www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Here We Go Again- Married Priests

Back to my question: Do you think that perhaps one day priests will be able to decide freely between celibate and noncelibate life?

I understood your question. I simply had to make it clear that in any event, at least according to what every priest says before his ordination, celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord. And that is now the question, of course: How deeply do priesthood and celibacy belong together? And is not the wish to have only one [without the other] a lower view of the priesthood? Nor do I think that in this matter it's enough simply to point to the Orthodox Churches and Protestant Christianity. Protestant Christianity has per se a completely different understanding of office: it is a function, it is a ministry coming out of the community, but it is not a sacrament in the same sense; it is not priesthood in this proper sense. In the Orthodox Churches we have, on the one hand, the full form of the priesthood, the priest monks, who alone can become bishops. Alongside them are the "people's priests", who, if they want to marry, must marry before ordination but who exercise little pastoral care but are really only liturgical ministers. This is also a somewhat different conception of priesthood. We, on the other hand, are of the opinion that everyone who is a priest at all must be so in the way that the bishop is and that there cannot be such a division.

One ought not to declare that any custom of the Church's life, no matter how deeply anchored and well founded, is wholly absolute. To be sure, the Church will have to ask herself the question again and again; she has now done so in two synods. But I think that given the whole history of Western Christianity and the inner vision that lies at the basis of the whole, the Church should not believe that she will easily gain much by resorting to this uncoupling; rather in any case she will lose if she does so.

I agree that was badly put. Of course Catholic doctrine doesn't teach that celibate priests are more priests than married ones (like a woman can't be sort of pregnant; a man is either a priest or not), even though the rule, only a rule though longstanding, is only the celibate may become bishops; the idea that celibate priests are better priests is only opinion.

Protestants of course are not in this picture: some claim the priesthood (Anglicans) but all believe in a fallible church (everything's changeable by decree or vote) so the question's moot.