Posted on 05/10/2005 10:37:52 AM PDT by NYer
Whereas I agree with many of your posts I believe the following study, eventually, would be about Catholic priests.
STRESS ON MINISTERS :
In a study by Moy & Malony, (1987), it was suggested that due to the significant number of stressors and the relatively few available resources, ministers are at high risk for developing burn-out.
It seems that despite the real spiritual aspects of the ministry, ministers are far from immune from developing significant psychological and emotional problems.
In their study they asked ex-ministers why they left their profession, it was found that:
there was a sense of personal and professional inadequacy, an inability to inhibit relocation when necessary, and problems with relationships eg. with wife and or with children.
Role confusion:
Stress exists wherever there is confusion over one's roles or tasks, even over their values.
Clergy question themselves:?
What am I first a minister, a spouse, a parent, ???
Ministers make a covenant with God pledging loyalty to His service and people; however, married ministers also make a pledge or a covenant with God to their spouses - to love, & honor, in sickness & in health, for better for worse, till death do they part, this also encompasses their children, or future children.
Job insecurity / job relocation & pay:
- An over supply of ministers or high concentration of them in a particular area this can also results in lack of jobs, or then relocation becomes an issue,
mobility;
- Assignments out of the area brings in issues typical for anyone relocating. It is estimated that nearly 200 clergy move every day of the year. Decision about mobility are external to the family, often they cannot be refused, resulting in loss of support networks, disruption of personal growth, shifts in marital & family functioning.
What makes this more unique to clergy families is their lack of a decision. (Morris & Blanton, 1992).
financial compensation;
- Clergy are considered in the top 10% of the population in terms of education, yet they rank 325 out of 432 occupations in terms of salary.
- Education wise clergy are among the best educated comparable with that of lawyers, & doctors,,, pay wise it is comparable to that of someone far less educated.
. for many clergy families this is a chronic stressor
something I never thought about.
. clergy do not have an organized channel for collective bargaining and or requesting greater remuneration for their services.
Spousal Stressors:
Expectations;
- Via the congregations, spouses are expectant to be the resident holy woman, after all she is married to a preacher.
- More typical in Protestant denominations and more so in the past the wife was also expected to be an active supporter to her husbands ministry.
*** with the changing times and women's movement.... this expectation is lessoning.
- She is expected to be a model wife, and if they have children a model mother.
- She must dress accordingly.
- She is expected to fill in for her husband as a counselor or be a good listener.
Celibacy for priests is not mandatory, it's voluntary. Those who seek Holy Orders voluntarily take that promise or take that vow.
Of course, some pathetic souls decide to break their promise or vow, selfishly turning their back on the Church just so they can get married. Normally they're forced out.
You mean some Catholics are not bothered by it, and more than likely it is because they really don't understand the purpose and merits of the discipline celibacy. But it's not all there fault, many people who want to promote the idea of a married priesthood are doing all that they can to make sure Catholics don't understand the wisdom of the discipline of celibacy.
In defense of Professor Hoge, he is a professor of SOCIOLOGY, not THEOLOGY. Thus, his perspective is that of a SOCIOLOGIST, and his conclusions may thus be quite valid (although I disagree with his conclusions on their actual sociological merits).
If also irrelevant.
As well, if I recall correctly, Professor Hoge is not a Catholic. Thus, as a non-Catholic SOCIOLOGIST, I don't believe he is under any obligation to reflect Catholic doctrine concerning women's ordination in the Catholic Church.
Parishes that call for married priests are unorthodox, but parishes that actually have a married priest are orthodox?
A friend was in a small parish that was in limbo for several years until they got a former Anglican who was definitely married (he loved to show everyone pictures his grandchildren).
My friend told me about the first Mass he said. Halfway down the aisle, he stopped and yelled, "Look, people, I don't like singing solo, and I know you sure don't like HEARING me sing solo, so you'd better drown me out!"
Well, they started singing...and the parish started growing.
I don't think it's a coincidence...
That kind of statement is not proven, is typically motivated by personal ambition, and furthermore, is irrelevant, as the Church is not a democracy.
"Get a load of this thread" PING!
Hear hear!
Exactly!!! The former Cardinal Ratzinger once said that allowing priests to marry would create many more problems than it would solve. Marriage is not "easy". It is also a sacrament and a ministry in and of itself. He even joked that allowing priests to marry would be more like a penance than a blessing!
The statistics have already proven this to be an utterly moot point. Married priests won't be the panacea. A return to orthodoxy is what is needed. Those dioceses that have embraced unapologetic Catholicism and kicked the homos out of the seminary have little or no vocations 'crisis.' That's the key. The rest of this stuff is agenda-driven hokum.
"5. Imagine the costs of providing for a priest and his non-conceptive family, a real practical consideration in these times. God bless."
In other words, the Catholic Church is cheap?
Most Catholics understand that celibacy, freely chosen, is a valuable sign of commitment to the Church. However, since laymen see deacons and other laymen fulfilling full time ministries effectively, while married, they conclude that marriage is not a barrier to service in the Church.
Dear Antoninus,
Dr. Hoge is not part of the AmChurch revolution. Dr. Hoge isn't actually a Catholic.
Dr. Hoge is a non-Catholic sociologist who specializes, in part, in sociological topics related to religion.
sitetest
Watch how much the Church grows when an extra collection is taken each Sunday to support a wife and 5 kids.
"Watch how much the Church grows when an extra collection is taken each Sunday to support a wife and 5 kids."
So you're saying that Catholics are cheap?
Actually, from what both Catholic and Orthodox have posted, priests were never allowed to marry. ALREADY-married men could become priests, but those who were still single at ordination were bound to lifetime singleness. (And the married priests, if widowed post-ordination, could not remarry.) Why this is, I don't know -- but it goes a long way back, apparently.
I could imagine them allowing it at another time, but not now. Why? Well because the reason why it is being demanded is because our present age has decreed that the end all and be all of human experience is sexual fulfillment
That's actually the best argument I've heard in favor of priestly celibacy. The next best is, that if the Pope "compromises" on this (though it wouldn't be an actual wrong), it would embolden those who are agitating for actual wrongs -- women priests, homosexual acceptance, etc. They would inevitably perceive "married priests" as the proverbial inch, and would redouble their efforts to take a mile.
The counter argument of course is that recruiting married men as priests, may be the only efficient way to de-homosexualize the priesthood. One poster here, who I believe is a married priest (converted back to Catholicism from Anglican, I think), says that the homosexual underground within the church hates and fears married priests more than anything else.
It's not my call to make, but those are the 2 sides of the argument.
Read what I wrote again. This time read it slowly and sound out all the words:
Parishes with Anglican dispensation priests are probably very orthodox; after all, the reason why these former Anglican priest have become Catholic is because they are traditionalists who left their church due to its liberal descent into apostasy.
Also, please note that Rome does not forbid former Anglican priests from serving as Catholic priests. So, yes, these former Anglicans are no doubt very much in line with Rome.
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