Will the Catholic Church allow married priests in the western Latin rite? Should It? — GetReligion
Sciclina is an especially influential figure due to his 2018 appointment by Francis to a second post as Adjunct Secretary of the Vatican’s all-important agency on doctrine. Over the years, the Vatican has also entrusted the archbishop, who holds doctorates in both secular and canon law, to prosecute delicate cases of sexual abuse by priests.
As Scicluna noted, the Catholic Church has long welcomed priests who marry prior to ordination in its Oriental and Eastern Rite jurisdictions, centered in Ukraine, India, Lebanon and in the Mideast. Such is also the tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy, which ordains married men, but requires celibacy for bishops. (Catholicism occasionally ordains married Protestant ministers who convert, such as Anglicans and Lutherans.)
The archbishop asked, “Why should we lose a young man who would have made a fine priest just because he wanted to get married? And we did lose good priests just because they chose marriage.” He said “experience has shown me this is something we need to seriously think about.” For one thing, some priests cope with the rule “by secretly engaging in sentimental relationships” and “we know there are priests around the world who also have children.” Therefore “if it were up to me I would revise the requirement.”
Was Scicluna nudging delegates who next October will attend the second and final session of Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops at the Vatican?
After all, the delegates’ guidebook said local and national discussions leading to the synod had raised this: “Could a reflection be opened concerning the discipline on access to the priesthood for married men, at least in some areas?” Any such historic proposal voted by the synod would be merely advisory. The pope has full power to implement Synod conclusions, or not.
How might Francis lean? Last March, he reminded an Argentine news outlet that celibacy “is a temporary prescription” in the western Latin Rite, not a dogma that is unchanging. He added the ambiguous remark that “I do not know if it is settled in one way or another.” In 2019, Francis told journalists “I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no,” though he also said he saw leeway to consider exceptions for “pastoral necessity,” as with remote regions that lack priests.
The following year, a book co-authored by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI championed the traditional celibacy discipline. The modern case for celibacy was officially formulated by Pope Paul VI just after the Second Vatican Council in his 1967 encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (“Priestly Celibacy”).
The encyclical candidly addressed objections raised against the celibacy discipline starting, appropriately enough, with New Testament. Jesus commended workers who “have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it ” (Matthew 19:12). St. Paul wrote concerning unmarried believers that “it is a good thing for them to remain as they are, as I do” (1 Corinthians 7:8). However, neither mandated singleness for the 12 apostles or subsequent Christian ministers.
In the earliest Christian communities, 1 Timothy 3 teaches that a bishop should be “married only once” while “keeping his children under control,” and Titus 1:5-6 says presbyters must be “married only once, with believing children.” Pope Paul’s encyclical admitted all that. The clear inference is that most or all would be married as a matter of course. But over later centuries, the practice of clergy celibacy became widespread and, in some areas, a requirement.
Notably, the pope’s encyclical cited a dozen passages in 1 Corinthians but skipped 9:5, where St. Paul asks “do we not have the right to take along a Christian wife, as do the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?” (another name for St. Peter).
In other words, the man who in Catholic belief was the church’s first pope was married and traveled with his wife as a Christian evangelist.
CONTINUE READING: “Will The Catholic Church Allow Married Priests? Should It?” by RIchard Ostling.
FIRST IMAGE: The Rev. Dwight Longenecker and his family, at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Family photo from a 2017 article by Longenecker published at Newsweek.
