We do that in our parish as well. In fact, I have scheduled 3 days vacation in order to pitch in and help with the food preparation for our annual 'Hafli', later this month. Father reviews the budget with ALL the parishioners twice each year; unfortunately, even in the Eastern Churches, some people believe they don't need to go to church and that places an additional strain on those of us who pitch in to keep the parish up and running. And ... we are not supporting a wife and kids ... just one celibate priest. God bless this holy man who has to rent a room in the rectory of another parish. He has built up our parish's finances with the intention of moving us to a safer neighborhood and larger church.
But to reduce the question to dollars and cents is unfortunate in the extreme since that should have absolutely nothing to do with it and to me seems merely a cop out.
I didn't interpret his comments in that way. He gave a straightforward assessment from his experience. If ordaining married men to the priesthood resolves the priestly shortage, it also accrues other issues. A married priest's first priority is to his first vow - marriage. The priest is responsible to support his wife and children and provide for them. A bishop also has more difficulty in relocating a married priest than an unmarried one. Those are facts, not a cop out.
With regard to celibacy: “Celibacy is the most precious jewel in the treasure of the Catholic Church. But how do you conserve it in an atmosphere full of eroticism: newspapers, Internet, advertising posters, shows, all shameless and always wounding the virtue of chastity,” he said.
"Father reviews the budget with ALL the parishioners twice each year; unfortunately, even in the Eastern Churches, some people believe they don't need to go to church and that places an additional strain on those of us who pitch in to keep the parish up and running."
Unfortunately, NYer, that's human nature and being Eastern Christians doesn't protect us from that! Its fine that your priest reviews the budget with the people 2x a year. But don't the people set it in the first place?
"God bless this holy man who has to rent a room in the rectory of another parish."
Unless your parish is extremely poor, this is a scandal and I am surprised that Lebanese Christians would allow their priest to live as a pauper. Years ago we did effectively speaking the same thing. On account of illness, our priest had to retire and it fell to me as parish council president to work with the Metropolitan to get a new one. The first thing the Met. told me was that we would have to at least double the pay package for any new priest. I protested long and hard about that but His Eminence stood firm. We all took a collective deep breath, crossed ourselves three times and agreed. Everything was fine from day 1. All it took was a little more and smarter work, a little better management of our funds, a real push about increasing the pledges and some Faith.
"If ordaining married men to the priesthood resolves the priestly shortage, it also accrues other issues. A married priest's first priority is to his first vow - marriage."
True. Our Metropolitans tell their priests just that.
"A bishop also has more difficulty in relocating a married priest than an unmarried one."
I don't buy that, as I've said.
"But how do you conserve it in an atmosphere full of eroticism: newspapers, Internet, advertising posters, shows, all shameless and always wounding the virtue of chastity,”
Monastics/Celibates should live in monasteries where these are not such an issue. Your Patriarch knows that. That's what is done in Lebanon. I must say that +Sfeir seems to have one standard for America, where big brother Rome is looking over his shoulder and another for Lebanon where in this day and age Rome wouldn't dare.
You may remember that a few years ago there was a big dust up here in the States when one of the Eastern European "Greek Catholic" Churches wanted to start ordaining married men for service here. Rome protested loudly and vigorously, with one of its reasons being, I've been told by a Roman Hierarch "in the know", that it would cause problems with the Latin Rite Clergy here who to all reports are solidly behind a married priesthood. With all due respect to +Sfeir, I suspect his comments are directed towards keeping the Latin Rite hierarchs here happy more than anything else, which is unfortunate since its his eparchy and he shouldn't give a fig what they think or want.