www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Scranton RC diocese to get MARRIED priest

Saw this link in the Scranton Times website. Pretty interesting, no?

http://www.scrantontimes.com/site/n...amp;PAG=461&dept_id=415898&rfi=6

Not really a "new" thing considering dozens of former Lutherans and Episcopalians are serving other RC dioceses. Many years to the priest Eric!

We have a couple here in CT as well, though they are delegated to non-parochial work, at least the last I knew.

It was just interesting to me, considering the geographic location and historical perspective of the area on married priests. Maybe the local Greek Catholics should protest to Rome?

Axios to Fr. Eric!

I used to live in Tulsa where a bi-ritual priest said the divine liturgy. I think he was a former Lutheran pastor and was married. He was assigned to a RC parish as well.

I know that in the early period of the reception of married Episcopal or Lutheran clergy, there was still that mentality on the part of Roman bishops that it would cause "scandal" if these priests were assigned to regular Roman-rite parishes and so they were given "Anglican-Use parishes" or put into administrative work (similar in many ways to the attitude towards Byzantine Cath married clergy early in the 20th Century) Has this changed at all on the part of Roman bishops???

Jennifer, that is Fr. Gary Sherman. He was the first of the married Lutherans to be accepted as an RC priest, and he was ordained for the Diocese of Tulsa by Bishop Beltran.

He has biritual faculties and assists at St. Athanasius Mission in Tulsa which is in the Archeparchy of Pittsburgh. He is currently the hospital chaplain at St. John's in Tulsa.

Brian, that was certainly not the case in Tulsa. Fr. Gary was given some tough assignments in troubled parishes before his hospital chaplaincy.

Fr. Peter Dally, who is now retired in Washington state, was a former Episcopalian priest also ordained for the Diocese of Tulsa by Bishop Beltran. As I recall Fr. Peter never used the "Anglican Usage" in his parish although I do remember he preferred to use Eucharistic Prayer #1.

He is also a good iconographer and did some work for the Ruthenian mission chapel in Tulsa. I hear he pops in at St. George's in Olympia from time to time.

Many years to both Fr. Gary and Fr. Peter as well as Bishop Eusibius.

What a wonderful witness that Fr. Bergman gives! I especially find it wonderful that a regular paper was willing to print such a positive article.

The general rule was that a married priest would not be the main pastor of a parish. However, I have heard that this unwritten rule is not always followed anymore as the need for parish pastors has increased.

I was in a parish once that had a married Roman priest (Fr. Ray Ryland) as the associate pastor. During my two years there, I think he gave 3 or 4 homilies in strong support of the Roman rule of priestly celibacy.

Francis, in Tulsa they were called "administrators" to dodge the canonical bullet but had full pastoral authority in everything else except title. But I think that was only for a time in the 80s and 90s.

Bishops Innocent, Robert and Basil of the UGCC also did this for a time with the married priests who were getting ordained in Rome or Ukraine.

Axios to the priest Eric, God grant him many years. Our diocese will God willing soon receive and ordain a priest from the Lutheran Church.
And the Bishop seems more than willing to have him installed as a Pastor in a Parish.
Stephanos I

Diak,

As I recall, Fr. Gary whipped some pretty interesting parishes into shape pretty quickly.

One had replaced the "Peace be with you" greeting with "How y'all doin'".

Fr. Gary's nack was that he was able to smile and tell them what they were going to do and make them like it . . . well they did it, anyway.

I certainly wish this new priest the best.

I could add something about the whole married priest issue, but I won't soil a happy rememberance of a good priest!

I was initially, as a Latin Rite RC, aligned with those who disdained married priests as too "progressive", in Latin circles, anyway. But after some years of wandering and, hopefully, growing, I landed at Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church in the (now) Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which still has its founding pastor, Fr. James T. Moore, a very holy man. Needless to say, as a former Episcopal priest (and former Episcopal chaplain at Texas A&M, probably the nation's most conservative public university), he was (and is) married. For a while I kind of just tolerated that, although I always really appreciated how liturgically traditional (in an Anglican kind of way) the parish is, but then I began to realize how much I liked visiting with him, sharing views about each other's children, and similar such things, as well as discussing spiritual matters. His wife has added a special and beneficial kind of flavor to things at the parish, too, as well as handling many of the administrative tasks. Like a good matushka, I suppose.

Also it has been very comforting to me to go to confession to Fr Moore, knowing that he experiences marriage like the rest of us, and thus, I have to say, I feel he understands better some of the usual kind of issues--such as how spouses may, shall we say, vigorously differ with each other on a matter or two. I realize this notion of better understanding is controversial in many RC conservative circles, which I normally frequent, but in my experience, it is simply a fact.

So I add my prayers for Fr. Bergman and his little flock. I hope they will blossom into a new Anglican Usage parish in Scranton in the near future.

Woody

May God grant Father Eric many years in His service.

Francis,

Father Ryland was a very unusual case. As memory serves me, he was received into the Church almost 2 decades prior to being ordained to the priesthood, as opposed to the usual circumstances in which ordination occurs in very proximate time to the individual's reception.

Thinking back (I believe he, his wife, and family initially converted in the 60's), it was probably a function of the times - it was likely too soon for Rome to give serious consideration to taking such a step. That they agreed to so 20 years later was a big surprise to a lot of folks.

Many years,

Neil

God bless Eric Bergman and those from his old parish who chose wisely to follow him into the Church. May God grant Mr. Bergman health and happiness as he pursues entrance into the holy and eternal priesthood.

Logos Teen