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

  • Thread starter Thread starter jas84173
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
They’re still priests. You can’t be “un-priested”. Even a layacised priest must administer the last rites if necessary.

In any case…the point here is that a family man is much less suited to the priesthood than a single man who can offer all his time. You just can’t compare a priesthood to a career. Marriage is a vocation that requires 100% of the person. So is the priesthood.
 
R_H_Benson said:
40.png
Vonsalza:
Priest can and do quit the ministry, sadly.
Click to expand...
And the indelible mark of the priesthood remains on his soul for all eternity, wherever he spends it.
Click to expand...
That may be. Point remains.
 
Vonsalza said:
The property manager for the building I work in is a half-a-million a year kinda guy. You think not answering his phone at 2am when work rings is an option???
Click to expand...
Yes, but don’t you see that having a high-responsibility job and a large income is very, very different from having a high-responsibility job and a small income?

Also, come to think of it, Catholic seminary formation itself would have to be completely different for married men with growing families.
 
Xantippe said:
40.png
Vonsalza:
The property manager for the building I work in is a half-a-million a year kinda guy. You think not answering his phone at 2am when work rings is an option???
Click to expand...
Yes, but don’t you see that having a high-responsibility job and a large income is very, very different from having a high-responsibility job and a small income?

Also, come to think of it, Catholic seminary formation itself would have to be completely different for married men with growing families.
Click to expand...
Honestly, It’d probably be about the same as it was when I hung around a protestant seminary for awhile.

Most aren’t married at the time. Some are. And a small handful had kids. It was a challenge, sure. But it got handled.
 
Xantippe said:
Yes, but don’t you see that having a high-responsibility job and a large income is very, very different from having a high-responsibility job and a small income?
Click to expand...
There’s another issue. If you have a family and are a priest, who is supposed to look after the family financially?
 
Vonsalza said:
C’mon guys. You can always “what if” yourself into a corner.
Click to expand...
What if there was a dying parishioner who needed help at the same time there was a wedding where the groom’s family had all flown in from New Zealand while the wife’s family all flew over from Poland? And then the priest needed to go to the ER for an emergency for himself because he tripped and broke his ankle? 🤣

Certainly, we can come up with lots of different scenarios, but, in all seriousness, it would be tough. I work in a parish and my schedule is crazy enough for my family. Adding other priestly responsibilities in there would be even harder. We are blessed to have three priests and I cannot imagine any of them juggling a family and everything else they are doing.
 
We don’t have evidence because we haven’t tried it 🙂
Look at the conversations happening between young men in high school, or better yet, the exit interviews of men leaving the seminaries. The biggest reason for most to not become a priest is the desire to have a family. Making them choose is depressing.
 
Fair enough. Although there are some married Latin rite priests, and many of the Easter rites as well. We could also look at other Christian groups with married ministers that otherwise seem fairly close to Catholics. That could tell us some things, but would not necessarily predict everything.

My main point is that I think it is overly simplistic to think that removing the celibacy requirement would magically improve everything. If it were that simple, I think the Church would have given much more serious consideration to the possibility.
 
AdamPeter said:
There’s another issue. If you have a family and are a priest, who is supposed to look after the family financially?
Click to expand...
A lot of people with moderate incomes would take on a second job (say, delivering pizzas) to make up the shortfall. But is that even feasible for a person who is on call?

I think what you would typically wind up with would be a working wife supporting the family (as often happens with less prosperous Protestant pastors) and hence a smaller family.

I suspect that there’s a lot of wisdom in the guideline that says that married deacons need to be well-established family men (if they have families), rather than being neck-deep in little kid responsibilities. You also don’t want kids growing up seeing themselves as being in constant competition with the parish for attention, with the family coming in last priority over and over, but being expected to be perfect. It’s a lousy combination.
 
Duesenberg said:
Not if it meant moving to attend seminary full-time. I strongly believe the Church needs to look at forming priests (married or celibate) within their own dioceses/parishes
Click to expand...
Kind of like an “internship” program with an individual priest? The Church tried that. It failed so spectacularly (we had priests who had no idea about pastoral care, or about theology, or about Scriptural exegesis) that the seminary system was formed in order to permanently eliminate these kinds of failures in formation.

Dioceses do tend to offer “part time” formation programs for permanent deacon candidates. I’ll leave it to your evaluation whether they work as well as the existing formation programs for priests…
 
To be sure, we can always find a reason to not do something that would be difficult.

But we’ve already done this before. Other, very similar faiths do it now.

Course, I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy, so…
 
Last edited:
My next question would be, are there Catholic women out there who’d be lining up to marry priests? Considering the demands of the job, the lack of funds and the lifetime commitment, it would be a vocation for the woman too, and similar to making a commitment to marry a missionary.

This is a new concept for Catholic young women. In Protestant churches, people tend to have a good idea what it means to be the preacher’s wife, and you have role models in the wives of the ministers in your church. There are also Bible colleges for women where many of them meet their minister husbands and get a training roughly equivalent to his.

If the idea is to let priests marry in order to get the numbers up, they better have a good many Catholic women ready to marry them and stay married to them through all the challenges. If there isn’t a pool of willing wives, the men will just be disappointed, and it won’t get the numbers up.
 
As someone discerning the priesthood: it would certainly be a plus for me. I almost feel obligated to marry (to keep my family lineage going), and that would allow me both to have children (accomplishing that) and share my life with someone.

However, Saint Paul warned us about this. To paraphrase, “A married man is concerned with earthly affairs, how to please his wife”. Marriage splits your attention. While a parishioner is in danger of death and needing the sacraments, you may be picking up your children from school, or taking care of your flu-ridden household. Aside from that, your wife would certainly need a well paying job, considering how little priests make.

No, I think the “single priesthood” is best for everyone involved, despite my own desires.
 
Vonsalza said:
We’ve done it before. Other, very similar faiths do it now.
Click to expand...
…and the Protestant pastors’ families not infrequently struggle in various ways.

A cousin was a Protestant pastor and father of a large family. His wife left him after about 20 years and many kids and he lost his job. Likewise, I have some friends where the husband is the pastor of a small (very small!) Protestant church. I think he’s found some balance, but initially, they were being eaten alive by the pastoral needs of their tiny flock. Also, they struggle financially–I know the wife is very anxious about money now that they have two big kids. My parents’ old pastor had a teen daughter with anorexia. Basically, you have all of the normal family problems, but without as many resources for dealing with them, plus the added issue of not being “allowed” to have problems, because you’re supposed to be on a pedestal.

Google “pastor’s kid” for much, much more.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top