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.
The point being...
Interesting site.
My beef, as it were is not with celibacy per se but rather the understanding that it must be mandatory for all clergy.
In this I believe the Roman Church, in the legitimate interest of the purity of her ministers, has thrown out the baby with the bathwater so to speak and excluded faithful men for the puzzling reason of their desire for the Sacrament of Marriage.
Well, at least he didn't claim to be a deacon...
Yeah, and a puzzlement to some extent.
Conversely, mandatory celibacy was always the rule in the West and the idea that the whole Church everywhere endorsed a married priesthood from its earliest days is simply not true. The West has just as strong a claim to the continuance of the authentic Apostolic tradition as the East. But I would go further, the idea that there are two distinct churches, East and West, is a latter development and contrary to the understanding in the Patristic period. What we have is a clear historical witness from the West that there was a discipline in the Church of celibacy for the priesthood. In the East the evidence is ambiguous. A clear contradiction to this requirement only arises latter. To state without reservation that, contrary to the West, it never existed in the East goes beyond the evidence.
The suggestion that some who argue that the sacrament of marriage is a possibility for Priests are doing so from "worldly" perspectives is just that, an empty charge.
You misunderstood my statement. I was complaining against those who charged that it was the Catholic Church that was only using worldly reasons for imposing celibacy:
markedman, post 8:These charges have been standard fair for those who object to celibacy. Argue, if you must, that the Catholic Church is incorrect in its understanding of the Apostolic tradition but do not impute to us ulterior motives.
Actually, it was the weak combined with self-serving interests that led to celibacy in the first place.conservonator, post 20:
Does the well documented history you refer too involve the celibacy rule coming into existence only in the middle ages as a result of the Church wanting to stop priests from hording wealth and creating dynasties?markedman, post 22 (in response to post 20):
While those issues are _very well documented_ and was the final straw, there were movements back as early as the Council of Trent for celibacy.
(2) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the married clergy of the East represent a change from the early Church's emerging consensus on celibacy.
(3) The Church in the East often followed the lead of the Emperors in its discipline, while the Church in the West - left for centuries in an environment of political and social instability - developed the unique genius of Christianity with far less direct political interference.
(4) No one is saying that married clergymen are "wrong" - the Church has always held that celibacy is a discipline, not a dogmatic condition.
(5) The debate on married priests in the West is completely divorced from historical reality - neither the Eastern nor the Western Church in any period has ever sanctioned ordinands getting married. It has solely been a question of ordaining the married, not marrying the ordained.
Yet the proponents of clerical marriage in the Catholic Church universally demand that the numerous priests who left their ministry to get married in the 1970s should be permitted to resume the ministry, and that priests currently serving should have the option of getting married - an impossibility.
The point being that the passage you cited from Corinthians does not necessarily support your contention that the apostles traveled with their "wives". It is just as likely to mean that they traveled with their mother,mother-in-law,sister or spinster aunt,you know,a "woman".
I guess I figured that Jesus,whose time had not yet come, was acting like a "man". You know,standing around,having a couple of drinks,talking about the business,sports,politics and so forth-----oblivious to anything beyond the moment.
Then along comes Mary,a "woman",you know,sensitive,worrying about everyone having enough to eat and drink,making sure that people were enjoying themselves and getting to know one another,anticipating possible problems like a storm coming up or drinks running out-----concerned and alert to potential troubles.
Sensing the "good times" were about to end,Jesus used a word "woman" that expressed a truth about mankind,not negative,not positive,just a fact.
My tongue is in my cheek,but not totally.
I'll check with the Greek on this because it's been a while. In Greek the context and form of the word itself is everything and a word can have the same root but the meaning can be an extension of this. I know of no translation where the passage in Corinthians is translated
simply as "women" like sisters etc., and not as "wives" so there has got to be a reason for this.
More than likely it's the context. The context of the passage is St. Paul's affirmation of the right of Christian leaders to draw a living from their work in the Church. The Apostle is stating that he chose not to draw a living from his work among the Christians of Corinth (9:15) but that he did have a right to have the support of the faithful for his work and claimed the precedent of the other Apostles taking support from the Church even for their families.
Quite frankly I think your interpretation is a matter of reading back something into the text that doesn't exist. In other words it accepts as normative the idea of mandatory celibacy and then has to find a way to deal with a text that basically all interpreters have said indicates the Apostles had wives who traveled with them. So the simple solution is to grab at the noun and link it to another noun in an unrelated passage and then conclude they mean the same thing.
The problem is that arguemnt is more complicated then needed. Celibacy was rare in Judaism, still is, and it is almost certain that most of the Apostles, being the devout Jews they were, were married men. St. Peter himself
was clearly indicated by the Scriptures to be a married man. It is also not likely that by the time they were "ordained", that is the time Jesus breathed on them and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit and the power to remit sins (John 20:21-23), that all of them were widowers
or had put away their wives in some other fashion. All of that would have to follow for your argument to make sense.
But the Apostle Paul himself lays down regulations for married Bishops and by derivation Priests thus indicating
that marriage was indeed an option and that the married state for clergy had the approval of the Church. In this he was simply following the Faith as it was delivered to him. So even if every last one of the Apostles themselves were either widowers or celibate in some other way it is still clear that marriage was an option for clergy. You can read that in any language and the words are still the same and the meaning clear.
In the centuries after the writing of these texts a segment of Christianity, namely that in the West, started a gradual process of embracing celibacy for clergy that developed into the idea of celibacy as a mandatory state for clergy.
One can easily claim that the Roman Church has the authority to order its life as it sees fit. All churches have "traditions" and ways of being that one cannot direct to a specific proof text. What the Roman Church cannot do is claim that thier teaching on this matter is rooted in Apostolic command. The only person who speaks at length on this issue, St. Paul, while clearly believing his life as a celibate to be better, also promotes holy marriage for those without the special grace required for celibacy, and his regulating the married state of Bishops indicates that he saw this as an acceptable way of life for clerics. If he was not speaking for the Church on this issue there has been no one, or no canonical text, that presents any other option on these matters other than St. Paul's.
Just as an aside, the Eastern Church is "an" or "the" early Church, depending on your point of view. So what we have taught about marriage and clergy isn't a departure from anything, it is a component of the consensus on the issue. Put rather clumsily we emphasize a different side of the same coin on the issue of clerical marriage.
You are correct about that it is about ordaining the married and not marriage of the ordained. Both the East and the West would not allow for clerical marriage following ordination. In the East we simply believe that there is no Apostolic warrant for MANDATORY celibacy for clergy and this is where we differ from the West except in the case of Bishops (who are drawn from the ranks of monastics or celibate clergy).
I'm not so sure about the West being somehow less hindered from the state and able to develop its thought more in line with the genius of Christianity. That's a nice partisan statement but its basically unproveable. I think it would be better to say that both the West and the East have had periods where they were more or less influenced by the machinations of the state.
Since we both agree that celibacy is a matter of discipline and not dogma it is perfectly okay to revisit the issue if the Roman Church wishes to. I think they should and they have the model of the Eastern Church to give them a viable, ancient, and apostolic model if they so choose.
Just as a matter of curiosity, I seem to remember that married clergy were the rule in Ireland at least until the Norman Invasion and perhaps even later. In fact, if memory serves, the Brehon Law actually laid out a sort of hierarchy of honor among priests, with married priests entitled to 2/3 the honor of celibate clergy.
A couple of other points. Some here commented that the Council of Nicea mandated clerical celibacy. I just read it in English and Greek and don't find that anywhere. Someone else commented that the Council of Elvira mandated celibacy for priests. That is incorrect. What that rather odd council did was forbid priests from having relations with their wives before celebrating the liturgy.
Not really.
It's a fact that the Emperors in the East were far more effective in governing secular and temporal affairs in Constantinople up till the atrocity of 1453, whereas in the West the Emperors were usually ineffective absentees who spent the bulk of their time in Milan rather than Rome. By the 500s the emperors in the West were gone and there was a complete power vacuum with various localized lordlings in dozens of shifting alliances.
One sign that the Empire in the West was weak or nonexistent was the absolute lack of claimants to the throne after the abdication of Romulus Augustus in 476 - who just gave up on the office of Emperor rather than defend himself militarily.
The Roman nobility petitioned the Eastern Emperor to appoint a replacement, but he refused because the Romans had overthrown two of his previous choices.
From 395 to 771 (376 years!) there was no effective ruler in the West and from 476 to 800 there was no nominal Emperor.
For about 40 years (775-815) there was centralized political leadership, but by 850 the West was in political chaos again and wouldn't see any true stability until around 1250 when France had strong kings and Germany had strong Emperors again.
So from about 400-1250 there was no effective political center in Europe except for the brief Golden Age of Charlemagne's reign.
And even then, it was 250 years of shifting alliances around a French-German rivalry followed by the Reformation and yet another outbreak of political chaos.
The Eastern Emperors and the Ecumenical Patriarchs enjoyed a close, symbiotic relationship for centuries with only brief episodes of animosity - the Popes experienced the exact opposite state of affairs.
(2) There were several Councils of Elvira, not just one. The provision about abstaining from intercourse before celebrating the liturgy has Scriptural precedent and was hardly restricted to the Spanish clergy.
The unproveable part is that it allowed the Roman Church to operate in the "genius" of the Church.
It could be just as easily argued that the survival of the Eastern Empire allowed the faith there to flourish in a way that was not possible in the chaos of the fall of the West.
That is also the current practice in the East where married Priests are required to fast from all things for the designated fasting period prior to celebrating the Eucharist, including sexual relations with their wives.
The Church was forced to fall back on its own internal resources - most of the people of the West were just emerging from barbarism and had inadequate legal systems and almost zero literacy to start with.
The only sustaining cultural force was Christian theology - if Church itself did not dictate it's own discipline and mores, what did? The Vikings?
It could be just as easily argued that the survival of the Eastern Empire allowed the faith there to flourish in a way that was not possible in the chaos of the fall of the West.
Except, of course, that the faith gradually but relentlessly contracted in the East, it didn't flourish. Christians probably reached their high watermark as a percentage of the Eastern Empire's population during the reign of Justinian.
That the Apostle regulated clerical marriage in the Scriptures is an indicator that it was approved. If he had meant to say "Bishops / Priests should never marry" why did he not just come out and say this? Those texts are the source of the East's view on these things, the very formational documents of the Faith which say clearly that marriage is an acceptable option for all men. That is about an ancient and apostolic as one can get.
Again I respect the Roman Church's authority to order its life but it has taken one of the options for clergy, celibacy, and made it the ONLY option for clergy. That simply does not wash with the Scriptural witness on this matter and there is no way to play linguistic gymnastics to make it seem that MANDATORY celibacy is the rule for all clergy everywhere based on the teachings of the Apostles or the Gospels. Each of the passages you cited speaks of the regulation of marriage but not its prohibition and while there are many passages speaking of God's approval of marriage and its blessedness there is not one that speaks of Priests in the Old or New Testament being absolutely forbidden from being married. I understand that this is an argument from silence, of a sort, but it is a very pregnat silence.
The truth is that the Scriptural witness is simple and clear. There are two paths that any Christian may choose. One is the path of celibacy, something that is required of all Christians not in a heterosexual marriage. Celibacy is valued for its allowing of a total dedication to the things of God and service to human need. There is also the holy estate of matrimony where one man and one woman are sacramentally joined together and in this context human sexuality is expressed for the joy of the couple and the preservation of human life. Each is an equal option, none is mandatory for all people in all circumstances, and there is liberty to choose the single or married life as God gives direction and grace.
The Catholic Church has not made celibacy the only option for clergy.
The Latin and Ambrosian Rites alone restrict candidacy for ordination in this way.
Eastern Catholics follow your discipline.
"That is also the current practice in the East where married Priests are required to fast from all things for the designated fasting period prior to celebrating the Eucharist, including sexual relations with their wives."
I was always taught that we all, clergy and laity were supposed to "abstain" from sexual relations during the fasting period before reception of the Eucharist, in theory at least.
Of course.
But ordination is a privilege, not a right.
No one can claim the right to be ordained or claim that the bishops and patriarchs of the Catholic Church have an obligation to ordain married men.
If a lifelong celibate like St. Francis did not pursue a priestly vocation because he thought he was unworthy of it, how can someone claim that they are entitled to it no matter what their chosen state of life?
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