Reader Question: Anglican Converts and Married Priests
The announcement this week that Pope Benedict XVI has approved a new procedure to allow Anglican congregations to enter the Catholic Church en masse has raised a lot of questions among Catholics. Perhaps the most common question concerns the married priesthood. Many of the Anglican priests who are considering coming home to Rome are married, and the new process will allow them, after conversion, to be ordained as Catholic priests, even though they are married.
While married priests are common in the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church (outside of the United States) and in Eastern Orthodoxy, celibacy has been the historical norm in the Latin rite of the Church. So it's no surprise that some have regarded the new provision as the first step toward revising or abandoning the discipline of celibacy in the West. A question I received on Facebook is a perfect example:
Would you say this move by the Pope may very well point towards married priests in the future?
Any answer here, of course, is speculative. If I were a betting man, however, I'd have to say no.
Before I discuss the reasons why, we should clear up a common misperception about the married priesthood. A married priest is not a priest who got married; he is a married man who was later ordained to the priesthood.
This is an important distinction. There have been married priests throughout the history of Christianity, starting with the Apostles. But there is no evidence that priests have been allowed to marry after receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed, if an unmarried man is ordained a deacon (not simply a priest), he must remain celibate; he cannot marry, because he has already received Holy Orders.
Likewise, if the wife of a married priest dies (or if, in a very rare occurrence, a married priest has his marriage annulled), he cannot remarry.
But what about these Anglican priests who are converting to Rome? Some of them were married after they were made Anglican priests. Is there a double standard here?
No. The Catholic Church considers Anglican Holy Orders invalid, so any married Anglican priest who converts to Catholicism will have to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders in the Catholic Church before he can function as a priest. In other words, his marriage will have taken place before his ordination as a Catholic priest.
So to return to the question that I was asked on Facebook, is it possible that Pope Benedict's move is something of a trial balloon for introducing the married priesthood in the Latin rite?
It's possible, since celibacy is strictly a discipline and not an intrinsic requirement of the priesthood (as the long history of the married priesthood in the East shows). And, in the 1960's and 70's, Joseph Ratzinger expressed some sympathy for the idea of introducing the married priesthood in the West.
So why do I think it's highly unlikely that this will be extended beyond converts from Anglicanism? Because the dropping of the discipline of celibacy in the Latin rite could not happen today without great disruption, if only because it would interpreted by people on every side as "giving in." It would be followed by renewed calls to allow priests to marry (a practice that has no warrant whatsoever in tradition) and to allow women to become priests (another innovation that cannot be justified by tradition).
I think that Pope Benedict fully understands the disruption that dropping the historical discipline of celibacy in the West would have. Someday, under different circumstances, it might happen; today, in a culture obsessed with sex and rights and "gender equality," would be the worst of all possible times to tinker with this particular tradition.
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While I agree totally with welcoming Anglicans and their clergy into the church I find it also rather hypocritical
given the Vatican’s stand on celibacy among what is left of the Catholic priest population. You cannot have it both ways. If you allow married clergy to enter our ranks then how can the Vatican ignore the REAL problem now, and for sometime regarding the existing priest population. We are losing men to the married life. We are told many would come back if the marriage clause was lifted. The ridiculous part of this is that the first head of the church was a married man, Peter. Christ healed his mother in law. The church has no base to stand on except a ridiculous outdated law. As a cradle Catholic I am a little more than bothered by it as I see more and more entering from other denominations but nothing for our own priest population which is dwindling.
I find the entire issue of married Anglican priests entering the Roman Catholic clergy as hypocritical at best.
While I welcome Anglicans and their clergy, I am mystified why the Vatican continues the charade of disallowing its own clergy to marry. As a result of this outdated law, and it is nothing more than that, as the first head of the church, Peter, was married (Christ healed his mother in law), our priesthood is dwindling. The Vatican needs to step up to the plate and allow its own priests the option of marriage or celibacy. To do anything different is to continue the masquerade at the expense of many parishes which no longer have a full time priest.
BTW I am NOT supportive of women as priests as Christ had no female disciples so my critique is not aimed at the entire order of business in Rome.
History may provide a lesson on this subject. While it is true that the Roman Church has allowed certain Eastern Rite churches to retain vestiges of Orthodox liturgical practices, over the course of time, and particularly in the United States, that privilege has been abrogated through assimilation, Latinizing and prohibiting married clergy. The Eastern Rite was fractured with the return to Orthodoxy of many and the joinder of others to the Roman Rite. The Eastern Rite in the United States is a shadow of its former self. It is also true that in the years following Vatican II, Rome has ‘rolled back’ some of the excesses of so-called Latinization in the Eastern Rite, Anglicans who may consider the Pope’s offer should keep the history of Uniatism in mind when they pray over the Pope’s proposal. Perhaps their entreaties would be better addressed by Constaninople, rather than Rome. After all, the history of the English Church predates the split between East and West of 1054.
This is nothing new.
I first heard in the early 1980s that married Anglican priests can been ordained and still remain married.
I don’t know of any personal examples but I don’t believe that this is here-say.
Back in 1979-82, I was stationed with the U.S. Army in Frankfurt, Germany. An American Catholic priest there was married. He had been a Lutheran minister, but converted, along with his wife and children, to the Catholic faith. The American bishops would not ordain him. But a bishop in Europe did. So he served as a civilian chaplain to U.S. troops, because no bishop in America would incardinate him
He was a great priest, but it was odd hearing him talk about his wife and kids.
He remembered growing up Protestant in Detroit in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was told that, if a priest or nun was walking down the sidewalk, he was supposed to cross to the other side of the street.
At least some things have gotten better since then.
The best book on this is, “The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy,” by Christian Cochini, S.J., available from Ignatius Press. One summary says:
“He examines the question of when the tradition of priestly celibacy began in the Latin Church, and he is able to trace it back to its origins with the apostles. He examines evidence about the marital status of every known bishop, priest or deacon of the period and gives an exhaustive list of married clerics from apostolic times until the end of the seventh century, a list that includes not only the Western Church, but the East and also the Nestorian, Novatian and Pelagian Church. Then Cochini examines the relevant Church documents for the same period, including council and synod documents, papal letters, ecclesial and even secular legislation as it relates to the problem. He also provides a survey of scholarly literature on the topic.
“This is the definitive scholarly statement on the discipline of priestly celibacy in the Church East and West. What Cochini shows through patristic sources and conciliar documentation is that from the beginning of the Church, although married men could be priests, they were required to vow to celibacy before ordination, meaning they intended to live a life of continence. He provides extensive documentation, a bibliography and an index.”
Henri Cardinal de Lubac said:
“This work is of the first importance. It is the result of serious and extensive research. There is nothing even remotely comparable to this work in this whole century.”
I disagree with the protest. These are exceptional cases and must be treated as such. Thank God that the Church understands this! I’m glad that they do everything they can to ease the transition for the Anglican ministers.
As for celibacy, statistics imply that it is unrelated to vocations. Fifty years ago there was no vocations crisis, but we had celibacy back then just as now.
The vocations crisis is due mainly to how the liturgy, and the formation of priests, have been feminized and liberalized in the seminaries and churches since the Council. The priesthood is just not as attractive to masculine, tradition-loving, god-fearing men, as it used to be. If you look at the liberal seminaries, they are dying out and closing down. Now, look at the tradition-directed seminaries, such as The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (who form priests to serve the Tridentine Mass) : they are overloaded so much that they often have to TURN AWAY applicants. There is not enough room for them!
The future of the priesthood (and The Church) is in orthodoxy, which breeds vocations, and large families (who will produce our future priests) in abundance. Liberal/feminist thinking is barren; it discourages vocations, and is the death of Catholicism. The statistics prove this quite clearly.
I am a seminarian.
All of you hypocrites that say priests should marry are missing the boat. Celibacy is a gift and a great gift. If you dont have it, dont be a priest. There are plenty of priests in the world who want to come to america. Its just our white americans that have predominantly been tricked by a materialistic society that holds this notion of a sex life to be integral to living an abundant life. The orgasm is the highest sacrament of a carnal age. Why dont the hypocrites site the massive amount of divorces in this country. Marriage is not everyone’s salvation and oftentimes is much more difficult than celibacy. There are rewards, tremendous and liberating rewards, to living a celibate and life and thank God that the Church has not capitulated in cow-towing to a very sexualized paradigm in our so-called modern world.