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I could not agree with you more!

From a total compensation perspective, a priest with a family will always require more in terms of housing, groceries, utilities, insurance, gas, etc etc. A living wage will always be more for a family than for a single man.

But it is not simply the matter of cost. A priest's family is - in general - also very involved in helping to serve the Church in a myriad of ways, not the least of which is allowing their father to go and serve when he needs to.

"If I plant a vineyard, are the grapes the purpose of my vineyard or are they simply the fruit of my labor? Well, would one not say it is both?"

One would indeed. But a marriage is only metaphorically a vinyard, and even the vintner prunes his vines, and uses a variety of means to manage his crop, so if we go down this road, we are sure to run into ambiguous metaphors.

Meyendorff was pretty explicit concerning, and gave good patristic evidence to support, the idea that Christian marriage has no worldly purpose, and this distinguishes it from pagan marriage, and even marriage in the Old Testament, which was explicitly for the procreation of children, so that man might attain vicarious immortality through progeny. But in Christ, true immortality is open to us all, directly and personally, through the resurrection of the body. Therefore, the purpose of marriage is "otherworldly", a true sacrament that perdures through eternity and is a sign of the love Christ the Bridegroom has for the Church, his bride.

That is why, in the Eastern theology of marriage, it is not the couple who marry each other, but the priest who marries them in the name of Christ and through the descent and action of the Holy Spirit. Through that action, man and woman become co-creators with God, and children are a manifestation of the efficacy of the Sacrament.

It would contradict the meaning of the Sacrament to marry with no intention to have children (even if this was attained through natural means). Eastern sacramental theology is based on the concept of synergia between the recipients of the sacrament and the Holy Spirit; to deny the voice of the Spirit in effect renders the Sacrament ineffectual in its purpose both of signifying the Kingdom and of furthering the process of theosis. A married couple who deliberately choose not to have any children are not cooperating with the Holy Spirit and their marriage is hollow.

On the other hand, a couple may fully intend to have children, but may wish to delay the time; they may wish to have a limited number of children. How they do this, according to Archbishop Joseph, is a matter for their own prayerful discernment, since they have been Crowned as priests of their own domestic church. The Church should encourage them to find and walk the path of holiness, but cannot prescribe for them one rigid solution or approach, for such is contrary to the requirement that the Church view all of its members as unique persons, and not as abstractions.

StuartK:

Are you saying, then, that the private sector should emulate this example? Paying a single man less than a married man for the same work in the same company?

BOB

Bob,

But we are already in an apples to ourangatangs comparison here since IN GENERAL parishes also pay for the living expenses of the household, a rare thing in the corporate world - unless one is an expat. These expenses generally speaking will be higher for a priest and his family than a single priest. (I have known of some exceptions to this rule...)

In expat situations, the total comp package for a married person and his or her family is always higher. (I know this because I was approached 4 different times about living in Japan and Europe.) We are talking more than simply salary here.

And yet this seems to run absolutely contrary to the command of the Lord at creation: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. I sense in your statement here and the position ascribed to Fr. John Myendorff a logical trajectory which could, without qualification, very well lead into Gnosticism - the very denigration of the Christian sacramentality of the body and of marriage - if we are not careful. The energies of divine grace transfigure, elevate and redeem the purposes of the created order. They do not annihilate or replace them, but sanctify them and reveal their authentic telos (end) as defined by the imprint of the Logos upon created being (logoi). Through Christ, marriage is ordered sacramentally to its divine telos precisely by elevating through grace that which is now in this life common to its life and purpose (e.g. procreation). The highest expression of self-giving in marriage (sex) is thus elevated sacramentally to an act of life-giving and love-giving covenant renewal.

Christian marriage no more replaces the procreative end of marriage than Holy Baptism replaces the nutritional and cleansing ends of water. It rather elevates those ends to a new covenantal purpose.

And in view of the assertion that the purpose of procreation in the Old Covenant was simply to achieve vicarious immortality through progeny, I will simply echo our Lord's words: "It was not so in the beginning." God's command to "be fruitful and multiply" was given BEFORE the ancestral fall and the appearance of death and corruption in human history. This points to a much more fundamental purpose of procreation than simply cheating death. I would argue that it was to grow in and as the image and likeness of the perichoresis of Trinitarian life, which is both life-giving and love-giving.

"And yet this seems to run absolutely contrary to the command of the Lord at creation: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth."

But Chrysostom, writing in the 4th century (about something unrelated to contraception, but still pertinent), that the commandment had been fulfilled, since humanity has covered the face of the earth from one corner to another.

"if we are not careful."

I'm always careful.

"Are you saying, then, that the private sector should emulate this example? Paying a single man less than a married man for the same work in the same company?"

In the "best of all possible worlds", what a company pays a worker would be negotiated freely between the worker and the employer. A Christian employer (for what the Church teaches cannot be imposed on those who do not believe) would strive to the greatest extent possible to take into account the personal situation of each worker. That would mean--as was the case as late as the 1950s--that an employer would indeed distinguish between a man who had a wife and four kids and a man just out of school who had only himself to look after, or for that matter a woman who was working to support her children from one without dependent children who was working because she wanted to supplement her husband's salary. Circumstances do matter.

Now, there are limits: a company cannot consistently operate at a loss and "make it up on volume", and taken to extremes, the determination to pay a living wage can make a company uncompetitive, or at least, force it to cut back on the number of workers it can use. This then requires some prudential judgment: is it better to employ more workers at a lower wage, thereby at least helping them towards economic sufficiency, or a smaller number of workers at full sufficiency, trusting that those one did not hire (the opportunity cost of the living wage) will find work elsewhere?

Another point that has to be made, one raised by C.S. Lewis: Christianity postulates relationships between persons based on status--who and what we are, at an intrinsic level. Modern society, on the other hand, is based on contractual relationships--what can we negotiate, and what does the law mandate. The law mandates equal pay for equal work, and in so doing, reduces workers from flesh-and-blood individuals with personalized needs, to numerical abstractions. This may be fair, but it is not necessarily right or just (I am reminded of the last line of Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery", in which the woman about to be stoned to death, having constantly complained about the unfairness of it all, finally gets the point:

"It isn't fair", she cried. "It isn't right", and they were upon her.

Do you have the citation from Chrysostom? This is not a request for "proof" that he said it so much as trying to ascertain specifically what he actually said.

I have the Ford's wonderful work on St. John Chrysostom, men, women and marriage. I may look for a reference there as well.

I will only add that the fact that a Church Father points out that the command has been fulfilled does not abrogate the command or render it null and void. This is especially the case with the commands given "in the beginning." The New Law of the Beatitudes given on Mt. Eremos, for instance, may fulfill the Decalogue on Mt. Sinai, but it does not abrogate the demands of that law. Rather, it elevates them!

Pax.

And THAT is the most excellent point!

Dear Stuart,

There is also the point that the scheme of each employee negotiating his remuneration with his employer would put us back well over a century, to the days when labor unions were considered "illegal organizations in restraint of trade", and the bosses were all-powerful. Do you really want to see a revival of the Molly Maguires?

Fr. Serge

But Father Serge,

I do not engage in any collective bargaining for my salary. Rather, the company has its own internal formula derived from a number of factors including an MRP (Market Reference Point). If I require more, I can negotiate it with my manager. Someone in a collective bargaining and seniority based situation is precluded from doing anything of the sort unless he or she leaves the union and goes into management...

Not that I am opposed at all in principle to the notion of collective bargaining...but I do not see what I describe here as unjust.

"Do you really want to see a revival of the Molly Maguires? "

Dear Father Serge,

The situation has changed significantly since then, and labor unions, for the most part, do not represent the interests of their members, but rather use dues to accrue wealth for their leadership and to lobby for political interest on issues unrelated to labor. Moreover, unions have proven to be counterproductive for most workers, as they impose rigid work rules that impede productivity, extort wages and benefits that are unsustainable, and result, in the end, with fewer workers employed dividing an ever-shrinking pie. In a globalized economy, employers and employees must work together to grow their enterprises, otherwise both will go under. I think we have a couple of car companies here that are good evidence of that.

"Do you have the citation from Chrysostom? This is not a request for "proof" that he said it so much as trying to ascertain specifically what he actually said."

I will look it up.

I have a partial quote from a GOA site; unfortunately, it is not complete, and it does not give a reference:

It was for two reasons that marriage was introduced so that we may live in chastity [sophrosyne] and so that we might become parents. Of these the most important reason is chastity . . . especially today when the whole inhabited world [he oikoumene] is full of our race [John Chrysostom].

Finally nailed down a reference:

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. "Eis to apostolikon reton: Dia de tas porneias ekastos ten heautou gynaika echeto" [On the words of the apostle: Concerning the fornication each has with his own wife]. Patrologiae cursus completus: Seriesgraeca [Patrologia Graeca]. 161 vols. Paris: Apud Gamier Fratres, editores & J.P. Migne Successors, 1857-1894, vol. 51, cols. 207-218, at Col. 213.