Saturday, December 6, 1997
Eastern Rite Catholics likely to ordain married men
By ANN RODGERS MELNICK
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
VATICAN CITY - Although they did not say so in their speeches at the Vatican's Synod on America, many Eastern Rite Catholic bishops in the United States and Canada believe they have every right to ordain married men to the priesthood.
"The documents of Vatican II to the Eastern church stressed a return to our time-honored customs and traditions that are organic to what makes an Eastern church an Eastern church. In that case, one of the time-honored customs and traditions of the East has always been a married clergy," said Archbishop Judson Procyk of the Metropolitan Byzantine Archdiocese of Pittsburgh.
Speaking in an interview, Procyk continued, "I think that this is something that will happen. It will happen. It is happening in some instances already."
His reference was primarily to Melkite Bishop John Elya of Newton, Mass., who last year ordained a married man. If there have been repercussions from Rome, they have not become public.
Eastern rite Catholic churches are under the authority of the pope, but follow the liturgy and discipline of Orthodoxy. In their ancestral territories of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Eastern Catholic men may be ordained after they are married, but may not marry once they are ordained. And, as in the Orthodox churches, their bishops are celibate.
But when large numbers of Eastern Catholics migrated to the North America early in this century, Latin rite Catholics were scandalized to see priests with wives and children. In 1929 the Latin bishops of the United States asked for and obtained from Rome an edict forbidding married men to be ordained for the Eastern rite in North America. The edict was later expanded to cover all English-speaking nations.
Tens of thousands of Eastern rite Catholics were so angered that they became Orthodox. The American Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic Orthodox Diocese of Johnstown was created to accommodate a large schism from the Archdiocese of Pittsburgh.
"Since the 1930s, when there was civil war over this, so to speak, it has been accepted that Byzantine Catholic clergy in the United States and Canada were celibate. If they came over from Europe, they sometimes arrived with a wife, and the bishop accepted them. But that was rare," said the Rev. Richard Lelonis, a canon lawyer with priestly faculties in both the Latin diocese and the Eastern archdiocese of Pittsburgh.
Now 52, Lelonis attended grade school with a boy whose father was a married Byzantine priest. Those priests have died out, but the issue still rankles, especially since the Latin rite began accepting married priests who had left the Episcopal Church.
Both Vatican II and Pope John Paul II urged the Eastern churches to shed Western customs they had adopted over the years. A renewal of Eastern traditions, such as offering communion to baptized infants, is under way.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
While not written by an Eastern Catholic, I thought the quotes of the late Metropolitan Judson were important.
Also try these:
http://www.sffaith.com/ed/articles/2000/1200byz.htm http://www.cin.org/east/eastcathamer.html In Christ,
Lance
[ 05-18-2002: Message edited by: Lance ]
[ 05-18-2002: Message edited by: Lance ]