Opinion: Cardinal O'Brien, Chaste Celibacy, Chaste Marriage and Clerical Service

2/25/2013

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Christ.

The Eastern Church, both Catholic and Orthodox, often assigns married priests to different types of ministry than celibate priests. Similarly, in the Latin rite, married men ordained to the priesthood serve in a manner that reflects and respects their state in life and offers its pastoral witness as a gift to the whole Church.

In the Eastern Catholic Church where there has been an unbroken tradition and practice of admitting both celibate and married men to the order of deacon and priest, the men must have married before ordination as deacons. In the Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Churches we read:

"Clerical celibacy chosen for the Kingdom of Heaven and suited to the priesthood is to be greatly esteemed everywhere, as supported by the tradition of the whole church; likewise, the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor."

"Clerics, celibate or married, are to excel in the virtue of chastity; it is for the particular law to establish suitable means for pursuing this end. In leading family life and in educating children married clergy are to show an outstanding example to other Christian faithful." (Canons # 373-375)

For the Press who may be reading this opinion piece and looking for some news, Catholics already have married clergy, deacons and priests. For Catholic Christians, we must learn from this fact and trust that the Lord is behind it. We must also trust that his plan for its placement in the one mission of His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Caththe Church is just that, His plan.He will unfold it through those whom he has chosen to lead His Church.

The prophetic witness of consecrated celibacy has endured beyond the ranks of celibate clergy. It is also preserved in the inspired vowed life of monastic orders, the sacrificial witness of religious men and women, and the increasing new ecclesial associations of lay men and woman, who have chosen it, not to avoid marriage, but to enter more fully into the very nuptial or spousal mystery that marriage also reveals, but in a unique and prophetic way.

When I was invited to Holy Orders as a deacon, I knew that it was a vocation. As a Married man I pledged to embrace celibacy if my wife should predecease me. My wife gave her consent. I soon came to understand the theology I had studied and have studied since; there truly is an ontological change which occurs at ordination. My life was turned upside down and has never been the same.

I personally believe there is room in the Catholic Church, East and West, for a both celibate and a married clergy, deacons and priests. Both consecrated celibacy and consecrated Christian marriage are a response to the universal call to holiness. They are also a gift to the whole Church because they both participate in the one nuptial or spousal mystery revealed in Jesus Christ.

However, what I personally believe is not the issue. It is what the Holy Spirit reveals in guiding the whole Catholic Church in this the Third Christian Millennium. For that, I look to the teaching office, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Clearly, Cardinal Keith O'Brien was not the right man to raise the issues which a full, historic and proper discussion of the mandatory nature of this ancient and revered discipline of mandatory clerical celibacy for priests deserves.Given the challenges Christ's Church faces, and the necessary purification which she is undergoing, I doubt the question the question of mandatory celibacy in the Latin or Western Catholic Church is high on the agenda.

- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: celibacy, mandatory celibacy, chastity, chaste marriage, priesthood, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, married clerics, ordinariate, byzantine, married priests, Deacon Keith Fournier

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1 - 4 of 4 Comments

rosanne santos
2 months ago
Are sacraments by married priests valid?
• Sacraments by married priests are valid because “Sacred ordination never becomes invalid” (Canon 290).
• "Sacraments conferred by married priests are valid including Baptism and consecrating the Eucharist at Mass" ~ Father John J. Strynkowski, Executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
• The minister able to confect the sacrament of Eucharist in the person of Christ is a validly ordained priest alone” (Canon 900). “Every priest and a priest alone validly administers anointing of the sick” (Canon 1003).

Are sacraments by married priests legal?

• “There is a canonical basis for permitting the ministry of priests who have been laicized or suspended due to attempted marriage… The faithful have a right to request sacraments from suspended priests for any just cause, but the impetus must come from the faithful and not from the suspended priest” (Haselberger, J. 2004, thesis in Catholic canon law, p 115 & 98).

• “Prohibition [against married priests] is suspended whenever it is necessary to care for the faithful in danger of death. If [juridical censure- a very rare procedure] has not been declared, the prohibition is also suspended whenever a member of the faithful requests a sacrament; a person is permitted to request this for any just cause” (Canon 1335).

• “If a priest who has no authorization to assist at marriages is available, he should be asked to participate in the extraordinary form celebration when it can be prudently judged an authorized witness will be unavailable for a month” (Canon 1116). Weddings by certified married priests are legally recognized by states but not always by institutional church.

• “In a case of necessity, any person with the right intention confers baptism licitly” (Canon 861).

• “Even though a priest lacks the faculty to hear confessions, he absolves validly and licitly any penitents whatsoever in danger of death from any censures and sins, even if an approved priest is present” (Canon 976).

• “The salvation of souls must always be the supreme law in the church” (Canon 1752).
abey
2 months ago
If the history of fallen churches like the Anglican, its episcopals & others are looked into, it is plainly clear that the ordination of Women & Gay agendas(rebellion against the scriptures) are interconnected & the day the Catholic Church become complacent to this grave Error, is the day the Church can said to be fallen, fallen into the error of Modernism like the others, to which its enemies work to (for everything of the devil is in deceit), like in the case against Cardinal Brian through the BBC, & it would be most ignorant to think not that behind are the heads of Freemasonry, its royals & its offshoots, the Arc enemy of not just the Catholic Church but that of Christianity, if the Marian apparition in the warnings to the Church about freemasonry & its initiations(to a false mary spiritually going by the name of a great mother godess) is any indication, to which it seems some compromising critical members of the Church have fallen/deceived into.
Augustine, Obl.S.B.
2 months ago
A good article, Deacon, with some interesting questions to consider. However, I think you left out a question that also needs to be considered: should the Church continue to close and merge parishes due to a lack of priests, while denying discernment of priestly vocations to married men who have been Catholic all their lives, while allowing converts who are married the rite of ordination? Think of how the shortage of priests would be affected if even half of the permanent deacons in the country were allowed ordination to the priesthood.
michael
2 months ago
Deacon Keith...one of the great results of Pope Paul VI's reign was his insistence that the issue of priestly celibacy be looked at very carefully. This brought about the publications of a number of historical books by the likes of Cardinal Stickler and various other authors of note. The findings in connection with the research asked for by Paul VI have clearly demonstrated that priestly celibacy and clerical celibacy for bishops and deacons as well, is of apostolic origins. In short, then, there is NOT an "unbroken" tradition of married clergy in the Catholic eastern rites and "Orthodox" groups. They broke tradition. I would ask you to investigate the Council of Trullo in the 8th century in order to see the rupture and discontinuity in regards to priestly celibacy. Until Trullo, clerical celibacy was imposed as it was of apostolic origins. If one were married, he had to leave his wife, who in turn would be provided for by the Church. In fact, there are many ancient documents where the wife signed away her marital rites in order to give her husband to the Church.

Bishops and priests are not bachelors, but rather married man, i.e., married to the Bride of Christ the Church. Those who are married clergy and continue to live and have relations with a natural wife are tolerated as it has become "legitimate" or legal to use the words of the New Catechism. Legitimate, Deacon Keith, but not the ideal nor desirable. In a real way, there is bigamy going on here with married clergy. One man with two wives, and the Wife that is the Church is always preferred to the natural wife. The biggest supports of priestly celibacy are always wives of married clergy who often do not get the attention they need.

Finally, as AB. Fulton Sheen often said, whenever there was to be a Theophany or a God-appearance, Jewish men were told to be chaste with their wives. A CAtholic priest has a daily Theophany at the altar in the presence of the Word made Flesh.

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