I wrote this letter to the editors of Crisis magazine several years ago. With the recent musings of our Holy Father Francis that perhaps the Roman Church should once again receive married men into the clergy, I think it time to dust it off from the cellar where it has reposed and post it as my public response to those who are horrified that such a thing could come to pass in the Roman  Church.

Gentlemen and Brothers in Christ:

While a great admirer of the orthodoxy of your publication, and wishing to be an orthodox Catholic myself rather than the cafeteria style Catholic of which we see so many displays today, I must nonetheless take issue with one of your articles in the July/August issue.

As an Eastern Catholic, I hasten to remind you that a celibate clergy is not a dogma of the Church Catholic, but rather a clerical discipline of the Western Latin Rite.  Numerous Eastern Catholic Churches have had, and continue to have, married clergy.  The Latin Church has decided, some many centuries ago, that they would limit their clergy to the ranks of those who have discerned that they are not called to a vocation of marriage, but rather celibacy.   This is their right, of course.  What I object to – and may I say, rather strenuously – is the manner in which Latin Rite Catholics discuss this.  When the issue of having a married priesthood is entered into a conversation, those of the West treat it as if this is A.) dogma of the Church on a par with the Nicene Creed, and therefore not to be tampered with, or  B.) given to the ancient bishops of the Church by the very voice of God and therefore unchangeable. Both attitudes are reprehensible,  both in  the way that they are treated and the way that we, who do have a married clergy, are also treated. The Eastern Church has had no little trouble over this in America and to this day, we are still denied the same married clergy that our sister churches in the Ukraine and other European countries enjoy.  The problem comes from our bishops apparently not wishing to make waves over here by doing what is done this very day  in Europe and Canada, and ordaining qualified married men to the priesthood.

I am also quite tired of having some caveat thrown our way when discussions of this kind arise.  There needs to be a substantive discussion of this issue along these lines: are we, as Eastern Catholics with married clergy, fully Catholic, or are we some form of heretic or schismatic dissident?  If we are neither of the latter, then the Western Church needs to stop pretending that it alone is the only full and orthodox Catholicism by its insistence upon an unmarried clergy.  That is the attitude that we in the East often must endure, and your article reeks of it by throwing up strawmen and then knocking them down.

Your author states “In reality the celibacy requirement is a recognition that the duties of marriage should not be compromised by the competing demands of priesthood.”  May I call this pure and unadulterated horse manure?  If you follow this line of thinking, then there should be no soldiers who go overseas to protect our country, no doctors who work 12 hour shifts every day, no men in professions that endanger their lives and threaten to leave their families with out leadership and sustenance. Unless you can prove – and believe me, you cannot – that the priesthood is a 24/7 job which requires every spare second of a man’s life without letup, then this argument falls on my deaf ears.  Just this week I was in an appliance shop and met my former catechist.  When I asked what he was doing, he responded that it was his day off and he was shopping for a TV to replace his.  A day off that he might be spending with a wife, had he chosen marriage. I see priests go to dinners, functions, and other social duties at which a wife would be more than welcome and would not doubt enjoy with a loving husband.

What of the wives and children of priests in Europe?  Has anyone done a study to ask them if they feel neglected by the duties of their husband/father?  No.  I have yet to see one.  It is just an a priori assumption on the part of the defenders of celibacy that to be a priest means that one’s family would get the short end of the stick. I say,  no more than the married man with a job, and the burden is upon you Romans to prove otherwise.

You might point to the shortage of priests and state that because such shortage, a priest in a parish of 4,000 souls would be hard pressed to fulfill his marital and priestly duties.  But this is a self-fulfilling problem, for if the priesthood would be opened to married men, you would find the shortage of priests to be soon remedied, and multiple priests available to service the largest of parishes.  Don’t create the problem and then point to it as the reason for not solving it by expedient means.

You point out further down in the article that “Moving to a new post on the orders of his superior would be immensely complicated if the interests of a family had to be considered, and the faithful would have the extra burden of contributing to the support of the family as well as of the priest himself.”  This is again patent nonsense.  Families are forced to move all the time though the demands of employers or the military that they serve.  As for the issue of the support of the priest, perhaps if Catholics were not such a miserly bunch with their money, this would be no issue.  A study done many years ago on tithing (which is a duty to provide for the parish) showed that on average, Catholics gave almost a whopping 1% of their income to the Church.  Perhaps some shaming of the faithful by the bishops is in order, reminding them of the words of our late Holy Father, John Paul II, and his words of warning against the materialism that steals from the Church by having us enslaved to buying worthless Capitalist trinkets while the poor go hungry and the priests unpaid!

A man may indeed be called to make of himself an “eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” but please stop inferring that such a man is somehow more holy than a man who has responded to the vocation of marriage, or more fit for the priesthood by dint of so following his vocation.  That reeks of Gnosticism. Somehow Western Catholics read Jesus’ words in Matthew and see them as saying that only those who have made themselves eunuchs are fit to serve the kingdom. That’s the kind of “reading into a verse” that I have to constantly combat in my apologetics with Protestants.

While it is true that a celibate priest is a wonderful picture of giving up all for the service of the Kingdom of God, it must be said that it is equally true that a married priest is a wonderful picture of the relationship between the members of the Trinity. Married life is a picture of the Blessed Trinity according to Pope John Paul II in his marvelous THEOLOGY OF THE BODY. If you are going to try doing typology, it is not honest to ignore those  types which destroy or at least weaken your argument.

Your article is really just an exercise in defending a  prejudice which is not a dogma of the Church.  It has no support, either from Christian history, since the Apostles and the Early Church leaders were married. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, a proposal to require celibacy for all priests was defeated and at the Council of Trullo in 692, marriage rights for priests were reasserted.

I find this quote elsewhere on the Internet “At the origin of the law of abstinence, and later the law of celibacy,” said Schillebeeckx, “we find an antiquated anthropology and ancient view of sexuality.” (ibid) Rice follows with a quotation from St. Jerome which expressed the views of both pagans and Christians at the time that, “All sexual intercourse is impure.” 

What?????

No wonder heresies like Gnosticism were such a problem in the Church with attitudes like that floating around.  Catholic Church has defined marriage as a “good”.  Now can we make up our minds here, please? Either it is a good and unlike the Gnostic and pagan views of sexuality, it does not defile one, or else it is not, and no marriage is good because all engage at some point in the ritual defilement of sexual intercourse.  Honestly, people, can we get over this latent Gnosticism  and begin to respect our bodies as made good and for good purpose in the Sacrament of Marriage?

I am not against the Western Church choosing to select their priests only from the ranks of the celibate.  But if you are going to do that, stop writing articles that treat the celibate priesthood as if it is a dogma and those who do not agree are somehow less Catholic in their view.  That is highly offensive to us Eastern Catholics.

And most of all, stop bitching and moaning about not having enough priests when it is your choice to severely limit the selection pool.  You can do what you wish.  It’s your Church.  Just stop griping when you do what you wish and you don’t like the results.