Married Man’s Ordination Reveals Unusual Prohibition on Eastern Catholics

NC Register ^ | April 7, 2014 | PETER JESSERER SMITH

[NYer]

Father Wissam Akiki with his wife and daughter, Perla, at her first Communion.

ST. LOUIS — Surrounded by his wife, daughter and the bishops of his Church, Father Wissam Akiki made history in February as the first married man in 90 years to enter the priesthood for the Maronite Catholic Church in the U.S. Kp> But for Catholics of most Eastern-rite Churches in the U.S., including the Maronites, the fact the priest is a married man isn’t that extraordinary: What’s extraordinary is that they have to ask the Vatican for permission to ordain married men in the first place.

snip

“The tradition of a wholly celibate diocesan clergy is really something that is a characteristic of the Latin Church, but not the [entire] Catholic Church,” he said. In the tradition of most Eastern Churches, married men are ordained as parish priests. However, celibate men take vows as monks and can be ordained as priests, and bishops are chosen from the celibate clergy. But once ordained, priests can never marry.

Father Loya said that many Eastern Catholic vocations to the priesthood, both married and celibate monastic, were traditionally formed from priests’ families.

Father Loya explained that, in the Eastern traditions, seminarians who were going to be married priests “tended to marry girls who were the daughters or granddaughters of priests.” Such a woman “understood very much what it meant to be the wife of a priest” and her responsibilities as the “spiritual mother” of the parish. This included a witness to celibacy’s pointing toward the life to come by abstaining from sexual relations during periods of fasting. It also meant that in times of danger she would take the family to safety, while her husband would tend to his flock and possibly die.

[NYer]

Developing formation programs for the wives of seminarians, who will share in their husband’s vocation, will also be key. The priest’s wife is no easy task, and the task is even more challenging for a woman who has not grown up in a priest’s family and therefore doesn’t know what that vocation entails.

Ping.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

My mind wants to explode.

This is like homeschooling 3 boys. So many questions and whines of a legitimate nature perhaps, but so many, while big fires are blazing everywhere. And yet, you stop the hose, listen patiently while Rome burns, and ponder yet another one.

I know, I know, focus on the glass being 1/4 full, not just 3/4 empty. It’s a beautiful day that God has made and blessed us with, and the fires are warming and do light up the area well, and the kids, they will be so small only for so long.

So the Church is inconsistent in its bureaucracy - imagine that. Next, he’ll need a larger humble building for his larger family. Some will get it, some will not...another anxious hand with a good question goes up in the air.

Growing old and dying ain’t so bad.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Years ago, I read that married Anglican priests who joined the Catholic Church could be Catholic priests even though they were married.