Thoughts on Married Deacons?

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smndtupidisaftr said:
It is my understanding that previously deacons were single men, but at some point married men were allowed to be ordained. Why was this changed and how do you feel about it?
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Actually, historically, it wasn’t abnormal until after 1200AD. Many of them went on to be priests. After 1200AD, it was forbidden due to greedy heirs and other issues.

The restoration provides a much needed body of men for the Roman Church… men who preach, teach, and serve, and do so with knowledge of family life.

The biggest drawback is the children… we (I am one), the children of deacons, suffer changes in people’s perception of us when our fathers are ordained. It’s the biggest single problem I’ve encountered with the married deacons… the children have to cope with a changed perception when we haven’t changed.

Ok, so I sat in on many of Dad’s classes in formation… yeah, that does change my perspective. But his classmate’s sons, and the later classes of deacons locally, we all have had the same experience of people making mistaken assumptions of our ministerial duty based upon Dad’s vocation.

The Eastern Churches in Union have it much easier - it’s no exception, never has been, and those Catholic priests and deacons with wives and children are normal for their communities, and everyone knows that they have to find their own way into ministry… if it is indeed their calling.
 
First hand experence proves this all, decons being married is great, and proves that priest should not be married. the church in the ignornance of NO wisdom first alowed priests to be married, but then over time and experience figured out it wasnt only a bad idea, but it was a terrible idea…
a good example is, you dont really know another person till you share an inheritance with them, and that was what the church learned. NO MORE Priests can be married ever again. they having children eventuall brings a nice little vision of hell to the be in the church itself

Make a choice people, be a decon or be a Priest, but dont bring Hell to the church be changing the TRadition of the church.

If you want, go and a episcapalean or what ever. but stop the stupidity and ignorance simple because your uneducated to the Wisdom that already was learned.

the US is soo in trouble today, because it failes to teach its people History, the ignorant want to be leaders think that History starts when the US was former, but fail to educate themselves to the fact people did alot of stupid things for thousands of years before, and . its ok to make mistakes, but its ignorance to REPEAT those mistakes over again. thats why the US needs to, and the church included go back and find some real history books and start reading, and TEACHING them of past world history…

PRIESTS CANNOT be Married, NO< NO NO!!!
 
wanabesaint said:
PRIESTS CANNOT be Married, NO< NO NO!!!
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But there are married priests in the Catholic Church, even in the Latin Rite, a converted Lutheran priest can stay priest in the Catholic Church after his conversion, even if he is married but he need a special approval from the Pope.

This is a fact i know about in my own country where we have married priests who were granted this approval from blessed John Paul II.
 
Father, one who looks over others as a Father. God our Father, and a Priest who we call Father becasue he looks over ALL his Sheep that he is intrusted to by the Holy Catholic Church and often He should also look out for All in denial of himself and all else to be a Sheperd to All in need working devoid of all that is to administer to everyone he can in need.

To be a Priest is to of a human form of NO other, a huge call that few can answer even though they are Called to be Priests, the deny God as human nature of free will that God gave man…

the Church in its Infalable sense recognizes this, as the Cathechism absolutely and definingly would say in all Truth.

All Men are Called to be United in Faith to the one True God by the Holy Catholic Church that is Infalable to a Tradition that has been passed down and true since startted By Peter when He opened the gates of the Church to the Gentils, but in the course of free will many will and do reject God, and in ignorance many come to reject the Truth of the Church that is carried by a Holy Spirit of Truth that not even the Holy Bible that is all Truth cannot contain or hold, because God is beyound mans ability to comprehend, or to even hold in a Book. Its that on going reminder the Church existed and put the Bible together, the TRadition of the Church put the Bible together.

You cant deny either and seek the one True God in it greatest potential

or, many were brought to the one True Church for ages, and continue to be brought with NO Bibles, Tradition in a sense, superceeds the Bible in a mere comprehension of reality of the Power of Tradition on its very Own Spirit.
 
So Deacon Jeff in your experience did you find that the men who trained to be deacons did so because they wanted power, or because their wives wanted to run the show?

I know that in my class the men are very humble and want to serve, and their wives sacrifice a great deal in order to support them.
 
My experience is different from Moore11’s.

The deacons we’ve had seem humble and don’t preach often, and would probably prefer not to. The only exception I’ve seen to that was a small parish with an older, frail priest who could not stand for a long period of time. In that parish the deacons were more likely to preach when the priest was more ill. The wives are invisible as a “deacon’s wife” and seem like active parishioners, no different from the wife half of any other active couple in the parish. That is hardly surprising, since that is what they were before their spouse became a deacon.

I prefer having a deacon to having the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. And, come to think of it, none of the deacon’s wives have been EMHC, not that I recall.

The deacons seem to cover things that they were good at to start with, like if they did religious ed before, now they become the DRE type stuff. My experience is like Moore11’s in that deacons do a lot of the baptism preparation, etc.

I am intrigued by what I’ve noticed concerning canon law and the continence requirements, though. I am interested to see how that plays out.
 
wanabesaint said:
Father, one who looks over others as a Father. God our Father, and a Priest who we call Father becasue he looks over ALL his Sheep that he is intrusted to by the Holy Catholic Church and often He should also look out for All in denial of himself and all else to be a Sheperd to All in need working devoid of all that is to administer to everyone he can in need.

To be a Priest is to of a human form of NO other, a huge call that few can answer even though they are Called to be Priests, the deny God as human nature of free will that God gave man…

the Church in its Infalable sense recognizes this, as the Cathechism absolutely and definingly would say in all Truth.

All Men are Called to be United in Faith to the one True God by the Holy Catholic Church that is Infalable to a Tradition that has been passed down and true since startted By Peter when He opened the gates of the Church to the Gentils, but in the course of free will many will and do reject God, and in ignorance many come to reject the Truth of the Church that is carried by a Holy Spirit of Truth that not even the Holy Bible that is all Truth cannot contain or hold, because God is beyound mans ability to comprehend, or to even hold in a Book. Its that on going reminder the Church existed and put the Bible together, the TRadition of the Church put the Bible together.

You cant deny either and seek the one True God in it greatest potential

or, many were brought to the one True Church for ages, and continue to be brought with NO Bibles, Tradition in a sense, superceeds the Bible in a mere comprehension of reality of the Power of Tradition on its very Own Spirit.
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Why are you bringing infallibility into this? You do realize that the decision to have married or celibate priests is a discipline of the Church not a dogma. It can be changed. In fact the Latin rite already has some married priests that are converts and the Eastern rite has married priests.
 
smndtupidisaftr said:
It is my understanding that previously deacons were single men, but at some point married men were allowed to be ordained. Why was this changed and how do you feel about it?
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As others have noted, it was certainly permissible in the Early Church for married men to be ordained.

St. Patrick’s father was a Deacon, and his grandfather was a Priest
I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement of Bannavem Taburniae
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Confessions of St. Patrick.

It has certainly been the ancient and honorable custom for only single men to be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church , but the Sacrament can be validly imposed upon men who are in the married state.

If one considers the Eastern Churches that remained in union, their has never been a time in Church History where there were not married clergy, albeit relatively few of them.
 
wanabesaint said:
decons being married is great, because it reinforces the fact to why Priests should not be married.
example is, when decons deal with Issues combined with being married to a women who is of a mind of delusion of granduer, she runs the decon and the entire church and everybody out the door. and if they have children, then the real rodeo takes place that nobody can be a priest and have kids to deal with. Teen age daughters, end of story of married priests.
Code: 
Luthers only claim to fame is  the protestant church was created by God out of love to prove that one, and decons merely reinforce it...
another example is when priests get hooked up, not in the today sense, but in the general sense and then She takes over, worste case senerio, but it is an education in why a priest should NOT be married…

Luthers main objective was to be a priest and be married, and it all proved to be a failure in defiance to 1300 years of TRadition, and yet people of the Catholic faith are too ignorant to realize failure thats already proven…

Eve ate the apple first, God knows that when a Man marries the women the hormons over rule. she canbe dumber than a box of rocks, but they take over any way…
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Wow, awesome words!
 
Moore11 said:
So far this has been a decent thread.👍

My experience has been this.

I think the permanent deaconate is a valid ordination by the Church.
I personally would never consider it. My experience and perception is this. It blurs the line between priests and laity. Most of the deacons in my area are quite liberal, and their wives control most of the show. If I didn’t know better I’d say that in my area it is being used as a stepping stone to female ordination. The wives take all the instruction and classes that a deacon takes. So it is a pretty easy step to blur the line of ordination and say "well why can’t women be deaconesses too! The are not “in persona Christi” and have the same training as the men. Also, I have known many priests who found in the seminary that it was not their calling. I have never met a person who started the deaconate program and did not “finish” it. And if you attend the classes, you are “in”

Even though our parish has 2 priests at all times mostly deacons do the weddings baptisms, etc. 3 out of the last 6 Sundays the deacon has given the homily. Usually the second Sunday of the month is “deacon” Sunday.
Nothing is wrong with this in principle but in the way it is practiced it leaves a lot to be desired.
More than once I have seen deacons cry and lose it in a homily when talking about personal things and many times they misrepresent Church teaching. Once many years ago a deacon used his homily as a platform to announce his leaving the faith. Explaining how wrong the Church was.
I guess what I am saying is that I think the implementation of this could use some work in my diocese. If it could free up the priest for more things that would be great but it never seems to work that way. Confession is still only 3 hours a week and more and more weddings and baptisms are just “deacon territory”
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In our diocese only about 70% of the men who start formation go through to ordination. From speaking to deacons from other diocese it would seem that this is pretty common. There are those who choose to leave on their own and there are those who are told that they may not continue in formation.
 
wanabesaint said:
decons being married is great, because it reinforces the fact to why Priests should not be married.
example is, when decons deal with Issues combined with being married to a women who is of a mind of delusion of granduer, she runs the decon and the entire church and everybody out the door. and if they have children, then the real rodeo takes place that nobody can be a priest and have kids to deal with. Teen age daughters, end of story of married priests.

Eve ate the apple first, God knows that when a Man marries the women the hormons over rule. she canbe dumber than a box of rocks, but they take over any way…
Click to expand...
The discipline of celibacy is an honorable and ancient tradition of the Latin church and should be respected on its own merits, but it is ignorant and hateful to speak against the wives and children of the priest in this way. I am ever grateful to the wife of our priest for the sacrifices she makes so that her husband can serve us in our parish.
 
Hmm… I’m with you on the first assertion, but not the second. Bishops are priests whose episcopal ordination gives them the fullness of Holy Orders. This was a change in theology at the time of Vatican II that radically shook many priests’ understanding of their vocation. (Prior to Vatican II, the understanding was that bishops had a certain particular authority, but that there wasn’t a significant difference in substance of ministry.) One of the reasons many men left the priesthood in the wake of Vatican II was the impact of this change in perspective about their vocation…
 
Pug said:
I prefer having a deacon to having the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. And, come to think of it, none of the deacon’s wives have been EMHC, not that I recall.
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My mother was… Deacon Jim Lee’s wife is. Both of them have been active in Eucharistic Ministries… Mom to the infirm, Mrs. Lee to the imprisoned. Both also served as EMHC’s during mass… When the parish seats 1200, and is SRO, 2 priests and 2 deacons is an issue even if only because of the limited size of the paten and chalice.

A lot depends on the local ordinary.
 
We had new psych testing in our diocese this year. 30 couples applied - the wife gets tested too! Only 2 couples were accepted into the program.

We had a whole battery of tests and interviews and evaluations.

It was the bishop who made the final decision on those who got through the testing.
 
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