Guys, if you could be married and a priest would you?

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jas84173

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I am just asking because I would in a heart beat. I also want to be able to share my life with someone.

I disagree with priests being celibate. Most of the Apostles were married including our first Pope.
 
jas84173 said:
I am just asking because I would in a heart beat. I also want to be able to share my life with someone.

I disagree with priests being celibate. Most of the Apostles were married including our first Pope.
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I think that in the Roman Catholic church you will find good answers in the seminaries and among men who choose the celibate life.

There are Byzantine Priests who are married, but it is a difficult life for all involved. In some respects, the wife must have a vocation, too, and that is incredibly difficult.
 
I’m 100% for priests not marrying. Priests are the spiritual fathers of their parish. If a priest had a biological family in addition to a spiritual family, conflicts would surely arise and he would be forced to choose between the two.

When I was a Lutheran, my pastor had to frequently choose between hospital visits and family functions. His congregates would be upset if he chose his family and his wife would be upset if he chose his congregates. He told me once that he actually envied Catholic priests in some instances.

The beauty of the priestly celibacy is that the priest empties himself completely to his parish community and offers his very life as a sacrifice to his parishioners. He is married…to the church 😉

I think it may be a little insulting to just become a priest simply if you could marry. It is a sacred call. It is similar to men who say they want to become deacons instead of priests just because deacons can marry; it’s an insult to deacons who are actually called to be deacons.

God bless.
 
There’s always the option of missionary…kind of like a parish priest in terms of helping others…except on a wider global scale.
 
Forgive me if I am out of line but this priest actually had a family (children) and envied not having them?
 
As someone once said “if married priests were the answer, the Church would be seeking out Protestant ministers”.
 
No way. A priest is married to the Church. He devotes himself entirely to serving God and the Church: his family in Christ. Likewise, a married man devotes himself entirely to God and his wife/family. You can’t be both.

If you want to say homilies and be married become a deacon.
 
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jas84173 said:
Sacred call? Then why are so few making it?
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:roll_eyes:

If you look at the actual CARA numbers of people who actually follow church teaching and go to Mass, participate in sacramental life, etc, a surprising number of vocations are arising. (once you take out the number of those over 60, especially)

The issue is that we tend to see seminaries as a reflection of society as a whole and not what they are, a reflection of a man raised up to be a good Catholic. When you actually see the pool of young men who could be seminarians (ie are solid Catholics) a surprising number actually are seminarians.

But you have to look at good numbers to begin with. If you look at data that declares an area is 20% Catholic it looks terrible that out of 10k supposed Catholics there are only 2 or 3 seminarians. But if you realize only about 3% of that number…or about 300 are really actually practicing, 2 or 3 seminarians looks gangbusters.
 
Doesnt matter what you disagree with jas, the Catholic Church is a Monarchy.

Doesn’t matter if anyone in the past was married or not. An don’t you even consider suggesting that Jesus may have had romantic feelings for Mary Magdalen.
 
No I wouldn’t.

I’m in the middle of discerning, but tbh, I don’t want to be a priest. I’ll only want to do it if it’s indeed God’s will for me. Sure the celibacy vow is one of the reason I don’t want to be a priest, but there are many more reasons why I don’t think it’s my calling. One of them is probably because my talents don’t point towards that.

If the only reason you don’t want to be a priest is because you can’t get married, try becoming a deacon. But remember, if you’re married, then your domestic church (family) should come first and foremost.
 
superblue said:
The Church isn’t a person nor is the Church a female, Priests merely make a promise of celebacy and are not bound to keep that promise, promises can be broken and are plenty of times over. With nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a shuffle to a new diocese.

And a man could be married and a priest, plenty of men hold jobs and have a family, it is beyond insane to think a man couldnt handle both a job and a family.
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:roll_eyes:

Vow, not promise.

And like I stated Eastern priests are married and it’s an incredibly difficult life. Much more so than the average man. It affects his wife, deeply and really, SHE bears part of the burden of the vocation. It can be extremely hard for the children because unlike a protestant preacher with kids they will definitely live in rather poor conditions and have to miss out on many things.

A priestly vocation is a vocation. It deeply affects his life and would deeply affect his wife and children. Some can do it, but it’s extremely rare, extremely difficult and very much causes a divison of responsibilities in a way other occupations do not.
 
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I always wonder if married priests would really be an improvement, based on things I’ve seen happen with Protestant ministers, which include:
  • the minister and his wife deciding to have a large family and some in the congregation objecting to the fact that they have to support not only the minister and his wife but what they think are an excessive number of kids
  • the minister and his wife having marital problems, or some other family scandal, which ends up being not only a distraction from his ministry, but a big scandal or source of gossip for the whole congregation
  • the minister wants to transfer to another church or is being forced to transfer to another church and his family isn’t happy about it
  • the minister is single and available, causing women in the congregation to be hitting on him (no other way to say it)
Plus the fact that when you get a priest with a wife and children, he’s not going to be able to live in a couple of rooms in a small rectory that he maybe shares with other priests or has them staying there when they visit the parish from the missions or whatever. He may even need to go get a bigger house, and who is going to pay for that?

Add on top of that the fact that the priest would now have the responsibility to his family instead of just to his parishioners, and it doesn’t seem like an attractive option to me as a parishioner. In addition, I really wonder about the strength of men’s call to be priests if they weren’t willing to make sacrifices, like not being married, in order to become a priest.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I always wonder if married priests would really be an improvement, based on things I’ve seen happen with Protestant ministers, which include:
  • the minister and his wife deciding to have a large family and some in the congregation objecting to the fact that they have to support not only the minister and his wife but what they think are an excessive number of kids
  • the minister and his wife having marital problems, or some other family scandal, which ends up being not only a distraction from his ministry, but a big scandal or source of gossip for the whole congregation
  • the minister wants to transfer to another church or is being forced to transfer to another church and his family isn’t happy about it
  • the minister is single and available, causing women in the congregation to be hitting on him (no other way to say it)
Plus the fact that when you get a priest with a wife and children, he’s not going to be able to live in a couple of rooms in a small rectory that he maybe shares with other priests or has them staying there when they visit the parish from the missions or whatever. He may even need to go get a bigger house, and who is going to pay for that?

Add on top of that the fact that the priest would now have the responsibility to his family instead of just to his parishioners, and it doesn’t seem like an attractive option to me as a parishioner. In addition, I really wonder about the strength of men’s call to be priests if they weren’t willing to make sacrifices, like not being married, in order to become a priest.
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Eastern rites do have married priests. But they must be married first (so number 4 doesn’t occur).

The rest do. The rest are issues that Eastern priests will often face.

It also leads to delayed vocations/denied vocations because the becoming a priest, like becoming a decon in the latin rite, must be agreed upon by the wife. Some men want to be married and be a priest so they wait until they find a woman.
 
He could have who knows?
There’s lots of extra canonical texts, many of which we get our traditions from. In example, Anna and Joakim and the immaculate conception from the Protoevangelium of James, Peter being crucified upsidedown in the Acts of Peter. Our view of heaven and hell comes much from the Apocalypse of Peter and later the Apocalypse of Paul which many think Dante got his inspiration for the Divine Comedy from.

As for Jesus having a thing for Mary Magdalene. I have read all of the New Testament Apocrypha including the Nag Hammadi library ( Gnostic texts) and the notion that he had relations for her are speculative at best. It all depends how you interpret it. There’s no cut and dry allegation of that in any text.
 
Only a few making it is much of what makes it sacred…otherwise it would be the norm.
 
superblue said:
And a man could be married and a priest, plenty of men hold jobs and have a family, it is beyond insane to think a man couldnt handle both a job and a family.
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The difference for a priest is that he doesn’t have as much autonomy in his job as most men. If a man’'s job isn’t working out for his family life, he can usually do something about that, like look for a better job, ask for a transfer to a different office, change jobs or careers within the organization. He also usually tries to work his way up to better jobs so he can provide better for his family. But most priests don’t have much say in where they get assigned, and they don’t have much freedom to change jobs if their wife doesn’t like the working conditions or the neighborhood. They aren’t even going to get much of a retirement as priests seem to keep working even when they are senior citizens.
 
vows are the same as oaths which are the same as promises, a job is a job plenty of people hold both very easily, The Church is not a person, nor a female, nor a spiritual separate entity that is a female, the Church is a title or an it, for a a collective. Just as people from a nation are of a nation, The Church repesents Catholics so those who belong to the Church are that. An one cant marry a collective.
 
superblue said:
vows are the same as oaths which are the same as promises, a job is a job plenty of people hold both very easily, The Church is not a person, nor a female, nor a spiritual separate entity that is a female, the Church is a title or an it, for a a collective. Just as people from a nation are of a nation, The Church repesents Catholics so those who belong to the Church are that. An one cant marry a collective.
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LOL :roll_eyes: no

vows are not “the same” as a promise

Atleast in Catholic understanding.
 
Actually I seem to recall that Pope JPII admitted some married priests. They were married Anglican priests who came over somehow to the Catholic church when the Pope was trying to merge the 2 churches. There were only a handful of them, but they were married men and did become Catholic priests. I thought I read that back in the 80s.
 
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