If I should write the truth, I believe that I ought to flee all meetings of bishops, because I have never seen any happy or satisfactory outcome from any council, nor one that has deterred evils more than it has occasioned their acceptance and growth.
(St Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 131 from 382 AD; cf. PG ).
Wisdom of the Saints indeed! Thanks MM!
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus is the name of the Byzantine Catholic parish in nearby Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania.
Recently, the Roman Pontiff removed all restrictions against the ordination of married men to the priesthood for the Eastern Catholic Churches, with the exceptions of the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankar Catholic Churches, who do not ordain married men. It’s the first important thing he has said or done that I agree with.
St. Gregory knew what he was talking about.
Penguins Fan: “It’s the first important thing he has said or done that I agree with.”
.
Penguins Fan, please do not agree to married priests. There is one here and I could not go to confession to him because of his wife. Sorry. There was a third party to my confession and it was not God. It was the priest’s wife. It has been several years now, and I have not been moved from my original assessment.
.
I need some one who is with me 100%.
1) Then as now, all should “flee all meetings of bishops.” So much education, such little knowledge, so little has changed in 1600 years.
2) Mary De Voe gets my vote, sorry, Penguins’ Fan: having spent some years working at an Episcopal church in L.A., you have not seen internecine conflict, scandals, nor, as Mary De Voe observes, breaches of confidence and the seal of confession, until you have seen a “married clergy”: the seal of confessional broached (whether direct or indirect: both are delict acts) will be the ultimate blow to Catholic sacraments.
3) It is bad enough in the SF bay area, where a USF priest has commented to me, quite bitterly, of his shock at how, in social conversations at recreation time, some of the gay clergy have revealed information that was confessional matter to their “close friends”, who of course could not keep such juicy material silenced: I dont think we need to make it any worse with a “married clergy.”
Mary and Steve, I have the impression that you think a married clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches is some hair-brained scheme aimed at destroying the celibate priesthood of the Latin Church. This is not so. I can infer that you know next to nothing about the Eastern Churches.
I don’t know where you live and it isn’t my business. Pittsburgh was the epicenter of a terrible schism in the Byzantine Ruthenian Church, which has its Metropolia and its seminary in Pittsburgh. Under the Union of Brest-Litovsk and the Union of Uzhorod, the Ukrainians and the Ruthenians returned to the Catholic Church from Orthodoxy. They were promised and guaranteed that they would retain all aspects, traditions and laws of their particular Churches. Among those is a married clergy.
Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul instigated a schism that led to thousands of American Eastern Catholics joining the Orthodox church of America. Pope Leo, at the urging of American Latin Catholic bishops, forbid married clergy among the Eastern Catholic Churches in the United States. As a result, countless Byzantine Catholic families were split apart and almost 40 Byzantine Catholic parishes gave Rome the middle finger and started the American Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Diocese. My neighbors are ACROD. They have two young daughters. I attended the baptism of their baby in September. The father left the Byzantine Church for ACROD as this is where his wife was.
You see, stupid is nothing new in the hierarchy. Latin triumphalism caused schism in the Church in the 20th Century.
Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his 1995 encyclical Orientale Lumen (Light of the East) that the Eastern Catholic Churches were to return to their traditions and cast out things of the Latin Church that had found its way in. Also, Latin Catholics should learn about and appreciate the Eastern Churches.
A Ukrainian Catholic coworker invited me to a ceremony in his parish in Carnegie, PA where they had a new pastor – a priest with GASP a wife and six kids. I met him. He is a TERRIFIC priest, administering to his flock as he has been called and assigned to do.
The Bishop of the Romanian Catholic Church, based in Canton, Ohio, ordained two married men to the priesthood a few years ago. The Maronite Catholic Church ordained a married man to the priesthood this year in St. Louis.
I’m a Latin Trad. I value our commitment to a celibate clergy in the Latin Church. The Eastern Churches have their own traditions, customs and laws and ramming celibacy down their throats was a bad idea.
I think you completely misunderstood me, PF.
Penguins Fan: Jesus Christ was celibate. In the Sacrament of Penance the priest acts in persona Christi during the absolution and alter Christi the rest of the time. Since Christ was not married, the priest’s behavior in alter Christi might be like St. Peter, who was married.
.
In respect to the priest’s wife, I could not bare my soul to the married priest. A person cannot have it both ways. But St. Peter was married before he was called to follow Christ. St. Peter was not married after he was called to the priesthood.
.
All these other people and their examples have nothing for me.