Great article by a married Catholic Priest

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I was trying to avoid posting on this thread, as I am somewhat prejudiced in the matter. I am currently authoring a fiction tome dealing with married priests.

When I became Catholic in 1980, I had also transferred from public to parochial school. While on Senior Search retreat, our chaplain, who had been my catechist, said that he thought marriage for priests should be optional. That blew my mind, and the characters for this book began to move. The only phrase that any of our parish priests would use in regards to a priest’s wife, when asked, was “very self-sacrificing.”

That’s not so different from a lot of families. St. Francis de Sales states in the Introduction to the Devout Life that the mother of the family has to be holy because she is usually the only example the children have because the father has to work to support them. It’s always a boon for the father to be holy, and see to his own practice of right religion (peace).

Then I learned of the Pastoral Provision. I found a book written by Mary Vincent Dally, a married priest’s wife. Years later, we got the internet. Needless to say, the book has evolved to accommodate the Provision, and sailing has been smoother. The only caveat was that married priests aren’t allowed to live in the rectory because it would give the wrong impression. Celibacy is still the norm, so married priests are kept in the background. According to the Provision, the priest has to have an outside job to help support the family. That likely includes the wife, as well. My major character is not only an orphaned assistant convent archivist, she is also a certified doula. Coincidentally, her aunt is a midwife and preacher’s widow.

I’m sure the Provision can be adapted somehow for the Viri Probati being proposed. We need something, and quickly.

My new congregation will have a Sacerdotal Division, and I have plans to make sure that married priests receive support if they aren’t getting it. Prayer support first, then other support, as needed.

Blessings,
Mrs Cloisters OP
Lay Dominican
http://cloisters.tripod.com/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/charity/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/holyangels/id9.html
 
Appalling article.

The priest who wrote it starts off by arguing a certain objectivity, or at least why he is qualified to comment on the matter, but then betrays his strong bias when he then proceeds to talk of the “grinding loneliness of the celibate priest, the temptations to despair, the sexual temptations of the solitary life and the temptation to drift into a solitary, selfish existence–not of total self sacrificial service, but a life of solitary self indulgence and lazy indifference.” Me, I’ve never met any priest who suffered from any of this, so as I see it Fr. Longenecker is setting up a straw man here.

Furthermore, this father is one of those who subscribe to the idea that the celibate priest is “married to the Lord”, as he puts it. Actually, while there may be something beautiful about this metaphore when describing the celibacy of female religious, it is quite inapppropriate when applied to priests. Since the Lord is a man, and a priest is a man, the idea that a priest is married to the Lord is awkward and slightly distasteful. A priest is an “alter Christus”, not a “conjunx Christi”.

Father L. then proceeds to pass general judgment on men based on a bit of amateur neurology about the two halves on the brain. He claims with confidence that men are prone to “partition their behaviors”, which leads to them having affairs, trivializing the seriousness of such things, and lying about it. According to father L. the celibate priesthood is also an institute that allows pedophiles and homosexuals to hide and “pretend to be God’s good little boy.” Wow.

It was at this point that I stopped reading. Any priest, married or not, who writes with such sickening disdain about celibate other priests needs to be reprimanded by his bishop. And if his bishop won’t reprimand him, something is very, very wrong with the Church.
 
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So the married priest has to have a second job on top of priesting in order to support everybody?
So now he has responsibilities to his flock, his family and an outside job.
And I suppose if the wife should pass away, the priest is not permitted to remarry?

I also wonder if the wife would be permitted to work outside the home? I’m guessing the answer is probably no. Although I can see her being expected to do all kinds of work on a volunteer basis around the parish.

Sounds difficult to me, although there are probably some couples who could make it work.

I would also hope this would bring enough new men to the priesthood that the priest/ parishioner ratio would decrease. Ministers and their wives usually aren’t tending single-handedly to a congregation of several thousand people. If allowing priests to marry didn’t bring a huge percentage of new men into the priesthood, it doesn’t seem like the cost-benefit ratio is worth the effort.
 
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I don’t understand why his state prior to ordination would not have presented a conflict of interest for the Church. It is the same case has a married man who desires to be a priest. The pastoral answer would be for him to carry on his duty as the head of his Institution of Family, and to honor his marriage vows. In doing so he already does his duty.

The result is again presented here, in that he represents a case to avoid, not embrace. This is why we heed warnings, as much to avoid temptations to the exceptions as for the rule.
 
I don’t have the answers to those questions. I am assuming they would not be permitted to remarry in the event of the wife’s passing. I was told in an email from a Provision priest that after the man leaves Episcopalian Orders, he has to work at a secular job for two years to test his perseverance. Outside jobs would likely be in their own line of work, like being a religion professor at a local community college.

One of my intendeds in college was a Trinity Pentecostal minister. I had planned to go to Mass on Sat evening, then help him with his church on Sunday and other days. Obviously, due to a mistake of his, he ended up expelled. I was nearing graduation, and was feeling the pull to the cloister, even while still considered a couple. He and I both prayed over it, and he dispatched me to the cloister with his blessings.

I was an ecumenical member of the Canterbury Club in college, and our Episcopalian priest’s wife was supposedly going to bible study in Lexington. Then she hit him with a divorce, married the other guy, and took the kids. Absolutely blindsided him. He eventually met and married a Church of Christ lady minister through their common ground of the Air Force Reserve.

And, speaking of college, we had two ex-priests on faculty. One was a Liberation Theologian. The other was one of our head residents and my Latin 101 instructor. I told him of the eventual end of my book (canonization of the major character). He had been listening with his eyes closed, and said, “Ohhh, that’s beautiful,” with genuine feeling.

Our boys’ guidance counselor was a Lutheran minister’s wife, and she said the minister’s wife there wasn’t expected to do anything. I grew up Baptist, and our dear minister’s wife was involved in the events that would usually involve her at whatever age she was at the time. I don’t know if she had any assigned duties, but I know she worked outside the home and church. This congregation was able to pay the minister’s annual salary, so he didn’t have to work outside the church.

I still think there’s a place for both married and celibate priests. I like toolboxes.
 
Speaking of looking at countries, maybe the issue is having a specific guideline for so many different groups at once.

That is, maybe priestly celibacy shouldn’t be as universal a law. I could see why issues would arise if it were different every other diocese. But maybe each national synod could decide?
 
Ach, I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of a Catholic priest being married to a female clergy from another faith. Given that he would likely have to be married prior to ordination, I wonder if him making such a marriage would be grounds for him not being ordained.

I also wonder if there would be an issue if the wife was not a clergy member but was of another faith (Christian or non-Christian), a non-believer, or a non-practicing Catholic. An ordinary Catholic man could easily be married to all of the above if the spouse consented to raising the children Catholic and the couple obtained the approvals needed, but would a priest be restricted to only good Catholic women in his choice of a spouse?

Anybody have any data on how the Anglicans and Episcopalians are doing at recruiting priests, and how many of those priests are males who might be married (as opposed to females or openly gay males)?
 
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I sort of support married priests, but I’m not sure.

For example, let’s suppose the children of a married priest get new bicycles at Christmas. I know there are people out there who would look upon that and say, “Why did Fr. McSzmanskivich’s kids get new bikes for Christmas? I can’t afford to buy my kids new bikes for Christmas! What’s going on with that weekly collection?”
 
From a marital standpoint, I don’t care who he marries as long as they don’t interfere with his faith.

But it’s a little hard to get up there and preach that Catholicism is the way to go when your own wife is in the pulpit every Sunday at another church teaching that her church is the way to go.

Hey, maybe they could remake “Adam’s Rib” with a priest married to a minister.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Ach, I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of a Catholic priest being married to a female clergy from another faith. Given that he would likely have to be married prior to ordination, I wonder if him making such a marriage would be grounds for him not being ordained.
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C’mon…this isn’t at all the model the article was proposing. Longenecker was basically proposing viri probati. The Catholic church would want good catholic families without major financial strains that could, on some level, support themselves. In the case of a Catholic man being married to a female clergy of a different faith, the catholic church would simply say no.
 
Cloisters’ post raised the possibility. I hadn’t even thought of it before but it appears that these sorts of relationships aren’t entirely uncommon. And I can see why. If you and a person of the opposite sex are both trying to get people to Heaven in your own way, and you both aspire to be clergy, then it’s an interest you share, and you might well come to care about each other.

As for “The Catholic Church would simply say no”, I’m not convinced that they would say “No” to the marriage for an ordinary man. On what grounds would they refuse, if she consented to children being raised Catholic? For a priest, might be different story.
 
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Roguish said:
Any priest, married or not, who writes with such sickening disdain about celibate other priests needs to be reprimanded by his bishop. And if his bishop won’t reprimand him, something is very, very wrong with the Church.
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He won’t be reprimanded for this article. Nothing is perfect here on earth including the Church, but having a meaningful debate on married catholic priests is not one of the church’s problem’s as far as I’m concerned. I’m grateful we can have this debate these days…
 
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They wouldn’t necessarily say “no” to the marriage itself, but they’d very likely say no to the ordination of viri probati who are married to female clergy from another faith. It’s a non issue. I just don’t see discussion of this specific point (a catholic priest being married to female clergy from a different Christian faith) as relevant or productive.
 
Why? We’re discussing things that might happen. Which is likely, just about everything under the sun.

Think of every thread you have read about spouses on this forum, for starters. Now, imagine a Catholic Priest being involved in all of those situations. Because it will happen.
 
Ok…but how realistically would this ever happen in the model Longenecker proposed?

My concern is that extreme weird possibilities are brought up to scare people related to married clergy, but there is no way such events could happen with the serious proposals being considered.
 
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I can see married clergy working if it operates similarly to most of our current married deacons, which is that the married men accepted into the clergy have been married awhile, are secure in their marriages, and their wives are totally on board with the plan. I also think if we are going to do this, we would really need to study how the Eastern Catholics and Anglicans go about handling it.

I would like to see more hard facts on how the other churches are making it work, including from the wives’ perspective and childrens’ perspective, and fewer emotional arguments about how priests are generally lonely and miserable. Some probably are and many are not.
 
InThePew said:
As far as living with other priests is concerned, diocesan priests aren’t really big on community life (some religious orders aren’t either).
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You may have a valid and interesting point in parenthesis. What specific orders are not big on community life, and under what specific circumstances does this community life within orders not happen?..just curious…

What I have seen is that for Jesuits or Benedictines community life is extremely important.
 
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jack63 said:
I thought this was a great article by Fr. Dwight Longenecker…a married catholic priests. What do people think…

He is not proposing that we “Allow all priests to get married tomorrow”, but he is proposing a different model. Often the arguments on this forum assume somebody is pushing to allow all priests go get married as soon as possible. Really…nobody with any serious or sincere understanding of Catholicism is proposing this.
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I agree with his general thrust that it must be considered.
Only a fool does not consider all the legitimate options at his disposal. We are not called to be fools.

The recent difficulties in the priesthood have several factors that work together.
You don’t have to cast blame on any single factor, they all work together to create a toxic stew.
  1. all male
  2. power
  3. celibacy requirement
  4. some with homosexual tendencies
These factors working together have the potential to create disorder.

Your solutions can address one or more of these factors.
1 You can try and weed out men that are gay. Good luck with that!
2 You could remove the power clerics have over others. This would also be difficult to do but is worth pursuing in whatever legitimate ways it can be done.
3 You can allow married men to become priests. This allows a larger slice of men with well ordered sexuality and outlets for it… And please, this is not to say that most priests are lacking something. That’s not it at all.

As everyone knows a small change in a mix of people can leaven the whole bunch.
 
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