Is Adelphopoesis still practiced or allowed?

[x1980x]

Is the practice of adelphopoiesis/ordo ad fratres faciendum still practiced or available in any Catholic rite, or in any other communion (E.g. EO or Anglican)? Has it simply fallen into general disuse without being formally abolished, or was there a cutoff date after which no new adelphopoiesis could be validly or licitly contracted?

Basically, if two men walked into a Catholic Church and told the priest or bishop, "We want to go through adelphopoiesis, and we understand that it is not a gay marriage or anything sexual, would the priest or bishop tell them to go pound sand or would he be willing to consider it?

For what it’s worth, I do NOT believe that this was a “gay marriage” type of ritual.

Please don’t make this thread descend into another gay marriage debate thread, or a thread about what church is “true” or “valid”. Let’s keep on topic, please.

 

[Spencerian]

Is the practice of adelphopoiesis/ordo ad fratres faciendum still practiced or available in any Catholic rite, or in any other communion (E.g. EO or Anglican)? Has it simply fallen into general disuse without being formally abolished, or was there a cutoff date after which no new adelphopoiesis could be validly or licitly contracted?

Basically, if two men walked into a Catholic Church and told the priest or bishop, "We want to go through adelphopoiesis, and we understand that it is not a gay marriage or anything sexual, would the priest or bishop tell them to go pound sand or would he be willing to consider it?

For what it’s worth, I do NOT believe that this was a “gay marriage” type of ritual.

Please don’t make this thread descend into another gay marriage debate thread, or a thread about what church is “true” or “valid”. Let’s keep on topic, please.

studies this directlyFirst Things. The author is a scholar and, at the time, associate professor at the Catholic University of America, who participated in a similar process with a close friend and fellow scholar. As noted in the article, however, the ritual was akin to an adoption of two people as devoted siblings without any sexual context whatsoever. The author takes apart a book by John Boswell that attempts to rewrite the historical context of *adelphopoiesis *to mold it to contemporary behavior. It’s a good read.

 

[DexUK]

I dare say that if a priest of the Catholic Church were to be approached by two persons who wanted their friendship blessed, it would be something he could do as a form of ‘para-liturgy’.

Adelphopoiesis, on the other hand, seems to be more formalised towards two otherwise non-related persons accepting each other as family. Essentially they’d become spiritual siblings by virtue of the rite being performed.

Now I know you don’t want this to be a debate about homosexual ‘marriage’, but it seems to me that Adelphopoiesis could never be equated as such since, based on my understanding, the two parties (or, I suppose, more - I see no reason why it should be limited to just a pair of people) would essentially become family. Were that to be translated to a homosexual relationship it would then become incest, so any argument by those who promote homosexual ‘marriage’ would, on this basis, be entirely groundless.

 

[joanofarc2008]

I had never heard of this - but I am very intrigued - do you have a good reference for the practice?

 

[FrDavid96]

Is the practice of adelphopoiesis/ordo ad fratres faciendum still practiced or available in any Catholic rite, or in any other communion (E.g. EO or Anglican)? Has it simply fallen into general disuse without being formally abolished, or was there a cutoff date after which no new adelphopoiesis could be validly or licitly contracted?

Basically, if two men walked into a Catholic Church and told the priest or bishop, "We want to go through adelphopoiesis, and we understand that it is not a gay marriage or anything sexual, would the priest or bishop tell them to go pound sand or would he be willing to consider it?

For what it’s worth, I do NOT believe that this was a “gay marriage” type of ritual.

Please don’t make this thread descend into another gay marriage debate thread, or a thread about what church is “true” or “valid”. Let’s keep on topic, please.

There is no such ritual in the Catholic Church. Not at the present, and not in recent times.

The primary source for official Catholic rituals is “The Roman Ritual” which is no so much a single book as it is a collection of approved rituals. It was a single book until sometime in the early 1980s.

I don’t want to go off on a tangent here about how ritual books are published and made available. Some rituals (like the installation of a new Cardinal) aren’t published in books because there is simply no need. One can still find the ritual on the Vatican webpages.

If one looks hard enough, he can find a priest willing to do just about anything in terms of ritual. No priest could legitimately perform this sort of thing though; certainly not as a minister of the Church.