Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Recently I saw an article about a married, former Baptist minister who was ordained as a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Louisville. In the Diocese of Peoria in which I currently reside, we had a former Episcopalian minister ordained as a priest. Shelray goes to an Anglican Use Rite parish in San Antonio, the first established in the US I believe, in which the priest is married.

One thing that this article that irritated me was the comment from his spiritual adviser. She mentions that the Church will benefit from it because he knows what it is like to be married. This is a most asinine canard and has nothing to do with the decision. A man knows only his marriage from experience and a particular experience may help with empathy but it does not go much further than that when it comes to understanding and helping with the myriad of issues that married couples are faced with. One might just as well say he prefers a psychiatrist who has suffered from his pathology because he understands it from experience. But this is an aside.

The article itself calls to mind the difficulties some people have with the provision that the Church has made for some time, in allowing former ministers from the traditions arising after the Reformation, to seek ordination to the Catholic priesthood. I had one friend who was convinced (perhaps he still is, I don’t know) that married Catholic men would soon be allowed to be ordained. His reasoning was that this prohibition is not dogmatic and there is already provision which allow it for those “ordained” in non-Catholic traditions. Thus, he reasoned, as a matter of fairness it is something that must also be open to married Catholic men.

I strongly support the pastoral provision but I also vigorously disagree with my friend’s line of thinking. First of all, ordination is not a matter of one’s rights. As such, the language of unfairness has no place in the discussion. Second, regardless of the fact that ordination of married men to the priesthood is not prevented by a dogmatic prohibition, this does not lead to the conclusion that it must, therefore, be opened to married Catholic men.

There is a solid theology which prevents married men from becoming priests. I would argue that the historical evidence supports this contention as it indicates that this prohibition has always been in place. That is not to say that in various times and cultures, the law was not widely disregarded. In the Eastern Church, unfortunately, married priest were permitted as a concession to human weakness and then only for the priesthood. The concession was allowed under the relatively permissive theologoumenon of the “oikonomia” which also is used to permit divorce and remarriage and artificial contraception.

Rather, the theological rationale behind the unmarried priest is, of course, that he is already married to the Bride in the Person of the Bridegroom. Therefore it is not proper for the vicar of the Bridegroom to have a singular bride as well. The East recognizes this in its prohibition against married priests being ordained as bishops, as they more perfectly manifest the Bridegroom than does the priest, who is the bishop’s vicar, if you will. All of this is without mentioning the significant practical problems and negative family impacts for the family of a married priest.

Then why allow anyone who is married to become a priest? This is the important question. Again, it is not a matter of fairness to the man because neither he, nor anyone else, has a right to ordination. The answer, it seems to me, is in understanding this as fulfilling the authentic vocation that the man imperfectly, but sincerely, responded to before he had come to know the fullness of the truth. In other words, he heard God’s call to serve him as a priest but due to his invincible ignorance because of his upbringing in a non-Catholic tradition, he assumed that this call to ministry was in the tradition to which he was attached. The problem is to then discern whether God is still calling him. That is why the provision requires the man to enter the Church for some time before even beginning the discernment, and then it is done in union with his bishop.

This situation is not significantly unlike the Pauline privilege in which, after a non-baptized person is baptized, their non-baptized spouse refuses to accept them any longer because of their baptism, the newly baptized person is permitted to remarry and the non-sacramental, one-flesh union is allowed to be dissolved.

The parallel here is that the assumption is that both persons had invincible ignorance about the fullness of truth of the faith and this ignorance allowed them to enter into a commitment which would eventually become an impediment to their future vocation. In both situations, the person responded to God’s call in trust and selflessness (ideally any way). Therefore, the canonical law can be waived for the sake of permitting the person to fulfill his vocation. Of course, the cases are not exactly equivalent. However, they do have sufficient parallels to make this connection.

Clearly, not everyone who is ordained as a non-Catholic minister and then comes home to the fullness of the Church, is being called to the priesthood. Even if they had imperfectly responded to what had been an authentic call. Just as God does not continue to call Catholic men to ordination after they miss the initial calling and get married, He does not continue to call non-Catholic ministers to the Catholic priesthood.

So, my old friend was wrong on all counts. We discussed this many times but of course, when someone has made up their mind about something, it usually requires a change of heart rather than a change of mind in order for one to over come the mindset that something is just not fair…