Sandro Magister: The next synod will be on married priests

ROME, December 9, 2015 - While waiting for Pope Francis to rule on communion for the divorced and remarried, which two synods discussed and split over, there is already a glimpse of the theme of the next synodal session: married priests.

The selection of the theme is up to the pope, as happened with the past synods and will take place with the next, independently of what will be proposed by the fourteen cardinals and bishops of the council that acts as a bridge between one assembly and the next.

And that married priests will be the next topic of synodal discussion can be gathered from various indications.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis has married clergy "in my agenda"

Details at Rorate.

This is an internal disciplinary issue for the Latin Church and  can mostly be filed under the heading "none of our business." I just hope they don't invoke Orthodox discipline in promotion of a decidedly non-Orthodox innovation as some have with the idea of giving Communion to the divorced and civilly remarried. If I hear one more idiot say that this is what the Orthodox Church does I am likely to respond in a very un-Lenten manner. For clarification, I refer to the fact that we do NOT allow for already ordained priests to marry, and our bishops must be celibate (almost always monastics).

Gay Christians choosing celibacy emerge from the closet

When Eve Tushnet converted to Catholicism in 1998, she thought she might be the world’s first celibate Catholic lesbian.

Having grown up in a liberal, upper Northwest Washington home before moving on to Yale University, the then-19-year-old knew no other gay Catholics who embraced the church’s ban on sex outside heterosexual marriage. Her decision to abstain made her an outlier.

“Everyone I knew totally rejected it,” she said of the church’s teaching on gay sexuality.

Today, Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians who find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is busy speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants and is the most well-known of 20 bloggers who post on spiritualfriendship.org, a site for celibate gay and lesbian Christians that draws thousands of visitors each month.

Read the rest here.

Vatican Approves Married Clergy for Eastern Rite in the West

The Vatican has taken steps to end a long simmering controversy. With the approval of Pope Francis, most restrictions in the diaspora on ordaining married men, or importing married clergy from the East are being lifted. The broad enforcement of the Latin discipline of celibacy on all Eastern Rite clergy in the West has been a sore point for more than a century.

Details here.

Ortho-Cath Ecumenical Group calls for married clergy in Eastern Rite

Read the story here. Mixed feeling on this one. I deeply sympathize with the Greek Rite Catholics who have lived with 2nd class status in the Catholic Church pretty much for as long as they have existed. And I am delighted that some high ranking people in their church seem to be coming around on this subject. But I am less sanguine about OUR clergy opining on this in any kind of official capacity. In the end, they are not Orthodox and we are not Catholic. Its an internal disciplinary issue of the Catholic Church for them to sort out, not us.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's none of our business.

Pope Francis hints at relaxation of mandatory clerical celibacy

...“I told him that as bishop of Brazil’s largest diocese with 800 church communities and 700,000 faithful I only had 27 priests, which means that our communities can only celebrate the Eucharist twice or three times a year at the most,” Bishop Kräutler said. “The Pope explained that he could not take everything in hand personally from Rome. We local bishops, who are best acquainted with the needs of our faithful, should be corajudos, that is ‘courageous’ in Spanish, and make concrete suggestions,” he explained. A bishop should not act alone, the Pope told Kräutler. He indicated that “regional and national bishops’ conferences should seek and find consensus on reform and we should then bring up our suggestions for reform in Rome,” Kräutler said.

Asked whether he had raised the question of ordaining married men at the audience, Bishop Kräutler replied: “The ordination of viri probati, that is of proven married men who could be ordained to the priesthood, came up when we were discussing the plight of our communities. The Pope himself told me about a diocese in Mexico in which each community had a deacon but many had no priest. There were 300 deacons there who naturally could not celebrate the Eucharist. The question was how things could continue in such a situation.

"It was up to the bishops to make suggestions, the Pope said again.”

Read the rest here.

Note: The source is a publication with a well known liberal bias. Take it for what it's worth.

Attention Protestant Clergy Thinking About Rome (or Catholics thinking about the Diaconate)

Dr. Ed Peters, a leading canon lawyer of the Roman Catholic Church has written something that you should consider very carefully if you are married. Roman Catholic canon law does not currently allow for any exceptions to the requirement that ALL clergy of the Latin Rite, including those who were married before being ordained, MUST maintain perfect continence from the time of their ordination. This includes permanent deacons and presumably married Protestant clergy who are received into the Roman Church and then ordained.

Eastern Rite Catholics Complain of Roman Interference and Indifference

 Gathered for their ad limina, Eastern Catholic bishops from the U.S. were addressed last week by Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Leonardo Cardinal Sandri. His injunction—made not about abortion, the HHS mandate, war, wealth redistribution, or gay marriage—could have a critical influence on the Christian response to all of the above.

Among the Cardinal’s remarks was a tersely reiterated expectation of celibacy for priests serving the Eastern Catholic Churches in diaspora—in this case the U.S. The message may not have been carried directly from the hand of Benedict but the effect has been unpleasant to say the least.

Enter Thomas Loya, a Ruthenian Catholic priest of the Parma Ohio Eparchy, writing his eparch in response.

    In addition to being chillingly reminiscent of the demeaning attitude of the Latin Rite bishops toward the Eastern Catholic Churches during the beginning of the last century in America, the Cardinal's remarks about celibacy seem to confirm what so many Eastern Catholics in America have suspected for too long: Rome and the Latin Rite see the Eastern Catholic Churches in America as essentially inconsequential, perhaps even in the way of ecumenism between Rome and the Orthodox Churches.

The chilling reminiscence refers, in part, to an exercise in aberrant ecclesiology—more a power play—engineered by Archbishop John Ireland that resulted in an entire body of U.S. Eastern Catholics breaking communion with Rome.

Read the rest here.
HT: The Deacons Bench

Vatican pushes celibacy on Eastern Catholic clergy

The money quote...

On what theological grounds can the jurisdiction of the Eastern Churches be restricted to the “historical territories”, the same principle not being applied to the Roman Church? These are issues that require further serious research and discussion, not least because of the desire for Roman union with the present Orthodox Churches.

Read it all here.
HT: Dave Brown.

A really really bad article on priests' wives

I am not going to excerpt this one.  If you want to read it go here.  Seriously, it is so ridiculous it borders on insulting.  This is not the Middle Ages.  Catholics are not going to start running around treating the wives of their newly ordained clergy like she-demons.  Even her (the author's) dating of theological issues is wrong.  Both in the East and West there was a pretty clear understanding of the nature of Holy Communion dating to the earliest days of the Church.  This entire article is so wrong I am tempted to use a very crude descriptive for it.  But being a Christian blogger I am above that.

Roman Catholic bishops veto married Eastern Rite priests in Italy

Italian news sources are reporting that the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) has vetoed the idea of allowing married priests of the Romanian Catholic Church (one of the Eastern Catholic Churches in union with the pope of Rome) to exercise their priestly ministry in Italy.

In an article entitled “Priests of a Lesser God: CEI — New Veto to the Presence of Married Catholic Clergy in Italy,” Italian news service Adista reported obtaining a copy of a confidential letter written last September 13 by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference to Lucian Muresan, Major Archbishop of the Romanian Catholic Church. In it, Cardinal Bugnasco explained the position of the Italian Episcopal Conference regarding not allowing the presence of married Romanian Catholic priests in Italy. (The Romanian Catholic Church follows the Byzantine liturgical rite and retains many customs — such as a married priesthood — similar to Eastern Orthodoxy, from which it broke away in 1698 when it entered union with Rome. It is estimated there are 800,000 Romanian Catholics in Italy.) Cardinal Bagnasco, appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to be President of the CEI, said that the Bishops’ Conference

“after having carefully examined the issue in light of the figures relating to the consistency of the ethnic communities from Eastern European countries and the situation of clergy in the Italian dioceses, believes that, at present and in general, there is not ‘just and reasonable cause’ to justify the granting of the dispensation.”

Read the rest here.

HT: Dave Brown

More talk in Rome of a doctrinal basis for clerical celibacy

See this post at Rorate Caeli. The implications for Eastern Rite Catholics are well worth considering.

Met. +Hilarion criticizes the mandatory celibacy of the Roman Church

Moscow, September 15, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate supports the idea to cancel celibacy of the Catholic clergy.

"Mandatory celibacy of the clergy introduced by the Western Church in the 12th century was not known in the early Christian time. Eastern Churches have followed the ancient practice which allowed them to ordain married men. The Eastern Christianity has always criticized the Roman Catholic Church for this celibate practice," head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk said in an interview published Wednesday by NG-Religii paper.

According to him, "Orthodox believers think the problem of obligatory celibacy to be an internal matter of the Roman Catholic Church and they would only acclaim its cancellation, if it happens."

"We would rather consider such cancellation of celibacy the return to the age-old traditions of the ancient Church, than a break from the ancient traditions and a liberal deviation," he added.

Speaking of the relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Protestant Church, he noted that there were many Protestants "who shared more Orthodox and Catholic positions than that of their own church authorities."

"We know that such believers are pronounced "fundamentalists", "fanatics" and "separatists" in their own Churches just for the reason that they share views different from the officially declared standpoint and try to defend their positions. We are ready to cooperate with such Protestants on different projects including the project of the New Evangelization of Europe," Metropolitan said.

Source

I have a lot of respect for Met. +Hilaion. But I think this is something that is best filed under the heading "None of our business." We aren't Catholic and they aren't Orthodox. How they run their church is their business (though as a matter of private opinion I think the policy is silly). That said, I would note that Rome has a history of trying to ram their Latin disciplines down the throats of their so called sui juris Eastern Rite churches. They have backed off of that a lot, especially since Vatican II. But Rome has never renounced its claimed right to dictate discipline to any part of their communion.

+Batholomew speaks - a major problem for military chaplains - and Met. +Hilarion on Rome and celibacy

Josephus over at Byzantine Texas has several excellent posts up that I recommend...

An interview with Patriarch +Bartholomew.

A discussion of potential problems for military chaplains with the likely imminent repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell."

Met. +Hilarion addresses the Roman discipline of obligatory celibacy for the clergy.

The NY Times discovers Greek Rite Catholics... (because their clergy are not celibate)

RUDNO, Ukraine — Let the rest of Europe be convulsed by debates over whether the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests is causing sex abuse scandals like the one now unfolding in Germany. Here in western Ukraine, many Catholic priests are married, fruitful and multiplying — with the Vatican’s blessing.

The many feet scampering around the Volovetskiy home are testament to that.

The family’s six children range from Pavlina, 21, to Taras, 9. In the middle is Roman, 16, who wants to be a Catholic priest when he grows up. Just like his father.

Dad is the Rev. Yuriy Volovetskiy, who leads a small parish here and whose wife, Vera, teaches religious school. The Volovetskiys serve in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which believes that celibate priests are not necessarily better priests.

Ukrainian Greek Catholics represent a branch of Catholicism that is distinct from the far more prevalent Roman Catholic one. The Ukrainian church is loyal to the pope in Rome, and its leader is a cardinal and major archbishop.

But it conducts services that resemble those in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In religious terms, it follows the Eastern Rite, not the Latin one that is customary in Roman Catholicism.
.
Historically, the Vatican appears to have tolerated the traditions and attitude toward celibacy of the so-called Eastern Rite Catholics in order to retain a foothold in regions where Orthodox Christianity has dominated. But this exception suggests that the Vatican view on celibacy is not as rigid or monolithic as it might otherwise appear.

Read the rest here.

Rome: Clerical celibacy to remain normative and extended to the entire church including the East

From an interview with Father Laurent Touze (emphasis mine).

ZENIT: With this measure, do you think that one day, celibacy might become voluntary also for priests of the Latin rite?

Father Touze: No, because the Church is understanding more and more the relation between priesthood, episcopate and celibacy. It is something that could be likened to the revelation of a dogma, though it isn't so at this time; one tends increasingly to understand that a practice must be promoted among all priests and also among Eastern Catholic priests which is truly similar to the one lived in the first centuries.

Read the rest here.

A Mother, a Sick Son and His Father, the Priest

O’FALLON, Mo. — With three small children and her marriage in trouble, Pat Bond attended a spirituality retreat for Roman Catholic women in Illinois 26 years ago in hopes of finding support and comfort.

What Ms. Bond found was a priest — a dynamic, handsome Franciscan friar in a brown robe — who was serving as the spiritual director for the retreat and agreed to begin counseling her on her marriage. One day, she said, as she was leaving the priest’s parlor, he pulled her aside for a passionate kiss.

Ms. Bond separated from her husband, and for the next five years she and the priest, the Rev. Henry Willenborg, carried on an intimate relationship, according to interviews and court documents. In public, they were both leaders in their Catholic community in Quincy, Ill. In private they functioned like a married couple, sharing a bed, meals, movie nights and vacations with the children.

Eventually they had a son, setting off a series of legal battles as Ms. Bond repeatedly petitioned the church for child support. The Franciscans acquiesced, with the stipulation that she sign a confidentiality agreement. It is now an agreement she is willing to break as both she and her child, Nathan Halbach, 22, are battling cancer.

With little to lose, they are eager to tell their stories: the mother, a once-faithful Catholic who says the church protected a philandering priest and treated her as a legal adversary, and the son, about what it was like to grow up knowing his absentee father was a priest.

Read the rest here.

I hesitated quite a bit before putting this up. Any post that deals with the Catholic Church tends to draw accusations of either being an "online Orthodox" anti-Catholic bigot, or of still having one foot left on the other side of the Bosporus and being too sympathetic to my heretical former co-religionists. But I think this one is worth discussion so here goes.

My own take on this is that it is a tale of bad choices and irresponsible behavior on the part of many people with one truly innocent victim.

Fr. Willenborg: The man is a cad. I don't know what else to say except that he has utterly failed at his moral responsibilities. He needs to man up.

Ms. Bond: While I empathize with her plight it is to a large degree one of her own creation. No one forced her to shack up with a priest. She seems to have tried to do right by her son, but irrespective of the low character of the priest in question, it takes two to tango. Rape was not among the accusations here.

The Franciscans: It's not their fault that one of their members has more issues than Time Magazine. It is their fault that they chose to look the other way over this and similar behavior. More on that a little later. It also sounds like they had to have their arm twisted a bit before they decided to do the right thing for the boy. Unfortunatly at every step the evidence suggests a greater concern for their own position than that of the family now in existence thanks to the activities of one of their members.

The Roman Catholic Church: It's time to broach a subject that will land me in all kinds of hot water with my Catholic readers. But oh well; sometimes things need to be said. Obligatory celibacy for all ranks of the clergy does not work. It never has. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional. This is not a doctrinal issue. (I do not want this post to become a springboard for an Orthodox-Catholic debate on doctrine.) The issue is disciplinary.

Back in the days before swimming the Bosporus I knew my share of priests. A few of them were fairly candid on this subject. While I know of no serious study that's been done, the numbers quoted in here don't sound terribly off base to me. It is quite clear that a substantial percentage of Roman Catholic clergy habitually break their vows of celibacy. This occurs in every diocese and in most cases (unless they choose to remain willfully ignorant) the bishops know what's going on. Some of these priests live, to varying degrees, semi-openly with their "wives" in monogamous relationships. Others, like the subject of the linked story, are serial philanderers. And of course the Roman Catholic priesthood has historically been a popular career choice for homosexuals because it provided them with a convenient place to hide in plain sight where no one would ask them how come they don't have a girlfriend or get married.

The problem is that the hands of the bishops are from a pragmatic point of view tied. It's not that they don't want to discipline their clergy (though I suspect that may be the case in at least some places). The same rule (obligatory celibacy) which creates these scandals has in recent years severely hamstrung the bishops by creating a dearth of priests. Like it or not, we live in an age when large numbers of people who feeling called to a religious vocation, and are then being told that they must abandon any hope of a married life to pursue that vocation, are walking away. If by conservative estimates a quarter of your clergy are playing around routinely how does a bishop sack them all when he already doesn't have any-where's near enough priests to keep things up and running properly?

And blaming this on Vatican II or liberalism (which I know is popular) is hogwash. This sort of thing has gone on in every diocese in every country since the day Rome said "NO" to married clergy. In the old days, especially in culturally Catholic countries it was a lot easier to cover it up. But there are more than sufficient records to demonstrate this problem throughout history.

OK lets dispense with the inevitable cries of "Orthodoxy has its share of problems too!"

Yes we do. But they are not on the same level. Not even close. Yea we have priests (and at least one bishop) who cross the line. But we don't have a system in place that attempts to impose burdens on young men that not everyone is able to bear. And we do accept the possibility that those who are not called to a life of celibacy (which we hold in great honor) may still be called to the religious life including the ordained priesthood. By and large our scandals are more often about power and money. I would also note that in those instances where sexual scandals do occur it is as often as not in a monastery.

The bottom line here is that Rome's insistence on celibacy is turning away thousands of young men who would make terrific priests and setting up those who enter seminary for burdens that many will not be able to bear. Many of these will fall into grievous sin. Frankly, I think the rule is nuts.

And lastly Nathan: He is the one tragic and truly innocent victim in this mess. To be honest, I am not really overwhelmed by the story if you take him out of the picture and probably would not be posting on it.

OK a quick reminder on comments... READ THE GUIDELINES FOR POSTING FIRST.

A Roman Priest's Case For Celibacy

The scandal surrounding the Rev. Alberto Cutie has raised questions in the minds of many concerning the Catholic Church's discipline of priestly celibacy. Why does the church continue to defend a practice that seems so unnatural and so unnecessary?

There is a very bad argument for celibacy, which has appeared throughout the tradition and which is, even today, defended by some. It goes something like this: Married life is spiritually suspect; priests, as religious leaders, should be spiritual athletes above reproach; therefore, priests shouldn't be married

This approach to the question is, in my judgment, not just stupid but dangerous, for it rests on presumptions that are repugnant to solid Christian doctrine. The biblical teaching on creation implies the essential integrity of the world and everything in it.

Genesis tells us that God found each thing he had made good and that he found the ensemble of creatures very good. Catholic theology, at its best, has always been resolutely, anti-dualist -- and this means that matter, the body, marriage and sexual activity are never, in themselves, to be despised.

But there is more to the doctrine of creation than an affirmation of the goodness of the world. To say that the finite realm in its entirety is created is to imply that nothing in the universe is God. All aspects of created reality reflect God and bear traces of the divine goodness -- just as every detail of a building gives evidence of the mind of the architect -- but no creature and no collectivity of creatures is divine, just as no part of a structure is the architect.

Read the rest here.

This sounds like a compelling argument for voluntary celibacy. My problem is that I have never heard a compelling argument for compulsory celibacy. But assuming for the sake of discussion such an argument exists how does one square that with the lack of celibacy in the Eastern Churches (I refer to those under the Pope)? If there are reasons that justify enforced celibacy in the Latin Church how do you justify not enforcing it in the Uniate Churches?