There’s nothing less simple than a change of culture.Both of these issues could fairly easily be solved by a simple change of culture. We can give priests and parishes more stability, and we can pay them more. Our particular way of doing things have built up around the culture of celibate priests.
You’re right. Change of culture isn’t simple. That was a bad way of putting it. I guess what I’m saying is that it is a matter of the culture that we have built up. Cultural change does happen slowly, over time, and if the Church were to make a change in discipline to allow for married priests, the change would happen slowly and incrementally, and allow the culture to change as well.There’s nothing less simple than a change of culture.
Parish stability has it’s pros and cons. It’s probably not a good idea to have a community so reliant on a single priest for an entire generation. On the other hand, the constant change of priests isn’t ideal either.
Pay them more with what money?
Father, I have no doubt that many, many priests work as you describe. I also have no doubt that there are many priests who manage to lead more balanced lives. So much of it seems to depend on the type of parish(es): rural, urban or suburban. Do you have other priests? Do you have to travel long distances to get to your parishioners? At a local suburban parish in the local Latin diocese, there are about 3000 families. The parish has 2 priests, plus one in residence, and 2 deacons. The parish offers 2 Masses daily, one on Saturday evening and 4 on Sundays. Confessions are offered for 3 hours on Saturdays, with all three priests hearing them. The priests are quite busy, but not utterly swamped. It was in this parish that the priest was able to ski and play golf occasionally. In the same diocese, which is geographically large, there are many rural parishes, where the situation is as you describe. The life of the priests in these parishes is very different: hours spent in the car, driving from place to place. Their flocks are different; not quite as large, but spread out. I don’t know much about their lives, to be honest, but I suspect it is much like you describe. I know other priests who work hard in non-parish work (diocesan offices, academia, etc), but still help out with Mass on the weekends and are involved in youth activities, etc. They are all, by the nature of their vocations, on-call 24/7.The idea that Sundays are “open” for priests other than Masses is 180 degrees away from my reality, and the reality of other priests I know. I have 2 masses Saturday evening and 2 on Sunday. I drive between 3 different country churches to provide the sacraments. Baptisms, religious education, meetings with people, days of prayer, marriage preparation, one on one counseling, Sunday Vespers, confessions, calls to to the hospital, visits to the sick. Spiritual direction, daily Mass, anointing of the sick, home communions. Meetings with the youth. Praying the breviary 5 times a day. Mass in spanish. Mass in Latin. Learning both. Planning liturgies, paying bills, overseeing the maintanence of the buildings and grounds and cemetery. Meetings with the parish council and altar society. Planning special liturgies. Writing back to parishioners who ask for many things, and seek your counsel. Reviewing and overseeing the sacramental records of the parish. …
The priest needs to be available as a spiritual father pretty much every day, at any hour the calls come. That’s the reality I face as a priest every day. It is a labor of love, and it requires 120% of my energies. I have no deacon at my parishes and I have 3 parishes that I am responsible for. I totally am in love with my people and give my all every day. There is realistically no time to care for another earthly family, I have hundreds of spiritual children in my care, and that is where my energies must be given, and for this I am very grateful to my heavenly Father, for making me a priest of Jesus Christ.
Nicely stated.Father, I have no doubt that many, many priests work as you describe. I also have no doubt that there are many priests who manage to lead more balanced lives. So much of it seems to depend on the type of parish(es): rural, urban or suburban. Do you have other priests? Do you have to travel long distances to get to your parishioners? At a local suburban parish in the local Latin diocese, there are about 3000 families. The parish has 2 priests, plus one in residence, and 2 deacons. The parish offers 2 Masses daily, one on Saturday evening and 4 on Sundays. Confessions are offered for 3 hours on Saturdays, with all three priests hearing them. The priests are quite busy, but not utterly swamped. It was in this parish that the priest was able to ski and play golf occasionally. In the same diocese, which is geographically large, there are many rural parishes, where the situation is as you describe. The life of the priests in these parishes is very different: hours spent in the car, driving from place to place. Their flocks are different; not quite as large, but spread out. I don’t know much about their lives, to be honest, but I suspect it is much like you describe. I know other priests who work hard in non-parish work (diocesan offices, academia, etc), but still help out with Mass on the weekends and are involved in youth activities, etc. They are all, by the nature of their vocations, on-call 24/7.
By comparison, I know a doctor who works in an urgent-care clinic. She has regular hours, 8 hour shifts. Another doctor I know, an OB, spends his time working in several different offices and delivers babies in 2 different hospitals. His life is crazy - on call hours, emergencies that run on for hours. Same profession, different lives.
My own priest ministers to a very small flock in his own parish. We are fewer than 25 families, but spread out over a large geographical area. There is no staff. He serves as pastor, secretary, finance guy, volunteer coordinator, catechist, janitor, appliance repairman, and gardener. He gives us his cell phone number and is responsive to our calls. In return, we respect his boundaries and family time, as much as we are able. If it is truly urgent, we’ll call in the evening or the middle of the night. If it can wait, we call at a more reasonable hour. If he cancels a house blessing because he forgot about a soccer game, we shrug it off. Life happens. If he can’t make a soccer game because he is needed as a priest, his family deals with it. Life happens. He also helps at the parish where his children go to school, saying Mass a few times each week and hearing confessions when he’s needed. In addition, he works full-time teaching theology at a Catholic High School. He is, truth be told, stretched way too thin, and so is his wife. He often wonders if a celibate priest would be better suited to the particular (financial) circumstances of our parish. I tell him that he is the priest that we prayed for and God has given him to us as our spiritual father for a reason. We have been immeasurably blessed with him as our pastor Thanks be to God, he and his wife are both extraordinary human beings, well suited to their vocations. He, with the grace of Holy Orders and the pair of them with the grace of Matrimony are an example to all of us.
To all the faithful priests, working 20 hours a day or 10, I am grateful. The church is grateful and I don’t think there needs to be this competition. Every priest has an extraordinarily difficult job in our culture. Each priest has his own life to lead and his own way of living out his vocation. Thank God for the gift of grace in the sacrament Holy Orders that is given to every priest, married or celibate. .
You can argue practical reason for or against celibacy, but the reality is that the Catholic Church allows and has always allowed married priests. Celibacy should not be decided based on practical matters, but spiritual. Married priests are equally able to bring us Christ in the Eucharist, hear our confessions, anoint us when we are sick, perform our marriages (necessary in the East). The tradition of married clergy in the East should not be affect the ancient and venerable tradition of celibacy in the west. The two traditions can co-exist and enrich one another.
The reality is that the Apostolic Norm of priestly continence is clearly evident from all of the more recent scholarly deep studies.SyroMalankara #69
As you can see, celibacy and continence was still a question in regard to Bishops, let alone corepiscopos, parish priests in the Metropolitan areas, and village priests.
The ”debate” on the preference for a life consecrated by profession of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, has been settled from the beginning by the Apostolic Norm. More recently by Pope Pius XII’s Sacra Virginitas (post #68), Pope Paul VI’s Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, (On The Celibacy Of The Priest) 1967, and by St John Paul II’s Pastores Dabo Vobis (On The Formation Of Priests In The Circumstances Of The Present Day), 1992:twf #75
whether secular / parish priests, who are not called to consecrated life, need be celibate is open to debate.
Continence was mandatory and obligatory for the married priests from the beginning as all the learned studies show – that is the reality.Babochka #81
the reality is that the Catholic Church allows and has always allowed married priests.
Thus, the Magisterium has clearly taught celibacy as superior, spiritually, shown with the ample justification based on the history of required continence, and no feelings advanced in this thread have been able to justify any views contrary to the Magisterium.Celibacy should not be decided based on practical matters, but spiritual.
The first written mandate requiring priests to be chaste came in AD 304. Canon 33 of the Council of Elvira stated that all"bishops, presbyters, and deacons and all other clerics" were to"abstain completely from their wives and not to have children." A short time later, in 325, the Council of Nicea, convened by Constantine, rejected a ban on priests marrying requested by Spanish clerics.Friends, Romans, Countrymen/women,
I am reeling at the moment!!! :stretcher:
Just found out that priestly celibacy is not Dogma. It is (t)radition which can be discussed and changed if agreed upon. The same way many traditions (small t) have been changed over the centuries.
Sorry, I’m a 3yo Catholic, must have skipped this part at RCIA or my mind was wandering.
Why isn’t it Dogma?
Not sure what you are trying to state by this. It certainly does not indicate that that celibacy is mandatory (other than by discipline). Nor does it indicate that total continence is the only option.The ”debate” on the preference for a life consecrated by profession of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, has been settled from the beginning by the Apostolic Norm. More recently by Pope Pius XII’s Sacra Virginitas (post #68), Pope Paul VI’s Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, (On The Celibacy Of The Priest) 1967, and by St John Paul II’s Pastores Dabo Vobis (On The Formation Of Priests In The Circumstances Of The Present Day), 1992:
“26. Thanks to the insightful teaching of the Second Vatican Council,(66) we can grasp the conditions and demands, the manifestations and fruits of the intimate bond between the priest’s spiritual life and the exercise of his threefold ministry of word, sacrament and pastoral charity.
“29. Referring to the evangelical counsels, the Council states that "preeminent among these counsels is that precious gift of divine grace given to some by the Father (cf. Mt. 19:11; 1 Cor. 7:7) in order more easily to devote themselves to God alone with an undivided heart (cf. 1 Cor. 7:32-34) in virginity or celibacy.
A synod may propose that only celibates be ordained; the fact is that married men are being ordained. This renders the quote moot.This synod strongly reaffirms what the Latin Church and some Oriental rites require that is, that the priesthood be conferred only on those men who have received from God the gift of the vocation to celibate chastity (without prejudice to the tradition of some Oriental churches and particular cases of married clergy who convert to Catholicism, which are admitted as exceptions in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on priestly celibacy, no. 42). The synod does not wish to leave any doubts in the mind of anyone regarding the Church’s firm will to maintain the law that demands perpetual and freely chosen celibacy for present and future candidates for priestly ordination in the Latin rite. The synod would like to see celibacy presented and explained in the fullness of its biblical, theological and spiritual richness, as a precious gift given by God to his Church and as a sign of the kingdom which is not of this world - a sign of God’s love for this world and of the undivided love of the priest for God and for God’s people, with the result that celibacy is seen as a positive enrichment of the priesthood."(78)
Note:
66. Cf. Presbyterorum Ordinis, 4-6;13.
The reality is that in the western rite, we have a long history of married priest (and currently have married priests), and many of them had children. You are clearly overstating your point contrary to history.
- Proposition 11.
Continence was mandatory and obligatory for the married priests from the beginning as all the learned studies show – that is the reality.
I ti snot a matter of feelings; it is a matter of facts. You cite as if there are no questions; - but it is not even a matter of questions; it is a matter of facts.Thus, the Magisterium has clearly taught celibacy as superior, spiritually, shown with the ample justification based on the history of required continence, and no feelings advanced in this thread have been able to justify any views contrary to the Magisterium.
It would appear that you cover several parishes, and it would appear logically from that, that the priests you know are not in metropolitan or suburban parishes. So yes, you have a very demanding schedule. And pastoring several parishes is certainly not the norm.I must say, with my heart firmly fixed on charity of the Lord Jesus, that these comments do not reflect an understanding of what many priests are doing, despite your familiarity with some priestly relatives. Many priests are working close to 24/7 much of the time. That is the life of a father when you have many, many spiritual children. That is how it is when you are a father to so many. What a gift to the priest, but yes it is exhausting! Many days there is enough time for only a few hours of sleep and even that is filled with dreams about serving my parishes. That is how it must be when the priestly heart is totally given to Christ and giving your all to his bride, the Church.
The idea that Sundays are “open” for priests other than Masses is 180 degrees away from my reality, and the reality of other priests I know. I have 2 masses Saturday evening and 2 on Sunday. I drive between 3 different country churches to provide the sacraments. Baptisms, religious education, meetings with people, days of prayer, marriage preparation, one on one counseling, Sunday Vespers, confessions, calls to to the hospital, visits to the sick. Spiritual direction, daily Mass, anointing of the sick, home communions. Meetings with the youth. Praying the breviary 5 times a day. Mass in spanish. Mass in Latin. Learning both. Planning liturgies, paying bills, overseeing the maintanence of the buildings and grounds and cemetery. Meetings with the parish council and altar society. Planning special liturgies. Writing back to parishioners who ask for many things, and seek your counsel. Reviewing and overseeing the sacramental records of the parish. The daily Holy Hour. Planning and conducting retreats. Preparing to preach and teach. Planning funerals and weddings. All these happen every day and Sundays too. When the people connect with their priest then their needs are almost insatiable. It is the hunger for God and that is a good thing, because the priest leads them to the Lord, but the needs are tremendous.
The priest needs to be available as a spiritual father pretty much every day, at any hour the calls come. That’s the reality I face as a priest every day. It is a labor of love, and it requires 120% of my energies. I have no deacon at my parishes and I have 3 parishes that I am responsible for. I totally am in love with my people and give my all every day. There is realistically no time to care for another earthly family, I have hundreds of spiritual children in my care, and that is where my energies must be given, and for this I am very grateful to my heavenly Father, for making me a priest of Jesus Christ.
I don’t know that anyone is saying anything about optimal.As a convert child of a protestant minister, my perspective is a bit different. “Make it work…” they try the best they can but it is definitely not optimal.
The present tense “is mandatory” obfuscates the reality of the Apostolic Norm from the beginning.otjm #87
It certainly does not indicate that that celibacy is mandatory (other than by discipline). Nor does it indicate that total continence is the only option.
Totally false, and shows the attitude of stubborn self-denial, and refusal to acknowledge the facts from the Magisterium and from the multitude of faithful clerical scholars. As Saint John Paul II proclaims in *Pastores Dabo Vobis *(On The Formation Of Priests In The Circumstances Of The Present Day), 1992, in the Synod in Rome especially to review the question for the Church.What you cite as evidence in part is groups of local bishops making rules within their jurisdictions; that is not universal, but local. And that is clear enough evidence that there was no blanket universal rule
the fact is that married men are being ordained
Well, YOU may say so, but that doesn’t make it so. There are Catholic traditions other than the Roman rite.There are no faithful Catholics, whether of the Roman Rite or Eastern Rites, who do not proclaim Christ’s Vicar the Pope as the head of His Church and who do not assent to all that She teaches.
Sorry, but that whole statement strikes me as, well…condescending.I don’t know that anyone is saying anything about optimal.
Neither is the family life of an attorney, or many physicians (particularly those who do surgery), or a CPA, or mid to upper level manager in a company, or a business owner of a small business… and that is just starting to scratch at the list.
On the other hand, there is also the issue that work will expand to the time allowed to it. few, if any priests seem to have even heard of time management; certainly not the ones I have spoke with over the last 30 years.
The priests you know, and their schedules are not what priests in many large parishes encounter. And in many dioceses there are not enough priest to “cover” for one another.Pretty much not every day; I am in a parish and there have never been daily or even weekly deaths.
People presume that priests are “at work” 24/7. Sorry, I have too many relatives who have been priests. I know differently.
The current model is still fixated on a priest being in his office all day 5 days a week, and With multiple Sunday Masses. The Masses won’t change; but the rest of Sunday is still open. However, a lot of what the priest does currently, was done by other priests (shared work in other words) when we had many parishes with 2 or more priests (like the parish I grew up in, in the 50’s and 60’s). Some of that work load can be (and is being) taken on by deacons. There is no reason that a married priest could not have shared responsibilities so that he had adequate family time.
And by my counting, adequate family time might mean, for example, that he is home when those teenagers get out of school - the period of time of the greatest likelihood of teenage conception.
I was in Real Estate for 7 years in the 90’s, and every year was a multi million seller before housing prices started going up 15 to 20% per year. I had twin daughters, and every day I had a 3 p.m. appointment that lasted until 6; it was with my daughters. I had that because it was my priority. Priests now cover for one another. The time issue is far less critical than you and others make it out to be.
I’m just having trouble understanding why people who don’t want to be priests themselves are so adamant and invested in a married priesthood. Especially if they’re not even members of a rite that is affected.I didn’t intend to accuse you of denigrating married priests, but I have encountered that before. As far as my becoming a priest in my particular Church, that’s not something I’m pursuing at this time. I would love to be a priest, but I don’t think that my bishop is inclined to ordain married men. There are other reasons as well.
THANK YOU FATHER.I must say, with my heart firmly fixed on charity of the Lord Jesus, that these comments do not reflect an understanding of what many priests are doing, despite your familiarity with some priestly relatives. Many priests are working close to 24/7 much of the time. That is the life of a father when you have many, many spiritual children. That is how it is when you are a father to so many. What a gift to the priest, but yes it is exhausting! Many days there is enough time for only a few hours of sleep and even that is filled with dreams about serving my parishes. That is how it must be when the priestly heart is totally given to Christ and giving your all to his bride, the Church.
The idea that Sundays are “open” for priests other than Masses is 180 degrees away from my reality, and the reality of other priests I know. I have 2 masses Saturday evening and 2 on Sunday. I drive between 3 different country churches to provide the sacraments. Baptisms, religious education, meetings with people, days of prayer, marriage preparation, one on one counseling, Sunday Vespers, confessions, calls to to the hospital, visits to the sick. Spiritual direction, daily Mass, anointing of the sick, home communions. Meetings with the youth. Praying the breviary 5 times a day. Mass in spanish. Mass in Latin. Learning both. Planning liturgies, paying bills, overseeing the maintanence of the buildings and grounds and cemetery. Meetings with the parish council and altar society. Planning special liturgies. Writing back to parishioners who ask for many things, and seek your counsel. Reviewing and overseeing the sacramental records of the parish. The daily Holy Hour. Planning and conducting retreats. Preparing to preach and teach. Planning funerals and weddings. All these happen every day and Sundays too. When the people connect with their priest then their needs are almost insatiable. It is the hunger for God and that is a good thing, because the priest leads them to the Lord, but the needs are tremendous.
The priest needs to be available as a spiritual father pretty much every day, at any hour the calls come. That’s the reality I face as a priest every day. It is a labor of love, and it requires 120% of my energies. I have no deacon at my parishes and I have 3 parishes that I am responsible for. I totally am in love with my people and give my all every day. There is realistically no time to care for another earthly family, I have hundreds of spiritual children in my care, and that is where my energies must be given, and for this I am very grateful to my heavenly Father, for making me a priest of Jesus Christ.
Another “simple” change of culture? How do you propose making people less “cheap”…if they are not compelled to throw in an extra $5 now for missions to the poor, what makes you think they would be moved by a plea to give the priest a bigger salary so he can take a wife?You’re right. Change of culture isn’t simple. That was a bad way of putting it. I guess what I’m saying is that it is a matter of the culture that we have built up. Cultural change does happen slowly, over time, and if the Church were to make a change in discipline to allow for married priests, the change would happen slowly and incrementally, and allow the culture to change as well.
As to the other question: 200 families giving an additional $5 each week to the collection could pay a pastor an additional 52,000 each year. This is over an above what he already makes. We’d have to work on that aspect of Catholic culture, too. We’re notoriously cheap.
I’m adamant about the option of married priests for the Eastern Catholic Churches, which have been affected through denial of the right to ordain married men in the Americas.I’m just having trouble understanding why people who don’t want to be priests themselves are so adamant and invested in a married priesthood. Especially if they’re not even members of a rite that is affected.
Abu refers to the Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome.Well, YOU may say so, but that doesn’t make it so. There are Catholic traditions other than the Roman rite.