The New York Times recently featured an article about Father Yuriy Volovetskiy, a priest in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is one of nine different rites associated with the Roman Catholic Church. The most familiar of those nine rites is the Latin rite, the dominant rite in both the Roman Catholic Church as a whole and in the
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s liturgy resembles of that of the Orthodox churches. However, perhaps its most important distinction in the early twenty-first century is that the Ukrainian Catholic Church allows its priests to marry. Father Yuriy Volovetskiy, for example, has a wife and six children. One of the boys, Roman, wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a Catholic priest.
Married clergy has helped the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church avoid two major problems that the Roman Catholic Church’s Latin rite faces: large numbers of pedophiles in the priesthood and a crippling shortage of priests. Indeed, Father Yuriy Volovetskiy has found that being married has actually enriched his ministry, enabling him to better appreciate the lives and struggles of his flock while finding personal fulfillment as a husband and father. (Clifford J. Levy, “A Flock Grows Right at Home for a Priest in Ukraine,” New York Times, March 22, 2010)
Celibacy of Latin rite priests dates back to the middle ages when the Church had problems with clergy behavior and the desire of clerical fathers to leave wealth to their sons. The latter was problematic because Roman Catholic bishops hold the Church’s property in trust for the Church as corporations sole rather than for the individual’s biological family. In other words, the Church faced a particular set of problems that demanded a particular discipline from its leaders.
Those social conditions no longer exist. Indeed, the Roman Catholic now faces a particular set of problems that demand a different disciplinary response: the trust that married clergy engender in their flock as opposed to the suspicion that celibate clergy too often engender in the wake of widespread pedophile scandals and cover-ups.
Not only does the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church exist within the Roman Catholic Church, offering an in-house precedent for married clergy, the Latin rite now welcomes male Anglican priests, married or celibate, to become Roman Catholic priests (cf. Who cares? For more thoughts on this overture).
How long will the Roman Catholic Church persist in its self-destructive rigidity, insisting on a discipline that whatever its earlier value or justification seems completely out of place in the twenty-first century? Religious institutions, like other types of institutions, must discern when and how to change without losing their essential identity. Obviously, a celibate clergy is not that type of distinctive for the Roman Catholic Church or clerical celibacy would be a matter of belief rather than discipline.
3 comments:
I agree with you that benefits may be derived from allowing priests to marry.
However, I have great difficulty with the assumption that marriage is the solution to pedophilia. Priests who are pedophiles are criminals just as non-priests are. Morally, they are, in my view, even more corrupt than non-priets because they operate under the guise of religion and supposed to be pastoral counselors. Moreover, as is seen time and again in the secular community, pedophiles many times are married. Marriage simply gives such pedophiles what they deem to be a "safe" guise. (Who would suspect, after all?)
Argue strongly for marriage of priests, yes. But don't do so because it's assumed a solution to pedophilia. It isn't.
You're absolutely right: marriage is no cure for pedophilia. Thanks for the clarification. My point was that if the Roman Catholic Church allowed married priests, then the Church could be more selective in who it ordained. Today, the Roman Catholic Church is so short of priests that it will ordain almost any adult male.
George, you are ruining my push for your sainthood with the Catholic church.
Anyone can or could be a disgrace to a religious order or denomination. It is the people who do wrong and should be judged accordingly; not what position they hold. This goes for all occupations.
Leaders have to make difficult decisions that others would consider wrong; but the decision may be the only good answer. Having made some difficult decisions myself, many could be judged wrong unless people understood the reasoning and background. With married priests, it will be easier to understand situations that a single person may not consider.
Marriage and children bring a lot more challenges in anyone's life. It is difficult or impossible to give good guidance to someone when you can not relate to their situation.
The opening of marriage in the priesthood will open the applicant base and the selection process.
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