Priests should be allowed to marry

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DD2007

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I think that the Church must soon allow Priests to marry. If not it will run out of Priests.

Since I have joined the Church I have attended three different Churches regularly…

The priests were all either old or linguistically challenged to the point that reliable communication wasn’t possible.

What do you think will happen? Will we soon go down to one Church per major city in the US and just require all of the small town people to celebrate Mass from home using their tv sets?

I heard that the Pope once said the he sees a future where Christianity is much smaller than it is today.

Please discuss:(
 
DD2007 said:
I think that the Church must soon allow Priests to marry. If not it will run out of Priests.

Since I have joined the Church I have attended three different Churches regularly…

The priests were all either old or linguistically challenged to the point that reliable communication wasn’t possible.

What do you think will happen? Will we soon go down to one Church per major city in the US and just require all of the small town people to celebrate Mass from home using their tv sets?

I heard that the Pope once said the he sees a future where Christianity is much smaller than it is today.

Please discuss:(
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Holy Orders is an impediment to marriage.

Never in the history of the Church have those who are in Holy Orders been allowed to marry.

Now, married men have been ordained but that is something totally different than allowing those who are ordained to be married.

The Church is not just in America. The Church is world wide and not everywhere in the Church is there a vocations crisis.

Yes there is the issue of accents and languages but you do not solve that by doing something that has nothing to do with it.

I have a question for you. When was the last time that you promoted vocations? Not just by saying you are for them or praying for them. Promoting vocations also includes the way you treat those who are religious and/or priests. It also includes the way you speak about them when others can hear you.
 
In the mean time we have like 33 seminarians in our diocese (small diocese)… up from the last few years…
 
The over 50 young men in the program with me at college right now would all disagree with you. Not one of us wishes or expects to get married before becoming a priest, not even the one eastern rite, who is allowed to. He has said that if we were to decide he was called to the priesthood, he would look to do so celibately.
 
DD2007 said:
I think that the Church must soon allow Priests to marry. If not it will run out of Priests.

Since I have joined the Church I have attended three different Churches regularly…

The priests were all either old or linguistically challenged to the point that reliable communication wasn’t possible.

What do you think will happen? Will we soon go down to one Church per major city in the US and just require all of the small town people to celebrate Mass from home using their tv sets?

I heard that the Pope once said the he sees a future where Christianity is much smaller than it is today.

Please discuss:(
Click to expand...
Three points to consider:
  1. You do realize that the Catholic Church ALREADY has married priests, right? Most of the Eastern branches of the Catholic Church allow for married priests (and always have), and there have been a number of ministers from other faiths that have been married, converted, and allowed to become priests. There are over 100 married Catholic priests in the US today.
  2. The Orthodox Church currently allows for married priests, and yet, they also have a vocations crisis. (It just doesn’t seem as bad because their numbers are so much smaller in the US.) The ordination of married priests is not by any means a cure-all for the vocations crisis.
  3. The ordination of married men was originally restricted in the eleventh century, in part, as a reform. There were priests that were committing simony and engaging in nepotism by finding jobs for their children within the church hierarchy. Some were also using parish funds to support lavish lifestyles for their families.
 
If we pray more for priest and religious vocations and do things for this purpose, then we can have trust in the Lord that we will not run out of priests.
 
Amazingly, in 2000 years the church has never run out of priests. Even under pain of death men became priests. Wathing their fellows die didn’t slow the tide. The only thing that slows the tide is that we, the laity, do not push vocations. WE allow our priests to be denigrated unfairly and to be disrespected. We don’t advise our children to consider vocations and we look on it as something that other people do.

We need to pray for vocations, we need to encourage vocations, we need to support our priests and hold them up to the esteem and thanks they deserve. We need to trust God to fill the rolls as He sees fit. We need to defend the priests and religious whenever and however needed. We need to help them be the men they are supposed to be.
 
The long standing discipline, not doctrine, has always been that if a married man is allowed to be ordained, once ordained he can never remarry. That is the true nature of Holy Orders so to speak, making up my own language here. An ordained man has an indelible mark placed on his soul that marks him for eternity, like baptism. About 20% of all Catholic priests are married.

The Church is not going to die. The priesthood is not going to die. I have 2 boys and I’m encouraging both to consider a vocation to the priesthood. Our youngest daughter we hope will join an order, like the “Intercessors of the Lamb”…the Carmelites [my dream]. But what ever vocation they choose we are trying to be an example to other Catholic families out there to encourage their children to consider vocations to the priesthood and religious life. It truly is a wonderful thing. I really loved being a seminarian. It was robbed from me… But I accept what’s happened to me and offer it up for vocations to the priesthood.

Join an apostalate to help foster vocations…

PAX
 
** Some were also using parish funds to support lavish lifestyles for their families.**

**If things back then were like they are now, the lifestyle was substince, rather than lavish.

Even in Protestant churches, more often than not, the Pastor has to have a secular job to support his family, as the congregation cannot do so.

Don’t even ask about the Orthodox.**
 
Hey, you don’t think $18 to $22K a year is living a lavish lifestyle?
 
Band-Aid solution. It will ruin the church, so it will not happen. The crisis must hurt before young men will step up. Until then, we enjoy the priests that we have and pray for vocations. When is the last time we all did that?
 
DD2007 said:
I think that the Church must soon allow Priests to marry. If not it will run out of Priests.

Since I have joined the Church I have attended three different Churches regularly…

The priests were all either old or linguistically challenged to the point that reliable communication wasn’t possible.

What do you think will happen? Will we soon go down to one Church per major city in the US and just require all of the small town people to celebrate Mass from home using their tv sets?

I heard that the Pope once said the he sees a future where Christianity is much smaller than it is today.

Please discuss:(
Click to expand...
FOR DD2007 - Hi!

C’mon be honest! Admit it! You are no Catholic convert! You are here in disguise just to test us and make us tear our hair out!:bigyikes: :eek:

People do it all the time! They say things to provoke and infuriate and just drive people crazy:crying: :banghead:
 
po18guy said:
Band-Aid solution. It will ruin the church, so it will not happen. The crisis must hurt before young men will step up. Until then, we enjoy the priests that we have and pray for vocations. When is the last time we all did that?
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Just wanted to say, ordaining married men would NOT ruin the Church. To say so is an insult to our Eastern Catholic brothers, who have always had married (as well as celibate clergy), and the many married Latin priests (mostly converts).

Priest marrying is not going to happen: this has never been allowed, East or West, Catholic or Orthodox.

For a priest or deacon to validly marry, he must be laicized (returned to the lay state) by Rome, and can no longer be an active clergyman.

God Bless
 
DD2007 said:
I think that the Church must soon allow Priests to marry. If not it will run out of Priests.

Since I have joined the Church I have attended three different Churches regularly…

The priests were all either old or linguistically challenged to the point that reliable communication wasn’t possible.

What do you think will happen? Will we soon go down to one Church per major city in the US and just require all of the small town people to celebrate Mass from home using their tv sets?

I heard that the Pope once said the he sees a future where Christianity is much smaller than it is today.

Please discuss:(
Click to expand...
This “Running out of priests” talk has been going on for decades - and it simply has not happened, and will not happen.

What we REALLY need to do is foster vocations by ASKING for them.

You could ordain all the married deacons (almost 20,000 of them) to the priesthood tomorrow, and then guess what? Things would not be that much different - unless you wanted to take on the burden of supporting them and their families.

I am a Greek Catholic, I have married priests in my church and at one point had considered becoming one myself. It really would not change things all that much except to add expenses and an additional layer of problems the Roman church is just not equipped to handle.

Pray for vocations, ask for them, preach for them, encourage families to talk about them… and you will get them.
 
bilop said:
Just wanted to say, ordaining married men would NOT ruin the Church. To say so is an insult to our Eastern Catholic brothers, who have always had married (as well as celibate clergy), and the many married Latin priests (mostly converts).

Priest marrying is not going to happen: this has never been allowed, East or West, Catholic or Orthodox.

For a priest or deacon to validly marry, he must be laicized (returned to the lay state) by Rome, and can no longer be an active clergyman.

God Bless
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Actually, I am Greek Catholic, and I am not the least bit insulted… To ordain married men in the Latin Church would change the institutional face of the Latin Church in a way that could easily be devastating. Rectories and workloads were designed for single men, not families.
 
Married latin priests are not the answer to the crisis. The answer to the crisis (if one truly exists) is better teaching of the faith, upholding orthodox teaching, forstering vocations through outreach and making greater use of the “instituted ministries” for those below the age for seminary. Such as they do in Nebraska so I have heard. They have the young men “instituted” as Acolytes and Lectors and the boys serve as altar servers. This model has been crucial ,in my opinion, in increasing vocations in that diocese (eastern nebraska…) .
 
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