Eastern Christian Book: Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII
It is the shortest essay in my new book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, "Reflections on Two Vocations in Two Lungs of the One Church," but David Meinzen's essay is one of the most singular and important ever written on this topic, for he demolishes the idea that a married priest, to avoid being "divided," must always put the parish first. Meinzen shows--drawing on his long experience as son of a married Lutheran pastor (Missouri Synod), and then a married Orthodox, and finally and currently a married Eastern Catholic priest--that any man in holy orders who neglects his family to serve his parish is unworthy of both vocations, and does damage to the one he is serving precisely insofar as he is neglecting the other. Put differently, to neglect his family is to serve the broader church badly for there is no real division between the domestic and wider Church: they are all the one body of Christ, and following impeccable Pauline logic, when one part of the body suffers, every part and everybody suffers. The logic Meinzen uses is very similar to what I used more recently in talking about the Christian case for self-care.
Meinzen goes beyond this to make a positive case: a strong clerical family by that very fact builds up the entire body of Christ, making it stronger as well. In other words, a man living up to his sacramental vocation to marriage, and working to strengthen and protect that marriage and family, is going to be in a stronger position to work to strengthen and protect his equally sacramental vocation to priesthood. Any idea of competition between the two is the grossest of theological mistakes which must be abandoned.
This is the order of charity; now some Latin apologists may still argue the duty to a parishioner who is not a family member is still greater than the duty to one's family. They may even used the flaw analogy of a priest being married to the Church (in a literal sense).
1 comment:
Priests are allowed to not affirm the Athanasius Creed in public and offer Holy Mass ?
The Catechesis in the parish is not Magisterial when the priests cannot affirm the Athanasius Creed in public.They also choose to reject the Athanasius Creed when they interpret Vatican Council II with the false premise.
We now have the Lionel Andrades interpretation of Vatican Council II which does not employ the false premise. It interprets the Council with the rational premise, inference and conclusion. So there is no rupture with the Athanasius Creed, the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus and the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX. There is a hermeneutic of continuity with Tradition.
So the Parish Priest is expected to affirm the Athanasius Creed he can no more say that it is contradicted with Vatican Council II.
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