[ebb tide]

There have been married Catholic deacons and priests for well over a millennium, though not in the West.

But were they continent?

You keep bring up the East; Francis brought up the Orthodox on divorce and remarriage (on an airplane, of course) and look where he is today.

"The Orthodox have a different practice," he told reporters July 28 during his flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro. The Orthodox "follow the theology of 'oikonomia' (economy or stewardship), as they call it, and give a second possibility; they permit" a second marriage.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I’m speaking, then, of our Byzantine brethren.