Priesthood and celibacy question for my fellow Easterners (and Latin brethren as well 😊)

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How do theological comments like this sit with you? Does this inspire a desire for communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Church if the Eastern-disciplines of a co-existing celibate and married priesthood are retained?

In his text, Cardinal Sarah recalls that “there is an ontological-sacramental link between priesthood and celibacy. Any weakening of this link would put into question the Magisterium of the [Second Vatican] Council and Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I implore Pope Francis to protect us definitively from such a possibility by vetoing any weakening of the law of priestly celibacy, even if limited to one region another”. Further, Sarah goes so far as to describe the possibility of ordaining married men as “a pastoral catastrophe, an ecclesiological confusion and an obscuring of the understanding of the priesthood”. In his brief contribution, Benedict XVI, reflecting on the subject, goes back to the Jewish roots of Christianity, affirming that from the beginning of God’s “new covenant” with humanity, which was established by Jesus, priesthood and celibacy are united. He recalls that already “in the ancient Church”, that is, in the first millennium, “married men could receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders only if they committed themselves to sexual abstinence”.


ZP
 
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As I’ve posted on other threads, if the Latin Church wants married priests, it should adopt in toto ALL the rules and regulations which married Eastern Catholic priests must follow. Otherwise, don’t do it!!!

The Latin Church needs to be faithful to its own Tradition.
 
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I think my only concern was this quote . . .

“a pastoral catastrophe, an ecclesiological confusion and an obscuring of the understanding of the priesthood”.

. . . and how it could be taken, considering a married priesthood is part of the Catholic tradition in the Eastern Churches (as it was with the West). I know, well assume, that this is directed to the Latin Church.

ZP
 
ziapueblo said:
there is an ontological-sacramental link between priesthood and celibacy.
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This statement is incompatible with “This only applies to the Latin Church”. One cannot say that there is a sacramental link that is only applicable to Western priests but doesn’t exist in the East.

Holy Orders are Holy Orders. So the implication is that Eastern Catholic priesthood is ontologically… defective? Inferior?

I don’t see how a statement like that can be brushed off with the usual banal “oh, it doesn’t apply to the Eastern Catholic Churches”.

This isn’t the usual "we must maintain the tradition of celibacy (small t used intentionally). This is a whole other level.
 
I know I have a copy of the particular law of the UGCC but it’s buried in my mini-Everest of papers 😀. Let me do some digging and I’ll get back to you. (I’ll ask my pastor too since he’s a married UGCC priest 😉.)
 
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ziapueblo said:
“a pastoral catastrophe, an ecclesiological confusion and an obscuring of the understanding of the priesthood”.

. . . and how it could be taken, considering a married priesthood is part of the Catholic tradition in the Eastern Churches (as it was with the West). I know, well assume, that this is directed to the Latin Church.
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From what I’ve read, the Latin Church already has between 100 and 200 married priests who converted from Anglicanism and other Protestant faiths, and the world hasn’t come to an end over it.

While I tend to be in favor of the Latin Church generally continuing the practice of having single, celibate priests, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “pastoral catastrophe” to have some married priests.

Cardinal Sarah says many good things, but like all of these celebrity clergy he occasionally takes some position that seems rather extreme. I also always wonder if he is speaking from a particularly African perspective, as things that seem one way to us in the West can seem quite different there.
 
ziapueblo said:
I think my only concern was this quote . . .

“a pastoral catastrophe, an ecclesiological confusion and an obscuring of the understanding of the priesthood”.

. . . and how it could be taken, considering a married priesthood is part of the Catholic tradition in the Eastern Churches (as it was with the West). I know, well assume, that this is directed to the Latin Church.

ZP
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It is only his opinion of what the discipline should be. However, he thinks that it can obscure the understanding of the priesthood, which could be true for some.

Catholic Encyclopedia
Turning now to the historical development of the present law of celibacy, we must necessarily begin with St. Paul’s direction (1 Timothy 3:2, 12, and Titus 1:6) that a bishop or a deacon should be “the husband of one wife”. These passages seem fatal to any contention that celibacy was made obligatory upon the clergy from the beginning, but on the other hand, the Apostle’s desire that other men might be as himself (1 Corinthians 7:7-8), already quoted) precludes the inference that he wished all ministers of the Gospel to be married. The words beyond doubt mean that the fitting candidate was a man, who, amongst other qualities which St. Paul enunciates as likely to make his authority respected, possessed also such stability of divorce, by remaining faithful to one wife. The direction is therefore restrictive, no injunctive; it excludes men who have married more than once, but it does not impose marriage as a necessary condition. This freedom of choice seems to have lasted during the whole of what we may call, with Vacandard, the first period of the Church’s legislation, i.e. down to about the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.
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Thurston, H. (1908). Celibacy of the Clergy. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm
 
Certain Eastern Catholic Churches such as the Maronites, leave the choice to the priest. I have met a Maronite priest who was a son of a priest. Unlike his father, he chose celibacy.
When they send priests to serve a congregation in the West, they always send the celibate priests.
 
Not sure if Cardinal Sarah’s comment was even directed to the Eastern Catholic Churches, as well. I think his being a part of the Latin Church was directed at that portion of the church. I also believe he is addressing the church , as a whole. As in any issues there may be “exceptions” to the rule.

Unfortunately, I believe that with the number members of the Eastern Churches being so proportionally small (compared to the Latin Church) that it is either an oversight or basically would be addressed with an asterisk. Since many of the Eastern Catholic Churches are also mostly autonomous, so many general statements make at higher levels, may not apply.
 
ziapueblo said:
How do theological comments like this sit with you?
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  1. " … there is an ontological-sacramental link between priesthood and celibacy …"
    I can’t say that i fuly understand this use of “ontological”, but, on its face, this ideas off.
  2. "Priestly celibacy is not, and has never been, a dogma. It is an ecclesiastical discipline of the Latin Church that represents a precious gift, as all the recent Pontiffs have affirmed. The Catholic Eastern-Rite Churches allow the possibility of ordaining married men as priests. "
    This is true, but scarcely seems compatible with 1.
Margaret_Ann said:
The Latin Church needs to be faithful to its own Tradition.
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I think that is up to them. But it is critically important that they recognize it as their own, particular tradition. And avoid the jargon that sounds like it actually is, or should be, dogma.
 
I think since the Latin Rite makes up such an enormous portion of the Church, changing the discipline of celibacy would be very different than in other instances. The Church balances a desire for unification when possible (such as ordaining married Anglican ministers who convert) along with its desire to have a celibate priesthood on the whole.
 
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Yeah, I recently read that each RC diocese in US is allowed 2 married priests, who would presumably be converted Protestant clergy, and that many dioceses have less than that (one, or zero). I think the Anglican Ordinariate is its own entity and not considered as being under a diocese, so their priests likely don’t count towards the limit of 2.
 
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ziapueblo said:
Does this inspire a desire for communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Church if the Eastern-disciplines of a co-existing celibate and married priesthood are retained?
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Cardinal Sarah is very inspiring for me to want to end the Schism in all forms. He is very mystic and traditional in views, I think the EO public will view him very positively if he ever became more important in RC. I interpret what he said about celibacy as a desire to not allow Modernism in RC which is something many EO people in Europe are arguing against the current leaders of RC - too much Modernism, on top of everything. Modernism is divergent from the end of Schism path imho.
Also Cardinal Sarah spoke about Ad Orientem liturgy which is something many EO will completely agree with. The RC rite is already criticized in the East by being concentrated too much on people and not on God, on pleasing the world and achieving aggiornamento at all costs, not mystic enough any more. Cardinal Sarah is against Modernism for sure.
The point of celibacy is not such a big deal, Saint John Chrysosthom said precisely otherwise than Cardinal Sarah and he is a Founding Father, Saint Peter also was married, so Cardinal Sarah being off about celibacy is not that big a deal imho. I support his ideas on celibacy as a struggle to stop change and modernizing the Roman Church.
On a personal note if the RCC becomes any more “hip and cool” and James Martin-ish so to speak, I think I will switch sides and join those who oppose ending the Schism, because I don’t want the EOC to follow down the line of making compromises and rephrasing details just to not upset the world when the world is definitely moving against God like the RC is currently doing for the most part.
 
XXI_4 said:
This statement is incompatible with “This only applies to the Latin Church”.
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I don’t think it is.

The Eastern Churches (whether EO or EC) differ from the RCC in some of their nuances on eucharistic and ordination theology. Namely they generally do not subscribe to an understanding that an ontological change occurs in the ordained, and in the priest being an alter Christus during the eucharist.

(This is not to say that the EO or EC churches have a conflicting ordination theology with the RCC, but theirs is an understanding that has developed in a different theological context which is nonetheless legitimate.)

That being said, I think Cardinal Sarah’s general argument is that priestly celibacy is deeply interconnected and embedded within the life of tradition in the Latin Church: to abandon (or excessively relax) it would essentially “wind back the clock” on a millennia of Latin theological development on areas as varied as eclessiology and sacramental theology.
 
Can I get an AMEN!

I’d take this a bit further to say that if the Latin Church wants to allow for a married priesthood, they have to also be willing to embrace the “problems” (perhaps “challenges” would be a better word?) that come along with a married priesthood.

Parishes would have to be completely restructured to allow for the priest to have time with his family. Parish and Diocesan finances would have to be managed in such a way that married priests are paid a just wage to support their families (something that rarely happens in the Church and Catholic ministries). The laity would have to be more willing to be involved in the day-to-day running of a parish so that their pastor could have more time with his family. This means that parishes and dioceses would also have to pay a just wage to everyone else employed by the parish. The list could go on and on…
 
Just remember that these are just opinions. In my experience, when Latin Catholics (clergy, scholars, and laity alike) start making doomsday prophecies related to the possibility of a married priesthood, they either are completely unaware of the experience of the Eastern tradition when it comes to married clergy, or they have disregarded it as some sort of archaic anomaly of the East, or they’re aware of the experiences of the East in this regard, but haven’t integrated those experiences into their own theological musings on the point.

I agree with others who disagree with Card. Sarah in re celibacy being part of the ontological nature of the priesthood. This would mean that celibacy itself is fundamental and necessary to the nature of the priesthood, and that, by nature, a non-celibate man could not be ordained to the priesthood because his non-celibate state is mutually exclusive of the priestly state. But the fact of married clergy in both the Roman Church today and the Eastern Churches throughout history shows that this is simply not the case.

Celibacy (for the sake of the Kingdom) is “ontologically and sacramentally” linked to the monastic life, not to the priesthood. A married monk is an oxymoron, not a married priest.
 
I think it’s fair to assume that it’s directed to the Latin Church as well.

I might add that I don’t think the disciplines in the Eastern Churches or the Western Church are going to be changed any time soon.
 
Actually, the laity are already doing a lot of the running of Latin Churches because of the priest shortage.

The main problems I can see if Latin Church decided to have a lot of married priests would be as follows:
  1. It might not solve the workload issue, since a priest who had to carve out time for his wife and family would have less time to give to the parish, so a parish could conceivably have two married priests and be in the same situation timewise as when they had one single priest working part-time. And the married priests would impose a bigger cost burden on the parish and diocese (see (2)).
  2. The married priest would bring with him a spouse and children and would likely need to be paid more and be provided with living accommodations suited to a family. He could not simply have a room in a common rectory shared with some other single priests.
  3. Because the Latin Church has a long tradition of single, celibate priests, there’s no context or understanding or defined set of standards for what the role of the priest’s wife is, or what work (if any) she should be doing within a parish (or conversely, can she just go off and have a career someplace else and not be doing work for the parish), or what procedures should be followed when a priest is having marital trouble or the priest’s child is out of control. There’s also some risk that the single, celibate priest would be regarded more favorably by the diocese or that married priests would have to work harder to prove that they and their families aren’t going to be a “problem”.
I’m sure these situations could be addressed in some way, but it would be another big pile of changes dumped on a church that’s still trying to handle the changes imposed by Vatican 2. If we were going to switch to married priests we probably should have just done it then so all the change could happen at once.
 
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