Is it time to ordain married men to the Catholic priesthood?

This Observant Catholic says: maybe

Much of the support to the idea of married Catholic priests comes from liberal reformers, who often couch it in their language, that is to say, in concepts foreign to Catholic theology, and also link it to another issue, "women's ordination" so-called. Put the two ideas into the same sentence and you see how both ideas sound so repulsive to Observant Catholics' ears.

This doesn't need to be this way. They idea of ordaining married men to the priesthood can be defended on orthodox, conservative, and traditional grounds. My thesis is that a married priesthood would not be a doctrinal innovation, but simply the restoration of a discipline that was normative for the first 1,000 years of history in the Western, Latin Church—although we need to acknowledge that the discipline of priestly celibacy became ascendant in the 5th century, from the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, who brought a monastic outlook to the papacy of his time, onwards. Five centuries later, another saintly Pope named Gregory (pp.VII), promulgated that celibacy was to be the mandatory disciplinary norm for all the priests of the Latin Church.

Before we attempt an analysis of the arguments set in favor of a married clergy, we need to set forth the following two principles:

The Holy Spirit guides Salvation History. He's also the soul of the Church, the life-giving, animating principle of the Body of Christ. Nothing happens in the history of the Church without a purpose, nor outside of God's will. If the Spirit guided the Western Church to establish a discipline of celibacy for all priestly tiers in the Western Church, and that discipline has lasted 1,400 years, well, we should hold to that fact as the point of departure for any conversation on this issue, and assign it all the weight it rightly deserves.

The second principle flows from what we mean when we say "ordaining married men to the Catholic priesthood." It means just that. The priesthood under this discipline will continue to be restricted to men,in conformity with 2,000 years of Catholic Tradition and, most recently, the binding authoritative teaching of Pope John Paul the Great, given in his 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

It also means ordaining married men; it doesn't mean that already ordained men would be allowed to marry and still permitted to minister. Already ordained priests seeking marriage would still have to be dispensed from their vows and laicized.

Many of the so-called reformers would find such strictures intolerable, for they do not fit with the pastoral model they have in mind for the Church and that's the Protestant Parsonage. Most observant Catholics opposed to the idea of ordaining married men to the priesthood also believe that this is the only model available to follow and therefore, they reject it—and rightly so. I also reject the Protestant Parsonage as a model for the Catholic one, and I say that with all due respect to all those successful Protestant ministerial couples out there who have made it work, often under dire circumstances in the mission field or while undergoing persecution for the cause of Christ.

I set aside the Protestant model because is not Catholic and I'm only willing to admit Catholic solutions to Catholic problems—in this case, the scarcity of priests in developed countries for which ordaining worthy married men is but one solution. As a Catholic theologian, I must look to the fullness of revelation as handed down solely to the Catholic Church since her beginning, for trustworthy guidance on this very important issue.

Catholic Tradition has preserved such a model of married priests and families, and it is the one we can observe today in the Eastern Churches, both the ones in communion with Rome and the ones that are not. They offer us a perfect model that is both historical, practical, steeped in Holy Tradition and therefore, thoroughly Catholic. The Eastern model is the one the Western Church should adopt if and when the Magisterium decides to restore the discipline of a married clergy to the Latin Church.

I have observed first hand that a married priest can minister to his flock and remain completely open to its needs, in all the demands that the Lord imposes upon him, be it the needs of the flock or the needs of its own family; I have seen holiness and wholesomeness flowing in these priestly families and it is inspiring to behold.

Now, do these couples "have it easy"? Most certainly not. These couples live under a social microscope and the need to send boundaries between service and love to others and service and love to their family lay unimaginable pressures on these servants of God. The fact that they achieve it and persevere every day, as well as their persistence in liturgical and private prayer, fasting, and mortification, demonstrates beyond all doubt God's blessings upon these unions. That this occurs within a traditional Catholic context is encouraging. The fact that in these marriages man, in his fullness—male and female—becomes a partner with Christ in the redemption of the world should not scandalize anyone among the Catholic faithful, but rather inspire them to pursue their salvation with due diligence.

Ordaining married men is not a messianic panacea that will heal all the ills of the Church in developed countries, for the vocation deficit ailing the Church today has but little to do with the life of chosen celibacy the priesthood now demands, and everything to do with the kind of culture we live in. Permanent Deacons—the ranks of men from which the first batch of married priests is likely to come—shouldn't feel any pressure to abandon their initial vocation; being a Permanent Deacon is a perfectly fine vocation and blessed by the Lord.

Enthusiasts of ordaining married men to the priesthood should stand under the cold shower of reality and the reality we live here in the United States is that our materialistic culture is not conducive to Catholic religious vocations of any kind, whether married or celibate. I'm not too optimistic that hordes of married men will rush to become priests if the discipline of married priesthood is ever restored in the Western Church.

If a married priesthood following the Eastern Christian model is to be restored in the Latin Church, pastors (i.e. bishops) should exercise extreme caution as to whom they choose for this restored ministry. For we will no longer be talking about one vocation, but two, the husband's and the wife's and maybe even the children's. I humbly suggest the following guidelines to its restoration and for the testing of the worthiest candidates:

• Candidates should be married Catholic men between the ages of 35 and 60; a dispensation may be granted to men older than 60, who are practicing Catholics in full sacramental communion with the Church, and members of the Catholic Church for at least one year prior to admission as a candidate.
  
  
• Candidates should not have been previously ordained clergymen in a Protestant Church—for there's another process open for them to request and receive ordination. (Picture right, Father John Fleming, an Australian Catholic priest, with his wife, Alison).
  
  
• Married candidates should meet all requirements for the Permanent Diaconate and should in fact be active deacons assigned to parish or diocesan ministries for at least 5 years prior to continuing to the priesthood.
  
  
• As in the Eastern discipline, bishops will be chosen only from the ranks of the celibate clergy (either secular or regular); widowers may also be elected bishops.
  
  
• The Church must guarantee a living wage to married priests and their families—a tough but necessary rule. Some poorer parishes may not be able to afford a priest and his family, which, ironically, may make necessary that the wife works outside the home or the priest to work part-time. But then again, if the Easterners and the Protestants can do it, why can't us? Where there's God's will, there's a way.

Then, there's the matter of need. Is the need to ordain married men real? It is true that ordaining men will provide limited relief to the wide and variegated spiritual needs of the Catholic faithful, and the problem of vocations lies in the modern materialist culture. Yet, the need for priests is now critical throughout the developed world and we can't wait to fix the problem with the culture. Ordaining worthy married men might one way to go. In fact, they may be a catalyst for even more vocations, both to the married and celibate priesthood.

Is now the time to admit married men into the priesthood? This is a matter of spiritual discernment, of being alert to the promptings of the Spirit and judging that whatever is enacted is the will of the Spirit. That's not my role. My role is to point out a need and a possible solution in accordance to the Deposit of Revelation—Scripture and Tradition.

In the 500 years between Pope St. Gregory I and St. Gregory VII, the Magisterium decided that a celibate priesthood better served the Church; Pope John Paul the Great judged that it wasn't time yet to restore the ancient discipline of the Church. The next Holy Father may decide that it is time to restore the ancient discipline, or he may not, and that's fine too. We should all be happy and at peace and always remember that our agenda, our schedule, is not the Spirit's. The Catholic Church will go where the Spirit blows, when the Spirit blows, and at no other time and often, in spite of ourselves.

- Read "Can a priest be a husband?" from Time Magazine

- Read Split in push for married priests, from Australia's Fairfax Digital

- Read What's the deal about legally married priests? at EWTN.

The following links are from the Married Priests Website. Vivificat! doesn't necessarily support everything they say, and may in fact oppose some of the things they say. In other words, this is not a blanket endorsement of that site's content. I link to it because they have links to the Magisterial documents I want my readers to study. Caveat emptor when it comes to the Married Priests Website.

- Read the Document Outlining the Pastoral Provision issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on July 22, 1980 Prot. N. 66/77

- Read the English Catholic Bishops' Statutes for the Admission of Married Former Anglican Clergymen into the Catholic Church

- Read the Provisions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches Related to Married Clergy from the Code of Canon Law for Oriental Churches.

- Read thinking out loud > married priesthood, by Alan Creech.