On the other hand, adding a priest who has already been married for quite some time, who is already well educated, who perhaps owns his own home, whose wife perhaps even has her own good job, whose children are older or even grown, would seem to be a bonus for a diocese. Right now we have a couple single “late vocation” men in the local priesthood. I’m sure there could be a few married “late vocations” out there as well.
Certainly not in my opinion. The present proposals that are seriously being considered are for ordaining already married and stable men.
I hope so! As I understand it has been the tradition for the Catholic church for nearly 2000 years! As I understand, in the Amazon they are proposing that certain men in the Amazon are ordained preists who are already deacons. The rules for deacons are clear. They can’t get married once they are deacons.
They get divorced. Divorces happen. I’m sure there has occasionally been divorces for married eastern rite Catholic priests. Hopefully, they will choose stable married men who have been good deacons to very much limit the chance of divorce.
Yeah…this question…I’m not saying it is not a fair questions…btw. Why is it such a bad thing if a married man wants to be Catholic priest and can cover some or most of the costs of his family? So what? He may simply want to give a gift and find a meaning to his life.
They won’t. There is 2000 years of documentation that priests cannot get married. Only married men becoming priests.BartholomewB:
Yes but it is possible that the door will be opened to men who are already priests to get married - as anglican ministers do, for example.
My guess regarding housing is this:
In the USA, the vast majority of people are “working or middle class”. Very few people are categorized as “rich”, you pretty much have to be a Trump/ Perot level billionaire. A family with a million dollars in assets is generally considered “upper middle class” and unless they are elderly retired, generally still has at least 1 breadwinner working for a living. So it makes sense that the vast majority of priests are also “working or middle class”.
Certainly not the case in USA, where having a priest in the family could get you a lot of respect among your fellow Catholics but did not do anything for you economically and in fact probably detracted from the family’s overall wealth as it was one less son making money.
Terminology is important. We primarily communicate through language. On Internet fora terminology is even more important because we lose the other methods of communication such as facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, etc. Terminology is important to bring about accuracy and precision to what we write on here. It is also important so we avoid giving offence even when that was not our intent.
I can find no reason why it would offend you. Perhaps you would explain how it is offensive.
The reaction will be what certain people pushing for married priests seek and what others who have failed to deeply consider the implications but agreed with the idea, will feel regret for.
Getting married was an appropriate activity at the creation, before the fall, and before the institution of a clergy. Also getting married was okay for priests up until the medieval times. So yes.
Pretty much half of the Christian world has married clergy. The logistics are workable.
Perhaps the question is better phrased to be as follows: “Will married priesthood only be the prerogative of older upper middle class men?”
The next suggestion of that by any church figure who knows what he is talking about will be the first.
I am unable to do anything about you being so easily and unnecessarily offended.
