Well, the Episcopal/Anglican churches have had married priests since the Reformation so your model doesn’t work since the latter two are a product of the modern, liberal age.
And, actually, Roman Catholics who are looking at the married priesthood issue are at a real disadvantage since they have no experience whatever with it (thus, the wild commentary about it).
My grandfather was a married EC priest and I have had 14 married priests on my grandmother’s side, all with doctorates in theology. I am related to several married Eastern Catholic priests - all of whom have children who are VERY conservative and who put their orthodox Catholic faith and practice first in their lives.
My grandmother was the one who set a great example for me and all of us in my extended family. She had seven children and as the wife of a priest, supported Fr. John in all of his undertakings. The women of the parish often came to her and not to my grandfather for advice.
My grandmother, Presbytera Irene, prayed for almost an hour morning and night. She said the rosary mid-morning, after her daily Mass and Communion, and then the Chaplet of the Holy Five Wounds of Jesus at three in the afternoon.
My grandfather prayed his breviary etc. - but my grandmother outstripped his rich prayer life, to be sure!
She would often check her husband’s sermon notes and would make suggestions, here and there about how to strengthen his points. Her father was a married priest who died young after over-exerting himself in the construction of his new church. Her mother, Alexandra, spent the rest of her life, in prayer and poverty, always giving away her pension to her grandchildren. I was named for her and I would like to, one day, go to Ukraine to buy a decent gravestone for her grave.
But getting back to my grandmother, she had a great devotion to the Most Holy Virgin Mary and kept a wooden icon of the Mother of God with her. It was very worn. When her children escaped soviet communism, she gave pieces of the wood of that icon to each, as a blessing and for them to remember to stay true to God nomatter what would befall them.
She survived several foreign occupations, including the Nazis and then the Soviets.
She also gave assistance to the anti-communist Underground, often at the peril of her life.
The Nazis tended to consider Ukrainians to be pro-Soviet. This is why they would take whole groups of Ukrainian villagers to the front as “cannon fodder” to allow the Soviets to empty their ammunition into these unarmed people.
When a group of these prisoners stood by my grandparents’ farm, my grandmother made stew and since the people had their hands tied, she fed them by dipping bread into the stew and putting each piece into their mouths, one by one. One of the Nazi officers saw this and then drew his Luger pistol, pointing to my grandmother’s head. His commanding officer grabbed his arm and said, “What are you doing? She is feeding her own people!”
Another time, now under the Soviets, my grandparents had a party in their home and two soviet officers from the village administration were present. One of them got so drunk that he started to have his soup with a fork. At this, one of the guests said, “Now sir . . .”
Since “sir” (“Pane”) was considered a bourgeois title and those using it to be counter-revolutionaries, the officer ordered everyone into the kitchen at that moment. He ordered them to stand facing the wall as he walked up and down their line with his unsheathed pistol (apparently about to shoot them in a game of Russian roulette).
My grandmother stood with her guests. The officer said, “Why are you standing there, Matushka? You didn’t do anything!”
At this, she replied, “These are my guests whom I have invited into my home. If they are to die, then I must die with them.”
The officer said, “I have a Matushka as loving as you back home in Moscow whom I miss very much.”
He and his colleague then left to go home, and no one was harmed.
To our Roman Catholic friends who think that a celibate priesthood is the only way to go or that celibacy best reflects Christ - PLEASE! Do not judge that with which you have no idea about! Married clergy is something that we have had from the time of Christ!
My one wish is that your celibate clergy be as long-suffering witnesses to Christ and His Catholic Church as my grandparents were!
Alex
