Pope Francis open to having some married men become priests

[commenter]

• I know a couple married priests, but they are Eastern Catholics with tiny congregations. They do additional work for the Latin Rite diocese, but I guess it is something they can limit as the needs of their family develop. I wonder how Eastern priests do in the Near East, where they presumably have large parishes.
• I think one of the worst nightmares for the Latin Rite bishops would be wives complaining about family life suffering, and the priest’s kid having any kind of problems, which would universally be attributed to his priestly vocation. In Protestant congregations, there is a whole theme of “PK’s” (preacher’s kids) and their foibles. It’s not all 7th Heaven.
• If Latin Rite bishops start ordaining married men, I bet they would try to assign a few to the tiny parish the already live in, if they are out in the country somewhere. (Most of the tiny parishes in my area have been closed or merged). Or they would be assigned to some situation like chaplain somewhere, or teaching, something that would not require them to be on call 24/7. They would not be assigned as pastor to any but a tiny parish.
• I am sure they would not move, more than once, if that. They would commute to their ministries. If the family happened to not already own a house, or wanted to move anyway, they might move into an empty convent or rectory, but they would not move again just because he changed jobs. I would much rather have the family live away from the parish grounds.

 

[jediliz]

Jedliz:

About the Eastern Rite - at least in the United States, many of their congregations are rather small, so the balance of the two vocations may be easier. I do know if married, the priest must be married prior to ordination, and cannot remarry. I’ve heard that many wives of Easter Rite priests were daughters of an Eastern Rite priest, so they have a little more understanding of what life will be like when married to a priest.

Yes, there are exceptions for those coming in under the Pastoral Provision.

As far as moving around, if there were an abundance of married priests I could envision the phones at the chancery office ringing off the hook. These phone calls would be wives wanting to speak to the bishop about:

• “What?” You are transferring my husband out to the boondocks? Why? What for?
• What? You can’t transfer my husband. There’s no way I am going to live in a crime infested ghetto?

Thank you…I have no experience with any eastern rite priests (other than when I found a blog written anonymously by a priest’s wife) and my experience is from Latin (Roman) Rite ones that get moved every two years (well, assistants do).

I think we should stick with what works right now and many dioceses might need to get better vocation directors - my diocese of Lincoln seems to do SOMETHING right since we have many seminarians right now.

 

[commenter]

I think we should stick with what works right now and many dioceses might need to get better vocation directors - my diocese of Lincoln seems to do SOMETHING right since we have many seminarians right now.

You can have the best vocation directors in the world, and get very few vocations. In my diocese we have had good priests doing it, with constant blurbs from the diocese. But very, very few vocations.

The problem is that 2 generations of Catholics have gone through parochial school or CCD with no real doctrinal content, and this is also reflected in sermons and the diocesan newspaper. Nothing is absolutely true or false, everything is relative. The Mass is kind of a community gathering, no understanding that anything supernatural happens here.

“Communion” really means kind of participation in the community. If you ask the average Catholic school senior what is the “Consecration”, I am not sure how many would understand it, or how that would connect to Holy Orders.

The role of the priest is sort of implied to be a kind of social worker, who makes people feel good about themselves, and draws people to be united with each other in the parish, and united with others in the neighborhood and the world.

I think Lincoln has had good vocations for years because they had good catechesis, preaching, and direction from the diocese for years. The other 10% is the vocations directors. It is much easier to print 50 bulletin announcements a year promoting vocations than it is to throw out a weak, ambiguous religion text and put in doctrinal content. But in the long run that prepares the ground for good vocations to priesthood (and religious life, and to Catholic Marriage, and to the lay apostolate.)

 

[dochawk]

In the Latin Church yes. I believe the Eastern Catholic church has always allowed a married man to become a priest (I could be wrong about when this started but TLTG (Too Lazy To Google).

Only since the first century . . . it was the norm universally (outside of the monastery, which was always celibate!), but fell out in the west in the late first millennium. Mariried bishops ended in the second century both because of the tendency to draw from monasteries for bishops, and because of problems with bishops willing church property to their sons.

There are very rare cases, both for EC and EO, in which married priests with very young children were allowed to remarry–but that was about the children, not the priest. And again, very rare. Deacons in the RC, however, are fairly often granted dispensations to re-marry when their wife dies.

AMDG

hawk

 

[dochawk]

No it’s not worth discussing.

Women cannot be ordained and therefore cannot be deaconesses since the office of deacon is an ordained position.

Are you deliberately trolling?

A deaconess is NOT a female deacon; it is a separate office, known to some eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches.

The social ministry is generally similar to a deacon, but without the liturgical role–although in at least one, they enter the holy place to receive the Eucharist with the clergy.

Installation varies by church, with at least one laying hands as with higher clergy, but, again, in no church is a deaconess a female deacon.

AMDG

hawk