Issue of married Catholic priests gains traction under pope

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That free housing is typically a parish rectory which is shared with other priests. Rarely would work for a family.

Anyone who thinks a typical parish could easily adapt to being assigned a married parochial vicar whose family needs support is kidding themselves.
 
I will take your word for it when it comes to your regular parish priest. The only source I have on that end are priests themselves (a cousin, a very close childhood friend, my daughter’s godfather, and a former pastor that talked about his salary in a homily about tithing). They could be exceptions to the national norm.

As for military chaplains, you can look up military pay charts for 2018. In the army, priests are officers. They tend to be captains or higher ranked (my current pastor is a major). They receive what is listed for their rank as their base pay with added benefits such as housing, tricare, assignment bonuses, and whatever else they may qualify for. A former post we were stationed at, our priest was an airborne ranger attached to special forces. Most of the parishioners at a military chapel are enlisted regular military that live in post housing. They only receive base pay without special pays (unless deployed or separated from family by assignment). Our priests do make significantly higher pay. Just as the Protestant chaplains do.

It’s not a knock against priests. I believe they more than earn what they get. They deserve much more. I just get tired of the statement that pay prevents them from raising a family. If that is the case, it prevents all of us as well.
 
There are many good size rectories (two or three levels, multiple bedrooms) that house a single priest… these could easily be made into family accommodations. I can think of very few rectories that house “multiple” priests. They exist - our cathedral rectory is a large Victorian style house that is home to seven priests - but that’s rare. A priest friend of mine, at his last parish assignment, had a choice of an apartment built into the church proper or a separate two floor house. This seems, in my experience, more the norm than “multiple priests” per rectory.

My small town home parish had two houses on the church lot. Loads of room for families in the plural. The one priest lived in the two floor rectory. The second house had once been intended for a resident sister but was at various points rented out.

If you live in a place where there are so many vocations that your diocese has been forced to shove multiple priests into each rectory…then get on your knees and praise God that you have been blessed beyond the wildest dreams of many Catholics…in which case this conversation of addressing priest shortages is probably moot for you.
 
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The parish I grew up in has two homes as well. One was originally for sisters that taught at the school and was across the street from the church on the school grounds. After the sisters left the school, it was rented out to a family. The other home was next but the church. Our priest opted to live elsewhere since the home was so large. And yes, it was bigger than most of the homes we, that attended the parish, lived in.
 
Yes, I can think of parishes where the large rectory basement is used for parish events and the main floor for parish offices…with the priest living upstairs. If these parishes were blessed with multiple priests, even with a family or two, I’m sure office and community space could be found elsewhere and the large houses converted back to residences.

Many parishes also have a housekeeper for the rectory. If the priest had a family, the wife and kids could help out with chores and the housekeeper’s salary given to the priest to bolster his salary as a family man.
 
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The church offices were actually in the school. The rectory was only a home.
 
Almost every parish around here has at least two priests. They always live in the same rectory
 
That’s good. Sounds like your area doesn’t have a critical priest shortage… and probably wouldn’t be a priority area for ordaining married priests.
 
We still have a priest shortage, it’s just not as bad as it was. All of the parishes around me, except one, have two or three priests. Now, these parishes each have between 2 and 7 thousand people attending mass on Sundays, so there is still a shortage. But our seminary has 60 seminarians at this time.

Not unrelated, every parish around here has Eucharistic adoration, if not everyday, at least once a week. I believe that the return of this practice has resulted in more vocations ( 12 years ago our seminary was down to 13). The surest way to fix the vocation shortage is to increase this practice, much more of a sure bet than married priests.
 
I realize that. I have family in the Midwest whose parishes share priests, and they are all older. And many of my family in that part of the country would not be able to remember the last time they went to a Eucharistic adoration and benediction. Their churches are often locked during the day, its almost impossible to even make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament (around here its almost impossible to make a visit and find the chapel or church empty during the day).

Perhaps married priests will help their situation, but I suspect it will not make much difference long term. I am not adamantly against the idea. But to deny that it would be a struggle for most parishes is wrong.

You use military chaplains as one example, but that is a bad example. I do not know how much your relatives who are priests make, but I can tell you the salary schedule in our diocese (this was around 10 years ago) for pastors was a little under 30K/year. A salary for a parochial vicar with less than 5 years in the dioceses was around 20K. That was the range of pay for diocesan priests. I do not think it would be much out of the norm. And we need to remember, if we had married priests, it would be completely absurd to expect their family to require two incomes to live. The husband would be away from home for so much of the time, even in the evenings, that the wife would almost certainly be a stay at home mom. Salaries would have to go up by 2 or 3 times at a minimum. In addition to that, if one expects it to solve the problems of the priest shortage, one cannot say that the available rectory space due to a priest shortage would be sufficient to house the families.
 
tafan2 said:
You use military chaplains as one example, but that is a bad example.
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Why is it a bad example? There is a huge shortage of military chaplains as well. There are places without a chaplain at all. They rely on local parishes to cover the chapel on post as well, or they don’t have Mass.

A acknowledged that I may not know the average pay nation wide. You are correct. But if those salaries from 10 years ago are correct for a national norm today, yes most likely they would need two incomes. Most families have two incomes these days, even those of us that have husbands gone most of the time. That isn’t an unusual family arrangement.

I actually don’t want married priests to become the norm, but the types of arguments many have against them seem very poor. They are all based in secular, material, wordly things and nothing at all about the spiritual. Not focussing on the spiritual enough and being ruled by the material desires has lead our church into too many scandals throughout history.
 
tafan2 said:
In addition to that, if one expects it to solve the problems of the priest shortage, one cannot say that the available rectory space due to a priest shortage would be sufficient to house the families.
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You do have somewhat of a point here. If there is a huge increase in the number of priests, the rectories will be filled. Many churches do not have rectified at all. Many places the priest lives in a home if their choosing already, and some parishes have empty rectories for various reasons. If there really is s time that it becomes so full that they are overflowing, what a blessing that would be! Instead of that being a problem to solve, that would be a source of joy that I’m sure will work itself out. And that goes for priests that are unmarried as well.
 
I’ve never even heard of a parish without a rectory. Must be a regional thing?
 
It might be. Or it could be a rural issue. The churches I am thinking of are all in very small areas that tend to be covered by the same priest. There isn’t a need for a rectory if there is no priest assigned to that specific church.
 
In my parents town there are two parishes covered by one priest. Both parishes still have a house on campus… the priest lives in one and a nun lives in the other. Both would have been rectories at one point.
 
We have had several priests of our diocese who have been military chaplains. But that is a temporary assignment. The bishop must assent to their assignment. The military would like to keep them till retirement but the bishop wants them back in the diocese after one military tour.

My current parish rectory has four priests in residence, including the pastor, two associates, and a retired priest in residence. Each has a bedroom and an office.
 
Yes some do get called back to their diocese. Our current pastor is out of South Carolina and has been in the Army 16 years now. The one I mentioned that was attached to the special forces was from the north east, but had been in the navy, attached to the marines, in the Air Force, and then was in the army. It really does depend on the diocese. Several other priests are in the reserves. They may get called up at times, but most just serve their reserve unit.
 
Mandatory clerical celibacy for priests has only been a thing since the 1200’s. It’s by no means the ancient position of the Church, nor a dogma, nor even a doctrine. It wasn’t until Peter Damian came around calling priests’ wives harlots and snakes that anybody started thinking differently.

Orthodox priests are and have always been largely married men–there are some celibate priests, sure, but married priests do just as good a job as celibate ones. Rome’s opposition to married clergy has everything to do with political considerations that stemmed from the Investiture Controversy and nothing to do with theology, morality or practicality.
 
This is a misrepresentation of both the historical facts and the situation in the east. In the east, clerical celibacy is not unknown, indeed since (IIRC) the early 7th century the eastern churched for the most part have maintained a rule that Bishops must be unmarried and celibate. Furthermore, it has been the rule in the east that even priests cannot marry after ordination.

Historically, one can really point to 1074, not the 1200s, as when priestly celibacy became the rule in the west. That is when Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) issued his decree that release everyone from obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. And it went back way before this, one can say that the rule of 1074 was a culmination of a process that had started 700 years earlier. There are local synods and councils as early as the 4th century which mandated celibacy, albeit, they allowed married clergy and sometimes requiring the clergy to separate from the wives sometimes not.

And to say this stemmed from the Investiture Controversy and had nothing to do with theology is a backwards reading of history. The Gregorian reforms took place because the church had become corrupted, especially the clergy. The investiture controversy was a means of ensuring the reforms were effective, not the other way around.
 
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