www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Vatican stops suspending married men ordained for Eastern churches

What about bishops? It is my understanding that while priests can be married, Orthodox bishops must be unmarried. So would you abolish celibacy for the bishops as well? Just marry everyone off?

TG,

It became a tradition to get bishops from the monastic community.

Celibacy should be optional, not mandatory.

What need is there for an aura or a mystique if one has a wife? She wouldn't allow them to interfere in their marriage.

Joe

I'm not sure I understand that last part, Joe, would you please explain? What's the "aura" or "mystique" you're referring to?

Theist Gal, I suggest you read the article by the monk Maximos Davies in First Things describing the relation of married parochial clergy to monastic clergy: http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0212/opinion/davies.html

We have seen many difficulties of celibate priests placed in parish situations, that many Roman dioceses are now paying the price for and will for many years to come. I think this is a direct result of divergence of celibate clergy away from their historical origin and mission as monastic clergy. Celibacy is a holy and very difficult calling which requires a serious "support network" which is offered by the monastic community.

Historically in Byzantine monasticism the solitary celibate life was attempted only after a prolonged period of living in the monastic community under faithful obedience to a spiritual father, and never without the blessing of the spiritual father. Even amongst the great saints this was the case. St. Seraphim of Sarov did not attempt solitary life until after nearly 20 years of very holy monastic life.

I would posit that having celibate priests living alone as pastors of parishes is foreign to the Byzantine tradition and not harmonious with the relationship between parochial and monastic clergy. Sending a young man in his mid-twenties into a parish situation without that support of a brotherly monastic community and disciplined spiritual guidance from a wise spiritual father is asking for trouble.

Diak,

Here is the formation problem: we send young men to the seminary, which first of all is a pseudo-community, however passing and temporary it is. Then after getting formed in a community which is neither family or monastic community, we send them out to a rectory to be alone to live like a hermit, which in itself is a special calling. No family (life with a wife) or monastsic community. What exactly were they formed for?

TG,

Somewhere en route between seminary formation and rectory solitude auras and mystiques appear.

Joe

I found this to be the cutest thing said in the article.

While the newspapers are making a circus of bishops and pedophile priests, they are worried about us splashing pictures of married priests all over the place.

Gosh darn! Why would they be so uptight?

I wonder what would happen if the media DID catch on to how a bunch of absentee pencil-pushers from afar were able to knuckle under bishops to comply to their mandatory celibacy rule? Someone needs to shine a spotlight into this clubhouse.

Joe

TG,

I haven't a clue. But they are thought to exist.

Joe

Dear Joe,

You posted:

"Diak,

Here is the formation problem: we send young men to the seminary, which first of all is a pseudo-community, however passing and temporary it is. Then after getting formed in a community which is neither family or monastic community, we send them out to a rectory to be alone to live like a hermit, which in itself is a special calling. No family (life with a wife) or monastsic community. What exactly were they formed for?"

*****************
Joe,

I think that you have gone to the heart of the issue about clergy formation in Churches which maintain the practice of requiring celibacy of non-monastic clergy. Having experienced a number of years of this formation, I came to the same conclusion.

Any educator worth his or her salt will determine the outcome desired from the program and then design a program to lead to that end. The reigning model which prepares a man to live celibately alone by making him a member of a community of celibates doesn't seem have its end and means aligned. I don't think that the call to celibate monastic life is the same as to the call to the priesthood either. Neither is the call to priesthood necessarily a call to monastic life.

There is much discussion about whether parochal clergy should be celibate. It doesn't seem to me that Rome will ease that obligation for most priests in the Latin Church any time soon.

If, as Rome has said, celibacy will continue to be associated with the Divine Call to the Priesthood in the Latin Church in most situations, there must be some reasonable attempt to help these young men to learn how to deal with the issues attendant on living alone.

A one year deacon/internship in the year before ordination is a step toward that. Perhaps the programs for formation of permanent deacons will spin off a new way of training for priesthood.

Developing a reformed formation program for celibate non-monastic clergy seems to be a daunting task. Developing it should be a focus that engages the great minds who are mandating that diocesean priests should be celibate.

Frankly, I think that it is a real miracle of God's grace that so many of our celibate priests live lives in which they honor their vow. They are truly honorable and worthy of respect. In my estimation, they are living evidence of the reality of God's grace and mankind's ability to cooperate with it.

They need the special support of all of us. We need to pray for them to be sure. But, we also need find ways to take them into our circles of friendship and care to ensure that they can meet their need for intimate human contact.

Most of all, we, the Church whom they will serve owe it to them to help them prepare for what they are asked to do.


Thanks for hearing me out.

Steve

Steve, seeing the depth of the problem in the Latin church, I have to disagree. The one year "internship" is a weak attempt to fix a problem that can only be resolved in monastic community with common life and vision. That is not to say there are very good Latin priests formed in seminaries. But I would say many of the best I have met were "later vocations" and thus seasoned through life experience.

The following is a strong statement, and admittedly from a Byzantine perspective, but I believe celibate parochial clergy in general to be akin to "rowing upstream".

The pseudo-community of a celibate seminary I posit actually worsens the situation because it is transitory in nature, and gives a delusion that some kind of community life exists when the day they are out of the seminary and the bishop lays hands, they are thrown out of the nest. The basis, function and purpose of this "community" is primarily academic study, not prayer, fasting, work, obedience, stability and metanoia which are the foundations of the monastic community.

According to the Byzantine tradition celibacy truly works in the framework of monastic life in common, and the solitary life as a celibate can be lived only after a real spiritual seasoning of the monk in community.

We need to recapture the healthy, traditional relationship between parochial and monastic clergy that Fr. Maximos discusses. The clergy themselves need the support of monastic brethren also living the "angelic life" and fighting the struggles of chastity and purity inherent with the celibate life.

Diak,

Good points. But many who only know the seminary system, albeit a Latin one, will think that 'formation' only happens here. What actually happens is a process to accept a mandatory celibacy.

Most of the community conferences I attended at a Latin seminary was about accepting celibacy and/or trying to understand our homosexual friends. It gave me the hee-bee gee-bees after one acceptance talk when several of the guys came out of the closet that evening.

Many look for something to fill in the void: namely auras and mystiques. Monks don't flaunt their gift of perpetual continence or use their special status in life (I am a celibate) to go looking for some mystical aura that doesn't exist. What people used to give priests years ago wasn't respect for their mythical auras, but TRUST. Today's media blitz on the downside of celibacy has broken that trust.

We know of many priests, thank God, who HAVE prayed and asked for the gift of celibacy and live deeply spiritual lives. For them we are truly grateful and appreciative.

There is basically no difference between one getting 'formed' as a full-time seminarian and as a lay student. We are all called to Theosis, not to be seminarians. True formation happens in Theosis. Those who advocate the belief in auras and mystiques are still trying to justify the old Latin notion that celibacy is intimately tied to the priesthood and that it is THIS which defines the ministry of priest.

This system and notion has developed some interesting phenomena over the years. Many former Latin priests who write about it speak about the Gentleman's Club (the veterans who attain perks and special treatment for their years of service as celibates). They also speak about the problems of alcoholism and sexuality. Auras and mystiques don't really exist so they have to fill the void with something that allows them to get a rush. Some turn to a self-centered path of accreditations. They want to feel accomplished and so they have to let you know how well accomplished they are.

How would these problems be addressed in the monastic community? in the family home? One's life-style is closely monitored and challenged. A monk reveals his thoughts to his spiritual father/mother every day. A husband has to sleep with his wife every night. Disaster can strike when a monk doesn't reveal certain thoughts or a husband covers up some troubling area. Penance for the monk; the couch for the husband. The community provides a means to correct loose ends.

But who does a celibate cleric turn to every day after leaving the comfort of the seminary institution? Support groups? The spiritual director who only give you one hour a month to get it out of your system? Alcohol? The cute (and single) Secretary? More accomplishments flaunting? The sweet and kind widow who is of the same age (and looking for a man in her life)? Little boys? Disaster strikes when the remedy is self-administered, especially during crises.

This was one of the greatedst fears in the Latin seminary I attended. It was one thing to be alone; it was another thing to be lonely. Those who solved their loneliness problem by finding intimacy with another man(!) were already formed into the notion that celibacy was another word for not having sex with the opposite sex.

Joe

To go back a bit, since i am slow on the take :

"Not to mention the extra cost of supporting a priest's family - how many churches could afford the costs of insurance and health care? There might be practical reasons, as well as spiritual ones, for maintaining a celibate priesthood."

Lemko Rusyn has a good point about a hundred years ago. But that was then. Can we support a married Priest and his family? YES. Here we can learn something from the Protestants in this regard. Many congregations have 50-100 families, some fewer, and they support a full time minister and his family. My in-laws' church is about 60 families, support their minister, and apparently also have decent stipends for an associate and a youth minister. (Think of what this implies for possibilities for Deacons and Cantors...)

I don't think these are positive signs, but the natural result of some Eastern Catholic bishops pulling their bluff for a change.

Unless the pencil-pushing bureaucrats want to make a personal visit to tell our parishes that they will have to close since we have no celibate priests for them, then Eastern bishops will begin to take action and run their churches for a change. It will be a first.

These positive signs are not a result of all those Vatican II documents, papal encyclicals, and flowery verbage that means absolutely nothing. Only when our bishops no longer maintain a plenipotentiary relationship with a Latin model of doing church will we hear more relinquishing of that pure pressure by absentee landlords.

Joe

Dear Friends,

Priests in our Church up here often work at a second job, teaching or otherwise, as do their Presbyteras - although the support for married priests in the parishes is pretty good.

In addition to marriage, the experience of being a "tent-maker" a la St Paul is one that exposes the Priest to daily work.

I remember someone telling me that priests shouldn't have to work at secular jobs.

But tell that to the thousands of RC monastics who teach at educational institutions throughout the world.

The RC Basilian priests who taught me often did not have time to pray their Office - my Latin teacher confided to me that he could barely say an Our Father without distraction due to all the demands on his time.

He is now a parish priest in Windsor, Ontario and loves his priestly duties - and he is "addicted" to the Divine Office and the Psalms!

Another Latin Basilian priest I knew, and who died recently, just told the school administration to "chuck it" and he went to chapel, even in the middle of a class, to say his Hours throughout the day!

One Benedictine priest told me that Benedictines in general work 8-10 hour days as a rule.

Who was it that said a good day's work never killed anyone?

Alex

Dear Theist Doll,

Bishops in the early Church were "men of one wife" until, later, they were chosen from among the monastic or "black" clergy.

To this day in the Orthodox Church, when someone who is not a monastic is chosen to be ordained a bishop, monastic tonsure is the first rite of the entire consecration service.

The Orthodox Church often refuses to ordain a celibate man to the "secular" priesthood and when a married priest's wife should die, as happened in Toronto a few years back, the priest often takes monastic vows (he cannot marry again).

Alex

Alex,

You make an excellent observation. Both pan and pani can be gainfully employed AND have their own insurance plans (and investment/savings programs).

Many today have not been brought up on the "job for life" mentality. We are used to the idea of being job-hoppers, unemployed at times, and taking our investments and savings accounts with us. Society has become highly transferable and mobile.

Joe