Posted on 10/03/2005 10:35:36 AM PDT by Stone Mountain
Top Cardinal Plays Down Priest Shortage
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Writer
October 03,2005 | VATICAN CITY -- A senior cardinal played down the shortage of clergymen that has left many churches without priests to celebrate Mass, saying at the start of a meeting of the world's bishops Monday that access to the Eucharist was a gift, not a right for Catholics.
But Cardinal Angelo Scola, the relator, or key moderator of the Synod of Bishops, hinted at some flexibility on another divisive issue facing the church: its ban on giving communion to divorcees who remarry without getting an annulment.
The comments by the Venice archbishop came in a lengthy introductory speech, delivered in Latin, to the bishops on the first day of the three-week meeting on the Eucharist, or Mass, during which Catholics receive what they believe is the body and blood of Christ.
His comments drew immediate, if nuanced, criticism from two bishops who appeared with Scola at a news conference -- a hint of the debates that will likely ensue behind closed doors during the synod.
Monsignor Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines said the synod had to "squarely" confront the priest shortage issue, recounting how on his first Sunday as an ordained priest he celebrated nine Masses -- and that that was the norm in his country.
"It is the priest who makes the Eucharist," he said.
He said he didn't have any answers to the problem, but many church reform groups have called on the synod to discuss the celibacy rule for priests, saying the priesthood would grow if men were allowed to marry.
Scola, however, repeated in his speech what the church regards as the benefits of a celibate priesthood and said the synod should talk about a better distribution of priests in the world.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Yes, but this is so commonly misunderstood, isn't it? I think the title of the thread is a little misleading in that way... when I saw it, I thought, divorcees already can receive communion, as long as they aren't remarried, so what's the big change? It surprises me how many people will say one who is divorced is in violation of Catholic teaching, rather than one who is divorced and remarried (without an annulment). I agree with you that this is unlikely to change. If this change is made, then what about Catholics who marry outside the church for other reasons? Would they be able to receive communion as well? I just don't see the Church going this route.
The issue at hand is not ordinands who have been married at some point, but ordinands who were married while in orders.
St. Peter, Apostle
We have no knowledge of whether St. Peter's wife predeceased his tenure as Pope or not. Let's assume she did not and was alive while he was Pope.
St. Felix III 483-492
No record of him having a wife.
St. Hormidas 514-523
According to chroniclers, his wife died before he was ordained.
St. Silverus 536-537
There is no record of his having been married. He was the legitimate son of St. Hormisdas.
Hadrian II 867-872
Hadrian's marriage had been annulled. This did not prevent his political rivals from murdering his wife and daughter.
Clement IV 1265-1268
It is a matter of record that his wife died years before he was ordained.
Felix V 1439-1449
There was no Pope Felix V. Pope Eugenius IV reigned from 1439-1447 and Pope Nicholas V reigned from 1447-1455.
I'll point out that it was a longstanding tradition among European noblemen (and many Popes were drawn from the ranks of European nobility) for widowers to enter Holy Orders after the death of their wife. Even today, many widowers are ordained as priests without prejudice to the discipline of celibacy.
Since St. Paul's teaching on celibacy had not been around long enough to create an entire generation of Christians raised to respect celibacy, it stands to reason that bishops would be drawn from sober adults who had already come of age before they knew Jesus.
There was no existing pool of celibates to draw on for the episcopal office at that time.
What about that wonderful picture hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of Pope Leo and his Grandchildren. No record of him either?
Yet, you can't cite.
Given the medium and the audience, there is no reason to expend (waste) vast amounts of time on subjects that can easily be looked up - even by the intellectually lazy.
A good sign of intellectual laziness might be that someone, instead of identifying a specific primary source, refers someone to a web search.
Another good sign might be an inability to to express a coherent thesis in his own words.
Again, now that I have demonstrated you to be completely wrong - cf. the Regesta including the decreta of Pope Siricus - what have you to say?
Papal celibacy was firmly established in the West more than a 1000 years before Trent, and all discussion of clerical marriage in the West from 400 until the 1960s centered on whether (1) celibate priests who took on live-in girlfriends subsequent to their ordination should be relieved of their duties or allowed to do penance and (2) whether clerics in minor orders like acolytes and subdeacons should one allowed to marry.
Then I presume you wish to re-evaluate Scripture, also.
St. Paul's letters are explicitly clear on the superiority of the celibate life and this is backed up by the writings of the Church fathers.
I would also imagine that it must be particularly galling to a celebrate priest who might serve in the same parish as a married priest who may have come over from the Lutherans or Episcopalians.
You mean a celibate priest?
Those who embrace celibacy and truly understand its beauty don't envy the married. Trust me. Pope John Paul called the celibate state "the finest jewel of our priesthood", or words conveying that meaning. Your comments betray a lack of understanding of the virgin state and pander to the secular stereotype of the celibate as a frustrated, lonely loser.
On the contrary, I'll bet you that there are a multitude of people who've entered the married state unthinkingly who have an enormous envy of the celibate- including a bunch on this forum.
To which "picture" and which Leo are you referring?
I anticipated your stock response and did a search of the Met's website for a portrait of any of the 13 popes named Leo.
There don't appear to be any in the Met's collection.
The problem in that line of argument is two-fold.
First it reads something into the next, namely that the Apostle Paul's thoughts on the issue are conditional ie "What I have to say is only good for a while until there are enough like me..."
Second the undivided Church understood this passage to mean that Clergy could be married because they continued to be so for a number of centuries in the West and continue to be so in the East. So clearly the earliest thinkers in the undivided Church understood that marriage was an option for clergy. Later councils shaping canons on the issue also affirm that marriage was an option by the very act of their attempting to regulate clerical marriage. All of this is completely in line with a passage in 1 Corinthians where the Apostle Paul (9:5) indicates that the Apostles, including Peter (Cephas) traveled in their ministries with their wives and the even earlier tradition of Levitcal Priests being married.
Quite frankly the idea that MANDATORY celibacy for clergy is ancient, apostolic, and the general rule of the Church simply does not have the textual or historical evidence to stand. Even the Roman Church does not define the mandatory celibacy of clergy as a dogma but rather as a discipline. It is the same in the East where the mandatory celibacy of Bishops is a rule born not of antiquity but rather of practical discipline and most would not claim otherwise.
The present Eastern Orthodox discipline does not go back to apostolic times but represents a relaxtion of more rigorous mandatory continence within marriage or celibacy that does go back to apostolic practice and teaching.
The assumption that bishops and priests should not be married in order to devote themselves sacrificially to the service of Christ rests on Mt. 19, 1 Cor 7 and the passage in the epistle to Timothy in which St. Paul says a bishop should be the husband of one wife (that is, should not remarry after being widowed, which was a counter-cultural requirement in Graeco-Roman culture but demonstrated self-control and a desire to devote oneself to God, as was also true of women who chose not to remarried after becoming widows and were thereafter supported by the Church on the official "rolls" because their prayers and service to the poor etc. was made possible by their choice not to remarry).
The first legislation requiring celibacy appeared as late as the fourth century (300s), but this is the first legislation that has survived. Until this time (ca. 314) the Church was persecuted, councils had difficulty meeting, and their legislation has been lost. Moreover the legislation of the early 300s describes clerical sexual abstinence, or continence, as a long-established practice, not something first being mandated at this point.
Even married priests were expected, according to this legislation, to abstain from marital relations with their wives. The woman thus exercised a veto power over her husband's ordination. The early legislation admonishes priests who promised continence but were not practicing it, to keep their pledge.
In other words, abstinence from sexual relations for both married and unmarried priests was well established practice long before the first surviving legislation in the early 300s. For an evaluation of every shred of surviving evidence back to apostolic times, see Christian Cochini S.J., Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990] as well as the more recent work by Stefan Heid [1997]).
The same rules about mandatory sexual abstinence for priests were shared by both East and West until the East modified it slightly in the 690s. Even that modification was restricted in scope: priests were still required, in the East to abstain from marital relations on the days on which they “handled sacred things.”
The claim that one of the fathers of the Council of Nicea, a monk-bishop named Paphnutius, favored married and sexually active priests is based on a pious legend, according to the detective work of Cochini and others. For centuries this has been taken as giving great antiquity to the Eastern position. In fact, the modified policy at the Synod of Trullo (not an ecumenical council) in the 690s was an innovation, which is why the bishop of Rome rejected it.
MM reads a lot in America magazine.
That should help you define his problem.
...only the homosexual priests "bitch."
Ah, you're back, hoping to get within a few thousand yards of target. No wonder you never made "gunner."
Was Peter's wife ALIVE when he was Pope?
Did they enjoy sexual relations?
Are you SURE?
I smell a troll
Actually, the cite is "married only once."
This has implications. While your thesis is perfectly legitimate, the cite could ALSO include men who were married "only once" but who are widowers.
Further, there is compelling, but NOT conclusive, evidence, that the ancient rule was "celibate OR continent," meaning that the married ordinand agreed (and wife agreed, too) NOT to enjoy marital relations after Ordination.
In reviewing some of the posts it may help for me to clarify something, namely that I do not oppose celibacy as an option for clergy.
I am a Priest in an Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction and I simply believe that we have handled this issue better than our counterparts in the West. In the East the state of a person at their ordination to the Diaconate or Priesthood is "frozen" for lack of a better word. If they are married prior to ordination they can continue to be married. If they are single they remain celibate. The remarriage of clergy following a spouse's death or divorce is extremely limited and handled on a case by case basis. Only the most extraordinary circumstances would merit consideration for a possible second marriage.
We believe that this is in line with both the letter and spirit of St. Paul's writings where he indicates his personal preference for celibacy but does not make it mandatory for everyone in all situations unless that person is not in a heterosexual marriage.
Now there are good reasons for celibacy and it can offer a certain freedom for people to serve that does not exist when one is married. The rub is that by making it not simply an option but a mandate for all places and times it flies in the face of the clear teaching of Scripture and apostolic precedent. After all Jesus ordained the Apostles by breathing on them and granting the Holy Spirit to them to vest them with Priestly and Apostolic authority while they were still relatively young married men. Why is what was good enough for Jesus not good enough for the Vatican?
The point is this. We in the Eastern Church have lived with married Priests since day one. We have also had celibate clergy. The faith has not suffered because both of these options ARE the teaching of the faith. The question is are the men we ordain faithful to the Gospel? If they are whether they are married or not the Church will thrive. The Roman Church does have the ability to revisit this issue because it is not dogma, not infallible, not something essential to salvation but rather a discipline of the Church
which can and does change.
There have been many studies about the historical origins of the law of clerical celibacy, and it is sufficient to open any of the big dictionaries of religious sciences to perceive the essential outlines. It never would have occurred to me to take my own turn at such a well-documented topic had I not been led to it through fortuitous circumstances. Quite a long time ago, as I was compiling some documentation about the priesthood in the early African Church, my attention was drawn to a canonical decree promulgated in the year 390 by a council held in Carthage. It stipulated that married clerics had to observe continence with their wives, on the basis of a tradition originating with the apostles. My curiosity was soon replaced by a passion for the truth after I had read other late-fourth-century documents in which there was the same claim of apostolicity. This claim, tested by means of historical facts and questions encountered in the course of the same inquiry, progressively appeared to me as being a coherent principle of explanation. Moreover, my research was stimulated by some reflections aroused in my mind by the history of the history. The thesis of a compulsory clerical celibacy rooted in the very origins of the Church had been defended throughout the centuries by more than one serious theologian on grounds that frequently seemed to me to maintain their entire validity.I will point out that the fourth century references to clerical celibacy date to the same period as the formation of the canon of Scripture.
What is particularly galling, apart from the lack of historical support by those arguing for a late medieval origin for priestly celibacy, is their insistence that that we cannot take seriously and honestly the arguments of those who support this discipline. No, all justifications, they argue, must be a smokescreen that hide purely worldly considerations.
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