What the literal scripture says and how the Church interprets and apply it are not always the same. The Church is going to interpret and apply it the way that the Apostolic community and the Fathers did. The passage is directed to all men and women. It’s is Christ’s universal call to holiness.
If you say that a priest in the Roman Church is married to the Church, then you are adding something to the priesthood.
40% of our Roman Catholic priests are members of religious orders. If you told a single one of those founders that their religious are married to the Church, instead of to their religious institute, they would deny it. Now you have another large number of ordained men to whom you cannot apply this.
Now you’re left with the secular and diocesan priests who have no commitment to spouse or to religious community. You would have just created a reality for a minority of priests.
Allow me to show you how this works. Let’s say that you’re a priest and you join an order like the Francisans or the Carthusians. In both of these orders the individual’s primary call is to be a brother (Franciscan) or a hermit (Carthusian). Direct ministry to the faithful is not the primary vocation.
Carthusians are never at the service of the Church as is a diocesan priest. They simply are not involved in pastoral care at all. Most priests in a Charterhouse have never heard confessions, never baptized, never witnessed a marriage, nerver precided over a funeral, never annointed a sick person. The priestly ministry is limited to the celebration of the Eucharist for the benefit of the Universal Church.
A priest who is a Franciscan Friar will be available only as far as his superior and his brothers allow it. There are other things that take priority: LOTH with his brothers, community recreation, community meals, community meetings, community ministries and so forth. His obedience is not to a bishop, but to his religious superior. That automatically calls into question his “marriage” to the Church, if he is not under the jurisdiction of a bishop. He can be under the jurisdicgtion of a lay brother. In fact, all priests who belong to a religious community are under the jurisdiction of their superior, not the bishop. They fall under the jurisdiction of the bishop only when they work for him and only in those matters related to the apostolate that they do in communion with the bishop. Let’s say that you have a Carmelite who is a priest, but he is the novice master. He is not at the service of the Universal Church in the way that we think. He is serving the Universal Church by serving his brothers in formation. This Carmelite Friar may never see a sick person, celebrate a parish mass, or a baptism and so forth.
So, to say that a married priest is more limited than a celibate priest is not quite accurate. The truth is that a priest who is a religious is much more limited than a married priest. A married priest is a secular priest. He belongs to a diocese and is at the beck and call of the diocesan bishop. A priest who is a religious is not at the beck and call of the dioesan bishop, because religious do not belong to any diocese. We are excardinated even from the diocese of our baptism the moment that we enter novitiate. We are only at the service of the bishops if and when the superior, with the consent of the chapter and the constitutions, allows it.
All priests belong to the universal Church, be they Roman or other. But the marriage analogy does not work well, unless you want to say that he has given his life to the service of the Church. That would be true. That’s not a marriage.
The fact that you have priests who are called to live the consecrated life of a religious puts them into a situation where there is another commitment that takes presedence and that mediates their relationship with the Church. In marriage, there is no mediation between the husband and wife.
For example, a priest who is a Carmelite Friars must serve the Church as a Carmelite. He does not get up in the morning and decide that he’s going to do A, B. and C, because he’s a priest. He gets up and does A, B, and C because he is a Carmelite and if D is not appropriate for a Carmelite, even though it may be appropriate for a priest, that Carmelite does not do it. Just like a Carthusian does not take sick calls. It’s not appropriate for him to do so, even if he is a priest. If you call a Chaterhouse in the middle of the night because you need a priest, you will not get an answer. If a bishop asks a Trappist Abbot to give him a priest to celebrate mass at a parish that has no priest, he’ll get back an polite decline. If a bishop asks a Franciscan superior to give him more priests for a middle class parish, he’ll get back a polite decline.
It’s a noble phrasing to say that a priest is married to the Church. All of them are at the service of the Church, but they don’t all do the same thing. To a monk and a friar, who is a priest, praying with his brothers takes priority over celebrating mass for the faithful.
Check out how a friar-priest defines his role in the Church.
capuchins.org/spotlights.html
If you notice, his availability is determined by his vows as a brother, not by his ordination.
I know that people often use this language to refer to priests, nuns, sisters and brothers. It’s OK if they use it, as long as they understand that the term marriage does not have the same nuance as marriage between husband and wife. In the case of clergy and religious, the term marriage means one who has given his live to the service of the Church. The married priest has also given his life to the service of the Church.
Just as the married priest must pay special attention to the welfare of his family, a priest who is a religious must pay special attention to the welfare of his religious community.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
That was good.