Should Be a Good Discussion

Tonight! https://t.co/YcwKFYZKNG

— Sheptytsky Institute (@Sheptytsky) September 14, 2021

Many Causes at Work Here

Every priest I talk to who’s 45 years of age or younger in Western Canada:

-Status quo isnt working
-we are losing good men after ordination because of burn out
-we want to live in community

Ive yet to talk to one priest in these parts who DOESNT feel this way.

— Fr. Harrison Ayre 🦚 (@FrHarrison) September 6, 2021

Eastern Christian Book: Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII

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).

 

 

One Take on a Developer of the Medieval Papacy

Clerical celibacy is that important to Latin identity.

St. Gregory VII, pope, reformer, and defender of priestly celibacy, pray for us! pic.twitter.com/6yMlJYmLs0

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) May 25, 2021

Eastern Christian Books: Married Priests in the Catholic Church

Eastern Christian Books: Married Priests in the Catholic Church

UND Press

Married Priests in the Catholic Church

@AAJDeVille1's "Married Priests in the Catholic Church" (April pub) is on page 10 @UNDPress's Spring 2021 Catalog. We are so excited about sharing this #book with the world! https://t.co/bZCh95tZ5Z

— Kathryn Pitts (@pitts5ndedu) October 15, 2020

What Sort of Handle on the Patriarchate?

#PopeFrancis has revealed that that, during the #AmazonSynod, the debate over married priests became too polarised - it is for this reason that he didn’t go forward with the proposal

/1https://t.co/fqMvoIRmMm

— Christopher Lamb (@ctrlamb) September 4, 2020

Antonio José De Almeida Pursues His Agenda

Sandro Magister: Step By Step Toward Married Priests. An Update

Valeurs Actuelles Interview with Cardinal Sarah

Sandro Magister has the links: Celibacy, Amazon, Germany. Cardinal Sarah Returns To the Field

The Eastern Tradition of Married Priesthood, True Light Podcast Episode 10

An interview with Adam DeVille

Shifting Definitions of Masculinity with Respect to the Presbyterate

Written by a feminist so it may not be agenda-free, but it is unlikely that the historical facts are in error.

UPenn: The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300 by Jennifer D. Thibodeaux

(a review)

See also: Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Palgrave).

An Academic Rebuttal to Cochini Is Required

Latins mounting a defense of the claim that priestly celibacy is a norm of apostolic origin continually and consistently refer to the book by Christian Cochini, the English translation of which is published by Ignatius Press, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy. But it is not at all clear to Byzantines and others that Concini has the historical evidence necessary to establish this claim.

Here is another Latin apologia: The Charism of Priestly Celibacy by Fr. Frederick L. Miller, STD

Magister Returns From Hiatus

Sandro Magister: Francis’s Silence, Ratzinger's Tears, and That Never-Published Statement of His

Edward Pentin Interviews Cardinal Sarah

NCReg: Cardinal Sarah: The Priesthood Today ‘Is in Mortal Danger’
In an exclusive English-language interview, the African cardinal discusses his new book, the status of the Catholic priesthood, and addresses those who say he opposes Pope Francis.
Edward Pentin

(via Fr. Z)

But what about exceptions to the law of celibacy that already exist, for example in the Eastern Catholic rites or the Anglican Ordinariate?

An exception is transitory by definition and constitutes a parenthesis in the normal and natural state of things. This was the case of Anglican pastors returning to full communion. But the lack of a priest is not an exception. It is the normal state of any nascent Church, as in the Amazon, or dying Churches, as in the West. Jesus warned us: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” The ordination of married men in young Christian communities would prohibit the raising of vocations of unmarried priests. The exception would become a permanent state. A weakening of the principle of celibacy, even if limited to one region, would not be an exception, but a breach, a wound in the internal coherence of the priesthood. On the other hand, the dignity and greatness of marriage is increasingly better understood. As Benedict XVI points out in this book, these two states are not compatible because they both demand an absolute and total gift.

In the East, some churches have married clergy. I do not in any way question the personal holiness of these priests. But such a situation is only livable because of the massive presence of monks. Moreover, from the point of view of the sign given to the whole Church by the priesthood, there is a risk of confusion. If a priest is married, then he has a private life, a conjugal and family life. He must make time for his wife and children. He is unable to show, by his whole life, that he is totally and absolutely given to God and the Church. St. John Paul II stated it very clearly: The Church wants to be loved by her priests with the very love with which Jesus loved her, that is to say, with an exclusive spouse’s love. It is important, the saintly Polish pope said, that priests understand the theological motivation of their celibacy. He said: “Priestly celibacy should not be considered just as a legal norm or as a totally external condition for admission to ordination, but rather as a value that is profoundly connected with ordination, whereby a man takes on the likeness of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd and Spouse of the Church” (Pastores Dabo Vobis, 50). This is what we wanted to recall with Benedict XVI. The true foundation of celibacy is not juridical, disciplinary or practical; it is theocentric. On this subject I refer you to the extraordinary speech of Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia on Dec. 22, 2006. Celibacy for God is an absurdity in the eyes of the secularized and atheistic world. Celibacy is a scandal for the contemporary mind. It shows that God is a reality. If the life of priests does not concretely show that God is enough to make us happy and to give meaning to our existence, then who will proclaim him? More than ever our societies need celibacy because they need God.

World Over Discussion of That Book

Cardinal Sarah Responds to His Critics

NCReg: Cardinal Sarah Calls For End to ‘Sterile Controversy’ Over Celibacy Book by Edward Pentin
The Vatican cardinal urges the faithful to cease discussing ‘ridiculous side issues’ over the book and to read the ‘essential question’ it covers instead.

Related: Looking East: Book on celibacy barely acknowledges Eastern tradition

DeVille Reacts to That New Book on Clerical Celibacy

Catholic Colonialism and Its Subaltern Celibates by A. A. J. DeVille

Should Have Guessed This Would Be on the Way

1P5

This Will Upset Traditional Eastern Catholics

Cardinal Sarah, fFrom Sandro Magister's post:

We must listen to the testimonies that emanate from the Eastern Catholic Churches. Several members of these Churches have clearly emphasized that the priestly state enters into tension with the conjugal state. […] The Eastern married clergy is in crisis. The divorce of priests has become an area of ​​ecumenical tension among Orthodox patriarchies. […] Why does the Catholic Church accept the presence of a married clergy in some united Eastern Churches? In the light of the affirmation of the recent magisterium on the ontological link between the priesthood and celibacy, I think that this acceptance has the aim of promoting a gradual evolution towards the practice of celibacy, which would take place not by disciplinary means but for properly spiritual and pastoral reasons.

I appreciate Cardinal Sarah as a voice for traditional Latin Christianity, but this is just Latin chauvinism, even if Cardinal Sarah thinks that it is well-grounded in (Latin) theology and the papal magisterium. His mistake, which is a consequence of Latin ecclesiology, is to attribute to these theologoumena a greater weight than they warrant, simply because they are opinions that have been held and repeated by men who have been bishops of Rome.

More on "THE Book"

Edward Pentin: Unpacking the Benedict XVI-Cardinal Sarah Book Fiasco
The book’s rollout caused a backlash against Benedict appearing as co-author of the book, even though it appears the Pope Emeritus had given at least tacit prior approval for the full manuscript.
Edward Pentin

Fr. Z: Summary of FACTS about the controversial new book by BOTH Card. Sarah and Benedict XVI
Rorate Caeli: Socci: The Backstory: here is what went on behind the scenes. The rage of the despot against the Catholic Pope
Sandro Magister: More From the Bombshell Book of Ratzinger and Sarah. A Little Anthology on Celibacy
First Things: Sex, Celibacy, and the Latest Curiosity From Rome by Francis X. Maier