16 October 2017

Married Clergy

There are some signs on the Internet of the ordination of married men to the presbyterate of the Latin Church becoming a talking-point.

Just for the record: the practice of ordaining married men who had formerly ministered in Separated Western Ecclesial Bodies did not originate in the post-Conciliar period, nor was it introduced in order to favour ex-Anglicans.

It began in 1950, at the direction of Pius XII, and embraced former Lutheran pastors.

5 comments:

Albrecht von Brandenburg said...

You can rely on certain trads, unlearned in the relevant matters, to make emotion-fuelled and nonsensical statements concerning clerical marriage. If St Peter, Liberius, John XII ... Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John-Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis can make mistakes, why not Gregory VII?

Richard Malcolm said...

I think it's critical to examine what the motivations in play were for Pius XII, John Paul II and Benedict XVI when they each respectively took actions to ordain former Protestant ministers (most of them married) - and what their motivations *weren't*.

Too much of the building present push (esp. in Latin America and Germany) is driven by two impulses a) utter inability to produce remotely adequate levels of vocations under the current celibacy discipline; and b) as a gateway to further expansion of ordination to other classes of people - namely, women (no matter how different the doctrinal implications for those expansions might be).

There isn't anything further which needs to be said about (b). But we should be able to say that whatever good reasons there are for ordaining married, convert clergy (and such reasons do exist), it shouldn't be treated as a vocations shortage magic bullet. Frankly, if you are not attracting adequate vocations now, you have a much bigger problem you need to solve.

Albrecht von Brandenburg said...

Once again, the subject of ritual purity rears its ugly head amongst some of my fellow trads, who are possibly the only ones capable of turning a discussion on Fatima into one on the alleged necessity of priestly ritual purity:

https://akacatholic.com/an-ecumenical-consecration-of-russia-with-russian-orthodox-bishops/

Will this never stop??

Far out!!!!!!

Albrecht von Brandenburg said...

Since it's germane, I repeat my comments of a few weeks ago under the post "Mary and Heresies and the Reign of Sex":

Yes, but to what extent is the present preoccupation with sex (no-doubt apurred on by the disciples of Gramsci and Alinnsky) a reaction to the most recent period of neo-Platonic, even gnostic, thinking that sex either is inherently polluting, or at least involves ritual impurity?? Both of these contrarieties are false, the first blasphemous, the second heretical. Sadly, many of my fellow traditionalists still maintain them. Is it then, any wonder that things are as they are???

....

Oh boy - you just can't make this sort of thing up!!!

A mere FOUR DAYS after my post mentioning ritual purity, on a traditionalist forum, we have this thread: "Can catholics be ritually unclean?"

https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=18610.0

The fact that this error is repeated in the Roman Catechism seems to absolve it from condemnation in the eyes of some people.

I repeat - it is no wonder things are the way they are. There will be no renewal of the priesthood, and therefore no renewal of Christendom, while traditionalists believe in this error.

pueblosw@gmail.com said...

The subject of married clergy should probably be discussed. The discussion should be considerably wider and deeper than that took place when mandatory celibacy was imposed. Caused a good bit of difficulty then and some of its adverse effects remain today.