www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology On Erroneous Remarks Made By "Catholic" Newsletter On Eastern Married Clergy

Alex,

Christ is risen!

How flattering to the RCC! I thought you were a militant Ukie.

You are breathing with both lungs.

Paul

Frank,

Here is the link to the article, which originally appeared in Eastern Churches Journal:

Is Mandatory Clerical Celibacy an Apostolic Tradition? [east2west.org]

Please share this article with the gentleman who wrote the essay for the journal, and let us know what his response is.

Thanks,
Anthony

WOW, what an article Anthony!

I'm fairly new to this forum, so I must ask:

Who Are You?

Tremendous work there my friend, and within it are included many valuable and pertinent insights.

I sent it to my pastor, Fr. Mikhail - and he immediately sent me back a reply of thanks.

All the thanks go to!

As far as me sending this information to the people that have written that newsletter, that will not work.

You see, I had once belonged to that group when I was attending the Roman Church and been assaulted locally by a diocese whose teaching structure had all gone astray. I know this firsthand, as I had personally taken Formation for Ministry classes in that diocese with the hopes of becoming a deacon there. I forced myself to complete their curriculum, but my faith was tested dearly. It was horrible.

So I had joined this group, the Coalition of Concerned Catholics - in the hopes of trying to help correct some of the serious abuses that were going on there. But after a while, I noticed that the president of this group (Phil Kiernan) and a few of the other members who were attending the Tridentine Mass - had developed some very skewed beliefs of their own.

In certain instances, they debated me to why I should disagree with some of the outward teachings of the Holy Father - because they were not proclaimed "infallibly".

This bothered me greatly, as their newsletter was directed at heterodox Roman Catholics who they were claiming were doing the very same thing! Hypocrites they were, full and through. So I left them, but I still am on their mailing list which is why I had recently received their newsletter which contained the offending article.

So you see Anthony, I need SOMEONE ELSE to please send them your incredible and wonderful essay. Coming from me, they would most assuredly not even bother to read it.

If you Anthony, or someone else on this forum could send them that wonderful article, I would certainly appreciate it. Mr. Kiernan is a somewhat likable, very intelligent, and extremely informed individual. But in his well intentioned exuberance to straighten out the mess that has developed from within their Roman Diocese, he has seriously stayed from the beaten path of facts and good wisdom.

So I present here again their e-mail address for comments on their newsletter:

cccad@capital.net

Or, you may want to write them at:

Catholics in Faithful Voice
P.O. Box 13-532
Albany, N.Y. 12212

For convenience sake, I have re-copied below the parts of his article "Arrows of Lascivious" that have brought into question the Eastern Christian Church's practice of a married priesthood:

"The Byzantine or Greek practice of ordaining married men who continued to have relations with their wives originated about the time of the "Quinisext" Synod in the sixth century. See Byzantine scholar, Roman Cholij's book "Clerical Celibacy, East and West" for an account of how documents and histories were tampered with and manipulated to bring this about."

"In light of the above, how do the signers of this letter (those Roman priests) explain that 'marriage and it's many blessings' are compatible with the priesthood and, in fact, enhance priestly ministry? Our Lord, His Apostles, and His Church are all witnesses against this assertion. Moreover, the lives of married clergy, whether Byzantine Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, or Jewish, do not bear this out. None of these religious groups are awash in vocations because their clergy are permitted sexual relations. The Eastern Catholic Churches of Europe and America are still heavily dependent on Latin Catholic priests to minister to their people. Eastern Orthodox congregations in the U.S. are often forced to go to Europe or the Middle East to find priests for their parishes. Many Protestant denominations are gasping for ministers." (from page 11 of the newsletter's article "Arrows of Lascivious")

Thanking you one and all for your time and eforts on this matter,

Frank

Frank,

Thank you for the kind words! I'm a doctoral candidate in theology, and I live in the Pittsburgh area.

While I'm tempted to send contact the author of the newsletter, I really don't know if that is the best thing for me to do right now. You see, I'm on a very tight deadline to finish the first draft of my dissertation. Getting drawn into a long, protracted debate with these people may not be the wisest thing for me to do right now.

Maybe someone else here would be kind enough to refer them to the article?

I'm sorry to hear about your negative experiences in your former diocese. Hopefully things will get better there. The unfortunate thing is that some faithful Roman Catholics will become so wrapped up in fighting "heterodoxy" that they go to the opposite extreme, and become excessively rigid.

Anthony

Now my question is in regards to the idea of slowly phasing in a married clergy in the Latin Church. What happens to those Priests who have served faithfully over the last 20 to 30 years, and now find their Bishop calling married men to Ordination? Do you say, "Sorry pal, guess you missed the boat?" Doing away with the restriction of getting married after Ordination, as opposed to before, could possibly lead to scandal if a Priest was dumb enough to start dating one of his own flock. As I understand it, that was originally the reasoning behind instituting that restriction. Now a Priest today who is in his mid-forties or fifties, I'm sure on average is quite healthy, and has many years ahead of him. Is he to spend the rest of his life as a celibate, while the thirty-something year old Priest down the hall of the rectory has a wife and children?

Aside from that reasoning, I believe the Latin Church should remain steadfast in Her traditions, as should Her Eastern counterparts in theirs. Whether or not Celibacy is an Apostolic tradition; either way, it has developed into an integral part of the Latin spiritual patrimony. If it is only a developement in discipline, such a developement has only served to compliment the Latin school of theology. I believe that any forced evolution of that system would be to its a detriment. Ironicly, history would probably regard such a change as an "Hellenization" of the Latin Church (as opposed to the historic Latinization of the Eastern Churches, LOL).

God bless and many prayers,
Timothy

I guess I should have someone else pic my next avatar... sorry, lol

Tim

Dear Tim I enjoyed your post though i must disagree on the basis that the R.C. does have married priests and alot of them. There are roughly 50 married priests in the archdiocese of NY being converts from Protestant Churches. I think it is unfair that these Convert priests can be married since E.C. priests in this country cannot. let me try to clarify what i am truly saying. celebacy and marriage are both vocations that can either help or hinder a priest's spiritual life thats why i think both paths should be open across the communion of churches.of course any particular church has a right to create its own disciplines.
God Bless
bobby

Christ is Risen!

I agree with orthodoxsinner above. Rome has spoken loud and clear on this issue, with many married former Lutherans and Episcopalians now serving RC dioceses, with more waiting in line. There are no indications that this practice will subside at all in the near future.

Anthony started a very insightful thread not too long ago relating to this topic: https://www.byzcath.org/cgibin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001514

Bobby,

The Priests that you speak of are converts to the Catholic Church and overwhelmingly come from assemblies "desended" from the Latin Church and those assemblies have generally forsaken much of their spiritual patrimony.

Now, a married Christian man is born and raised in one of these assemblies and is called by God to serve in the Church. The only way he knows how to fulfil that calling is by becoming a minister of some sort (do not mean to offend anyone, speaking generally) and as such, he may not truely become what God has called him to be if his calling is really to Holy Orders. Years later he converts to Catholocism and upon conversion, he realizes that his true vocation is to the Priesthood.

What do you do with him? We cannot deny that he has a vocation if he does infact have one. It is through no fault of his own that he was ignorant to the traditional demands the Latin Church places on her Priests- because he was a Protestant, and their tradition generally is marriage. Latins by birth grow up aware that to choose to live a married life ipso facto removes the possibility of persuing a calling to Holy Orders. Someone who is married upon their conversion has never had the choice of "either one or the other" to make. Under that condition, such a demand couldn't apply to them.

Celibacy has, in my opinion, grown out of the heavy monastic influence on the Latin Church's identity during her formative years. I find attractive the sense of personal sacrafice for God and the Church celibacy asks. That is the Roman heritage.

One further question, given that divorce is all too common in this day and age, what happens in a parish where the Priest ends up separating from his wife. I would imagine she would be pretty close to the congregation... that would have to lead to an aweful mess to clean up, though probably not nearly as bad as the sex abuse scandal.

With prayers,
Timothy

Dear Timothy,

Typically in the Orthodox tradition, a priest who is divorced may no longer be a priest in a parish at all. In extraordinary cases, IIRC, some jurisdictions have made an exception, but it is very clearly a granting of ekonomia. For all intents and purposes, his Ministry is over.

Gaudior, hoping that this helps

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Gaudior:
[QB] Dear Timothy,

Typically in the Orthodox tradition, a priest who is divorced may no longer be a priest in a parish at all.

Not exactly. He can, but the ecclesiastical authorities will never bless him to conclude the second marriage. Only if he does his ministry as a priest will be over. Traditionally, in Russia widower priests used to be tonsured so as to continue their mission, otherwise they would not be allowed to perform the Eucharist. There was no officially recognized concept of celibacy in Orthodox Russia up to the 19th cent. The entire clergy was either married or tonsured. But today an orthodox widower priest may safely go on with his parish activity since a respective precedent of the ordaining of an unmarried professor in Theology in the 1800s.

Valerius

And, again, it certainly means that the rules concerning widower priests are similar to that of divorced ones. Formally, a divorced person may not be ordained, but just there is nothing to do if it happens to a man who has been consecrated. Unlike the Roman Catholicism the Orthodox Church recognizes divorce, but, of course, reluctantly.

Valerius

Dear Valerius,

From what I have heard, that is not the case. It certainly is for widowed priests, as there is no fault to the priest if his wife dies...

However, divorce is another matter. Perhaps not even ten years ago a priest in Florida was immediately removed from pastoral duties and another priest assigned to his parish (where he was well beloved) because he had just been divorced. It has, if I am remembering correctly, to do with the presupposition that a priest must be able to maintain order in his own household. (For this same reason, men who are married to non-Orthodox wives may not become priests, even if neither party was Orthodox at the time of the marriage, and the man converted later).

However, as I said, in EXTREMELY rare cases, an ekonomia is granted, allowing the priest to continue his pastoral ministry once divorced.

Gaudior, casting vaguely about in cluttered mind for applicable points, and giving up waiting for an Orthodox priest or seminarian to speak on this.

Dear Gaudior,

I have met a divorced G.O. priest...from Salt Lake City, and he is also spokesperson for IOCC. I think that it must be a very sad thing for a priest...

Fondest Regards,
Alice

Hello,

If non-Orthodox man and wife become both members of this Church there is no obstacle for the man to be ordained as an Orthodox priest after they had been converted.

As for divorced priests, I have graduated from the Orthodox Seminary in St. Petersburg, Russia, and we had a professor-priest who was divorced but went on both teaching at the Seminary and serving at the Theotokos' Vladimir Icon�s. I don't remember that it was regarded as ekonomia, but the matter is that it is all but impossible to prove that divorce is a priest�s fault. Theoretically, he, as the parish leader (shepherd), has to be able to maintain the peace in his own family, teaching ordinary parishioners in this manner. But an Orthodox couple may, for instance, discontinue its marriage for the sake of hermit life, the background acceptable enough for peaceful divorce. When Russian Orthodox Patriarch Nikon of the 1600s was simply a priest he mutually agreed with his wife to part for good for monasticism. Both of them were tonsured but this �divorce� did not hinder him from the occupying of the Patriarchal Throne. A little earlier the parents of the first Russian Czar from the Romanoff dynasty had also parted before getting a Patriarch and a nun respectively.

It is also true that no religious leader can be guaranteed or ensured from loosing his family life through the death or, suppose, some kind of misbehavior of his spouse. I think that in the past a priest who was abandoned by the wife but at the same time was not reproach in it by the authorities or public opinion could be allowed to keep on his ministry, though it was strictly insisted that he has to get a monk. By the way, the current Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow was divorced and later on tonsured. His former wife now is married for the second time, as I heard. (Official biography of His Holiness avoids mentioning about this story). I doubt whether there are any official regulations for this case. It is only clear from the Eastern Church rules that a twice-married man can be neither a deacon nor a priest. As for decision concerning a widowed or divorced but then tonsured man, seeking the consecration, it depends, I think, on the will of a ruling bishop, taking responsibility on his own.

Valerius