Permanent Deacon to Priesthood

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MrJeremy

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If a male is ordained as a permanent deacon and married…then his wife passes or they get divorced with an annulment. Can he become a priest, or is that not allowed with being a permanent deacon instead of a transitional deacon.
 
Yes, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Just that a man is not precluded from presbyteral ordination because he’s been ordained a permanent deacon.
 
There’s a man in the seminary now for our diocese who was a deacon, whose wife died. Another applied for ordination after his wife died, but the diocese turned him down.
 
I think that the divorce is going to be a barrier, annulment or not.

Aside from that, possible, but not guaranteed.

And there is a real possibility that, in the coming decades, we will start seeing long serving married deacons ordained as priests in the RCC, starting in the areas Pope Frances is already considering, and possibly spreading. There is definitely movement towards this in the EC, but marriage isn’t a barrier there already (although until a year or two ago, it was for those that had been baptized RC).

hawk
 
He may become a priest if his bishop believes he has those charisms.
 
Yes, a priest in my town was a deacon for almost twenty years. After his wife passed, he went to a special seminary program and was ordained to the priesthood. His adult children get to tell everyone about their father, the Catholic priest.
 
I was chatting with a longtime deacon, ordained a priest after his wife’s death.

Before that, she once indignantly told him to take off the collar when they got home after liturgy, because he looked like a priest.

“Wait a minute,” he replied. “The black dress doesn’t bother you, but the collar is a problem?”

🤣

btw, there are more married RC priests in the US than EC–from the influx of former Lutherans and Episcopalians.

hawk
 
If the permanent deacon has children that are still dependent upon him for their support then I would guess that the diocese would say that he should wait until the children are all grown. If his wife has died it is possible for him to be ordained a priest if he and the diocese find that he has a calling from God to be ordained as a priest.

I just heard that the Chaldeans are ordaining fewer and fewer married men to the priesthood and recommend that men be celibates as it is harder for a priest to raise a family today. Travelling around the diocese to celebrate Mass, especially if the diocese is large, would be very hard on family life.
 
I know two men who were divorced, marriages annulled and who became permanent deacons and then priests. I know another divorced man who was ordained a priest after his marriage was annulled.
 
I think i chose my words poorly.

It is an issue that will be considered; it is not a bar to ordination.

hawk
 
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