentioned, as I have not read through all the posts.

However, what about the example of a celibate priest to the laity who are celibate, and not by choice. I.E. those who were unable to find a spouse and hence did not marry, and/or those who did marry and/or had families, but their spouse left and they cannot get an annulment. Such members of the church must remain celibate and may not remarry, unless their ex-spouse dies. Also, all SSA members of the church.

At least such members of the laity can be strengthened through a celibate priest’s example.
 
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MikeInVA said:
They must be able to drop everything and serve their flock at all hours of the day or night.
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That is a most unhealthy expectation asking for burnout. On-call demands should be rotated with others.
 
They get calls to administer Anointing of the Sick whenever the person needs it, not when it is scheduled and convenient.
Our priests have it pretty good today. In the 19th century, the life expectancy for a parish priest was around 40. Their life is very demanding.
 
MikeInVA said:
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goout:
In everyday life, we all face challenges to our time, attention, and energy.
Click to expand...
The issue is that priests need to focus on service to God and his flock first and foremost. They must be able to drop everything and serve their flock at all hours of the day or night.

It reminds me of a cough syrup commercial where the sick dad goes in to his child’s room and says, “Sorry son, I’m too sick to be your dad today,” and the announcer goes on to say that parents don’t get a day off.

Maybe I’m a weak person, but I couldn’t be both a priest and parent at the same time and I don’t see how anyone could.
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Let’s admit that this discipline will not be the same as the current discipline. It has it’s limitations, and at the same time, it has it’s blessings. We have to admit, human beings have limitations in all states of life.

It just seems to me that being obstinate to even considering the blessings of married priesthood adds to the very entrenchment that is causing a problem.
 
goout said:
It just seems to me that being obstinate to even considering the blessings of married priesthood adds to the very entrenchment that is causing a problem.
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Please enumerate these supposed blessings and how they would solve our current problem(s).
 
And that kind of on-call demand can be rotated just as with doctors.
 
MikeInVA said:
They get calls to administer Anointing of the Sick whenever the person needs it, not when it is scheduled and convenient.
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This can be done any time someone is seriously ill, not only at the point of death. CCC 1514.
 
MikeInVA said:
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goout:
It just seems to me that being obstinate to even considering the blessings of married priesthood adds to the very entrenchment that is causing a problem.
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Please enumerate these supposed blessings and how they would solve our current problem(s).
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Many individuals with a heart and a vocation for the priesthood.
Renewing a stale and compromised culture with sexually well integrated men. In the vernacular, “balance”.

I would like to note, that in the kingdom of God the blessings of one person, or the blessings of one state of life, are not opposed to, nor detract from, the blessings of another.

In the kingdom of God the good of one is the good of all, and abundance is the result.
Either/or does not apply here. If God calls one to the priesthood as a celibate, that’s a blessing. If God also calls a married person to the priesthood, that’s also a blessing.
 
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hmikell7 said:
I’m not saying that a married man can’t be devoted to God, but what I am saying is that a married priest isn’t going to have God as his sole and only focus. He can be as devoted as anyone, but the fact of the matter is that he will have his attention divided between his wife and our Lord
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That is true. And it’s one thing that differentiates the Catholic church from Protestants. Catholic priests cannot serve two masters, God and family.
 
Shakuhachi said:
And that kind of on-call demand can be rotated just as with doctors.
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That’s fine, but our priests should be devoted to God, with no obligations to wife and family.

On a practical side, where would all the married priests and their families live? Who would pay all their bills? Priests would have to go out and get secular jobs.
 
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