#3 Current Catholic church doctrine against married clergy does have exceptions - its not a universal and strict edict. There are married Catholic Priests. The Catholic Church needs to change this policy - but only with a lot of restrictions. This is what I have seen proposed:
The basic new form of married priests would follow the permanent diaconate in terms of formation. Basically, you must be a member of the Church in good standing, a practicing Catholic, involved with your parish and the community, if married, have a marriage of at least 10 years, and be at least 35 years of age. Then after scrutiny and checks by your bishop, you become a deacon, which takes a couple of years (a lot of course work, at a college level, for theology and psychology, etc), just like now. And they take the same oath of chastity - which means no divorces, and if they becomes widowers, no remarriage - they are bound by the same chastity/celibacy rules as current priests. So far, no major changes, all of this mostly in place with the current formation of Deacons. What comes next is all that needs to be added.
Once a man has been a permanent Deacon in a diocese for 5 years, he can petition to advance to the full priesthood. If qualified and selected, he undergoes training for the priesthood, and receives additional formation at the local Catholic seminar. Then he becomes fully ordained as a priest. However, under this form, he is not allowed to be anything other than a parish priest. Much like the Deaconate, his mandate is to serve a parish. So he cannot hold offices in the diocese, and cannot be elevated to become a Bishop or Cardinal. And he is to stay within his diocese as a priest (basically he can't just go around to other diocese at will. His job is that of a vicar for his Bishop/Archbishope/Cardinal to a specific community.
If that change is instituted, then dioceses will all have enough parish priests, based on the number of Ordained Deacons the Church has. This has 2 effects: 1. it solves any priest shortages by having the individual parishes supply the candidates who are already involved and ordained for that community. 2. it is pretty much in line with Orthodox practice, thus removing a barrier to unification.
And yes, this is what I personally would like to see - men with stable marriages who are deeply involved with the local Parish, and who live in the community would be ideal as priests. They also are likely to serve as a brake on clericalism, and things like the whole sexual abuse mess of past decades would not have been so easily done were there priests of this sort who are much less likely to be tolerant of aberrant behavior. |
[An Nahar] Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians, says a meeting with Pope Francis in Jerusalem this month will help move the two churches closer to ending their nearly one-thousand-year divide.