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Married priesthood?

Shortage of priests to attend to people's spritual needs raises the question of whether to allow clergy to wed
Married priesthood?

Will the Latin rite Catholic Church open its doors to married priests? (Photo by Angie de Silva)

Published: December 29, 2016 08:56 AM GMT
Updated: December 26, 2016 04:42 AM GMT

(UCAN Series: Best of 2016)

With a growing number of Catholic communities without priests to care for their spiritual needs, the question of ordaining married individuals has become a topical issue.

A spiritually mature person can certainly lead the Catholic faithful into a meaningful Eucharistic celebration. He or she can preside over other sacraments and nurture the spiritual hunger of many believers who only have access to the vehicles of God’s grace once a month, or even once a year.

Is there a theological obstacle to ordaining married people to the priesthood?

Early Christian communities had married elders serving the needs of believers. St. Paul in his letter to Titus advised the elders of Crete to be "blameless, married once, whose children are believers and not open to the charge of being immoral and rebellious."

Accordingly, it was a common practice in the early church that priests and bishops were married. Only later, with the emergence of the monks in the desert, that celibacy in the priestly ministry started to become an integral part of a person’s total dedication to God’s work. And in one of the ecumenical councils of the church, celibacy became a canonical requirement for priestly ordination.

Historically, married priesthood existed and was apparently effective. Neither was there a theological issue about a married person being ordained. 

The birth of religious priests in the Catholic Church gave celibacy the theological foundation and the pastoral basis for the observance of such a lifestyle.

The religious who were at the same time priests live in a community of men. It could have been very complicated if they were married. Most of all, they vowed to live in poverty, obedience and celibacy. These vows were essential to their consecration to God.

In time, the priesthood (because of the noble examples of saints, who were celibates, and the theological treatises expounded by the thinkers of the Catholic Church, who were also religious men), became wedded with celibacy.

The priesthood became almost synonymous with celibacy in the Catholic Church. This is the kind of culture present Latin rite Catholics have vis-a-vis the priesthood.

The Holy Spirit was guiding the Catholic priesthood to adopt a celibate lifestyle for many centuries until now. But it is the same Spirit of God who inspired the early church to ordain married men as ministers of the altar.

For many Eastern-rite churches in full communion with Rome, it is not uncommon for married men to be ordained to the priesthood. This is not so for the Latin-rite except maybe for those ministers who have converted from other denominations. Also, except in very extraordinary circumstances, are those in the Latin or Eastern rites allowed to marry after they have been ordained.

With the scarcity of celibate priests today, the hunger of the people to encounter God’s mercy and compassion is wanting.

Would God forsake His people and not allow spiritually mature men, like Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, and the prophets and priests in the history of salvation (who were mostly, married men) to lead them to worship in the sacred place of the altar?

I have faith that the present pope will listen to the movement of the Holy Spirit somehow unfolding in the historical and pastoral needs of the church today, especially the issue of married priesthood.

Bonifacio Tago Jr. is vice president for academic programs and professor of philosophy at Good Samaritan Colleges in Cabanatuan City, Philippines. He is currently taking up a doctorate degree in Theology in Consecrated Life at the Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia.

 Published Sept. 26, 2016

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