Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII

If asked to rank the most vexatious nonsense one hears regularly talked about married clergy, I would have no hesitation in putting in top place the old self-serving canard that a married man is somehow "divided" in his loyalties and affections, in his duties of service, whereas a celibate man knows no such divisions. This we must call--with all due delicacy and ecumenical sensitivity towards those in the West-Roman patriarchate--the ecclesiology and sacramental theology of biblical illiterates. 

Whenever I hear this "divided" claim, I always ask the following question which always remains unanswered by those whom I interrogate: "How is a married man 'divided' in serving the domestic Church, which is both his family and a fundamental unit of the entire Church? In serving his domestic Church, he is ipso facto serving the body of Christ, is he not?"

It is the shortest essay in my new book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, "Reflections on Two Vocations in Two Lungs of the One Church," but David Meinzen's essay is one of the most singular and important ever written on this topic, for he demolishes the idea that a married priest, to avoid being "divided," must always put the parish first. Meinzen shows--drawing on his long experience as son of a married Lutheran pastor (Missouri Synod), and then a married Orthodox, and finally and currently a married Eastern Catholic priest--that any man in holy orders who neglects his family to serve his parish is unworthy of both vocations, and does damage to the one he is serving precisely insofar as he is neglecting the other. Put differently, to neglect his family is to serve the broader church badly for there is no real division between the domestic and wider Church: they are all the one body of Christ, and following impeccable Pauline logic, when one part of the body suffers, every part and everybody suffers. The logic Meinzen uses is very similar to what I used more recently in talking about the Christian case for self-care. 

Meinzen goes beyond this to make a positive case: a strong clerical family by that very fact builds up the entire body of Christ, making it stronger as well. In other words, a man living up to his sacramental vocation to marriage, and working to strengthen and protect that marriage and family, is going to be in a stronger position to work to strengthen and protect his equally sacramental vocation to priesthood. Any idea of competition between the two is the grossest of theological mistakes which must be abandoned. 

Married Priests and Sex Abuse

On my sabbatical in 2018, I put the finishing touches to my newest book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church. 

But before doing that, I had also used the time to write a second book from start to finish: Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power. This latter book's final chapter focuses on the question of married clergy, including a married episcopate. Loathe though I was to include such a chapter, I felt I had to because of the grossly simplistic "thinking" one sometimes hears proffered to the effect that the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church today could be dramatically decreased by allowing priests to marry. The quickest way to disprove this claim is to look at every other Christian tradition with married clergy to see they too have problems with sexual abuse; so do married Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams, etc.

That said, what I did in the 2019 book was to look at how, in some limited and circumscribed ways, having a predominantly married presbyterate in the Catholic Church might help make it more difficult for abusive clergy to escape unnoticed (not least by their wives!) or to be shuffled around (shuffling married clergy can be a significantly more complicated task than with celibates, and requires wider discussion). I also noted, in raising the question of married bishops, that a man who has children of his own is, on average, going to be much more adverse to treating abused children in the bloodless, cold, ruthless way so many celibate bishops do today. In too many cases it seems an unspoken qualification for the episcopate is a complete lack of empathy for the most vulnerable human beings in the Church. Celibacy, then, can be deeply psychologically damaging to some people, especially when lived (as it should be) outside a monastic community of some depth. 

But a married clergy will not "solve" the abuse crisis, nor any other. It may help, but this has to be carefully considered. Thus the new book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, aims in significant degree to de-romanticize, de-mythologize some of the idealistic notions people might have about this venerable tradition and its challenges. 

Married Priests in the Catholic Church--including a Married Bishop!

My book that was just published this month, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, began life a decade ago as a collection focused solely on Eastern Catholic experiences--the longstanding Roman harassment and Latin chauvinism around married clergy, the fetishization of celibacy as some kind of "superior" state and with it the concomitant denigration of marriage as a second-class sacrament for the "weaker brethren," and the bogus historicizing that has gone on around the "apostolicity" of celibacy. These and other issues were to be taken up, along with an ecumenical examination of the costs of this approach to Orthodox-Catholic rapprochement. Almost all of this would be focused on a European, and especially East-Slavic, context for the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church is the largest of the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome, having the largest number of married clergy. 

But as the book went through the University of Notre Dame Press's superlative peer-review and editorial processes, the reviewers' recommendations came to me asking to expand the focus of the book in both "cultural" and ecclesial terms. I grasped the logic of this at once, and set out recruiting chapters from non-European married clergy (Melkites, Copts, et al), and from Orthodox clergy as well as former Anglicans who remained married clergy in the relatively new ordinariates around the world. All this made for a much richer collection.

In the coming weeks I want to feature excerpts and insights from the various sections of the book. Today we start with an essay from the third section, "Ecumenical Considerations." The essay comes from England bearing the title "The Gift to the Church of Married Clergy" by Edwin Barnes. 

Barnes was a bishop in the Church of England, mother-church of the Anglican Communion (in which I was baptized) from 1995 to 2002. He and his wife Jane converted to Catholicism a decade ago and spent the last few years of his life ordained a priest, and later designated a monsignor, in the Latin Church before his death in early 2019. 

His chapter is short but lovely, and it talks about how the ministry of married clergy is very much a ministry of the married couple. He gives moving tribute to how much unsung and unpaid work was done by his wife, and how no parish--if it is to be a genuine community of concern and pastoral care and not just a sacramental gas station--can function without the whole couple, together and singly, working in their various spheres. 

In saying this, his chapter joins nicely with others, including that of Irene Galadza, the matushka of the most important and influential Ukrainian Greco-Catholic parish in North America, St. Elias in Brampton, Ontario, where she and her husband, Archpriest Roman, have been since they founded the parish in 1976. Irene, too, recognizes not just how much parish ministry depends on the labours of husband and wife alike, but also--and importantly--how much a strain such ministry can put on the marriage. Hers is a welcome note of realism and restraint of those romanticized fantasies some have of how great it must be to have a married priesthood, and how that will apparently "solve" the so-called vocations crisis in the Latin Church. 

Irene's is not a counsel of despair, however, but very much a sober and cheerful reflection on how the wives of clergy can undertake the responsibility for the careful welfare (psychological and physical, but also spiritual) of herself and their children. Though she does not use such terminology as "self-care," that is very much the import of what she writes.

In this regard, her chapter is likewise joined to that of another: Bill Mills, a long-standing priest in the Orthodox Church of America, and author of any number of wonderful books, including his frank and funny memoir I discussed in my interview with him here. He, too, is well aware of the psychic costs of married life in a manse or rectory, and discusses those in his charming and amusing chapter, "Marriage and Ministry: an Eastern Orthodox Perspective." If you like that chapter, you'll love his many other books I have noted on here over the years. 

Married Priests in the Catholic Church

April is just around the corner, and that means that you can soon order my next book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, which the University of Notre Dame Press is bringing out.

About this international and ecumenical collection, you should know this:

These essays offer a historically rigorous dismantling of Western claims about the superiority of celibate priests.

Although celibacy is often seen as a distinctive feature of the Catholic priesthood, both Catholic and Orthodox Churches in fact have rich and diverse traditions of married priests. The essays contained in Married Priests in the Catholic Church offer the most comprehensive treatment of these traditions to date. These essays, written by a wide-ranging group that includes historians, pastors, theologians, canon lawyers, and the wives and children of married Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox priests, offer diverse perspectives from many countries and traditions on the subject, including personal, historical, theological, and canonical accounts. As a collection, these essays push especially against two tendencies in thinking about married priesthood today. Against the idea that a married priesthood would solve every problem in Catholic clerical culture, this collection deromanticizes and demythologizes the notion of married priesthood. At the same time, against distinctively modern theological trends that posit the superiority, apostolicity, and “ontological” necessity of celibate priests, this collection refutes the claim that priestly ordination and celibacy must be so closely linked.

In addressing the topic of married priesthood from both practical and theoretical angles, and by drawing on a variety of perspectives, Married Priests in the Catholic Church will be of interest to a wide audience, including historians, theologians, canon lawyers, and seminary professors and formators, as well as pastors, parish leaders, and laypeople.

Contributors: Adam A. J. DeVille, David G. Hunter, Dellas Oliver Herbel, James S. Dutko, Patrick Viscuso, Alexander M. Laschuk, John Hunwicke, Edwin Barnes, Peter Galadza, David Meinzen, Julian Hayda, Irene Galadza, Nicholas Denysenko, William C. Mills, Andrew Jarmus, Thomas J. Loya, Lawrence Cross, and Basilio Petrà.

Priestdaddy

This summer, I am receiving the new chapters I commissioned for my collection, Married Catholic Priests. While focusing strongly on Eastern Catholic history and experience, it also includes chapters by and about married Catholic clergy in the ordinariates created in 2009 for Anglicans entering the Church; and several chapters also from married Orthodox clergy, whose own experiences shed welcome light on Anglican and Eastern Catholic ones. And between now and, I hope, the early fall, I shall have all the revisions requested by the reviewers complete and be ready to send the thing back to the Press for the final stages.

As editor of that collection, I'm greatly looking forward to reading a unique contribution to the discussion in the form of Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood.

About this book the publisher tells us

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met—a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates “like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972.” His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church’s country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents’ rectory, their two worlds collide.

In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence—from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group—with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents’ household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother.

Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.

Married Catholic Priests

D.P. Sullins has written an important book that deserves careful attention amidst semi-regular papal chatter about possible relaxation of the celibacy requirement for presbyteral ordination in the Latin Church. In Keeping the Vow: the Untold Story of Married Catholic Priests (Oxford UP, 2016), 336pp., Sullins, himself both a married priest and a sociologist teaching at Catholic University of America, has given us a usefully detailed picture of a very select group of men in one country, the USA. Those interested in clerical life, those interested in the marriage-vs-celibacy debate, and those interested in the sociology of the Catholic Church will all find much that is informative in this welcome and tightly written book.

Sullins looks at the advent of married priests in the US from the early 1980s to the present, beginning with the Pastoral Provision, which allowed married Episcopalian clergy entering the Catholic Church the possibility of being ordained as Catholic priests notwithstanding their being married and having families.

As a sociologist, he has studied this group in some detail, and amassed in this book, in a number of tables and figures, the fruits of his research and statistical calculations. Via surveys and interviews, we learn much about the background of these married priests and their wives--education, formation, length of marriage, and location. Strikingly, the largest number of these men is to be found in just one state: Texas.

Sullins has also surveyed these men carefully on a number of controverted doctrinal issues, and all down the line these men are, compared to a comparable group of celibate Latin priests, much more "conservative" or "traditional" when it comes to such things as abortion, contraception, assisted suicide, etc. (Interestingly, however, their wives do not tend to be quite as conservative.)

He has also surveyed bishops to see what they know about these priests, about the Pastoral Provision, and now the Anglican ordinariates, asking them also about their support for married clergy and their views on celibacy.

Sullins has also usefully dispensed with some of the myths that are sometimes circulated to warn people off a married priesthood, especially the myth that it will cost dramatically more. By carefully crunching the numbers, he demonstrates that the average remuneration for a married man would only be slightly more than that of a celibate guy.

Sullins also sheds welcome light on other areas, noting that on average married priests perdure in the priesthood longer than their celibate counterparts, and have much higher levels of job satisfaction. At the same time, however, and most counter-intuitively, they tend to be lonelier than their celibate colleagues precisely because the married men have so few colleagues who can relate to them. Most of these men, entering a diocese, do so among a diocesan presbyterate that has, Sullins shows, its own internal groupings--the relative liberals, the arch-conservatives, those with certain interests or hobbies, etc. Married men find it hard to break into these pre-existing groups, and while their celibate colleagues are as a whole welcoming and friendly, they are also distant. So married clergy find developing friendships a challenge.

Only in a couple of places does he briefly mention married Eastern Catholic priests, a topic he does not seriously treat, and usually stumbles when doing so. Thus, e.g., he says that the Eastern Catholics driven out of the Catholic Church over married priests formed "today's Greek Orthodox Church in the United States" (175). It was actually the OCA that they largely formed, and the Orthodox Church of America has in fact canonized the formerly Catholic married priest, Alexis Toth, who led an exodus of Eastern Catholics into Orthodoxy thanks in part to the stupidity and intransigence of such as John Ireland. My friend D.O. Herbel gives the fullest, fairest account of all this in the first chapter of his splendid and vital study, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox.

A little earlier he implies (p.151) that the old rule prohibiting Eastern Catholics from ordaining married men in the United States is still in effect, but it is not.

These need not concern us insofoar as I am myself hoping finally to have movement from the publisher on my own book about married Catholic priests, which features a great deal of history and canon law around Eastern Catholics in North America, as well as chapters from married priests today, including several in the Anglican Ordinariates in England and the US.

In addition to not paying much attention to Eastern Catholic priests who are married--which, I must stress, is not a fault at all insofar as this book was clearly written to focus on another group, and so this is decidedly not a criticism, just an observation--there is one group I rather expected would be attended to more than they are: the phenomenon of the several Anglican Ordinariates.  But the book seems largely to have been centred on, and perhaps even written before, the advent of Anglican Ordinariates in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Sullins alludes to them a couple of times, but that is all.

Again, though, what he has given us is a rich, important study that fills a significant gap. Keeping the Vow: The Untold Story of Married Catholic Priests does indeed tell an untold story, and tells it extremely well. We are in Sullins' debt for this fine book.

Married Catholic Priests (Take 2)

In September I posted on here word of my forthcoming book, which I will (D.v.) submit to the publisher (the University of Notre Dame Press) tomorrow. After that initial report, several people contacted me on Facebook and via e-mail to suggest additional chapters, and I am grateful to them for their advice, which I happily took. Now the book is much richer, and I am delighted by that. Whereas previously it was almost entirely an "Eastern" book, focusing mainly on Eastern Catholic priests and their families, now it is a genuinely c/Catholic book, with a wide range of contributors: several Eastern Orthodox, a Russian Catholic, Ukrainian Catholics, Byzantine Catholics, two married Anglican clerics who are now married Catholic priests under the Pastoral Provision and later Ordinariate, further reflections from two presbyteras, and a chapter by the young son of a priest, Julian Hayda. With the volume thus strengthened and enriched, its focus is wider, and now the book--and its topic--can no longer be dismissed as merely or exclusively "an Eastern thing." There are now too many married ex-Lutheran and ex-Anglican clerics ordained to the Catholic priesthood to pretend that there are not married priests also in and for the Latin Church.

Fr.Roman and Presbytera Irene Galadza with Children and Grandchildren

A fortiori, then, I repeat what I said in September: this book will be the single-best collection ever published on the topic of married Catholic priests. There is nothing else out there remotely close to what will be in this book. That is a simple statement of facts. I have to say I'm especially pleased with how the essays cohere together. Often collections are very uneven, but many of these essays, even without intending it, build off one another and mesh together in a felicitous fashion.

We're still kicking around titles, though I'm leaning towards something like  Married Catholic Priests: Historical, Pastoral, and Theological Reflections. 

The contents:

I) Introduction: Adam DeVille

II) Historical Reflections:

1) David Hunter (University of Kentucky), "Priesthood and Sexual Continence: the Origins of a Western Tradition."

2) J.K. Coyle (†) (deceased professor of patristics and history at Saint Paul University, Ottawa), "Recent Views on the Origins of Clerical Celibacy: A Review of the Literature from 1980-1991."

3) Patrick Viscuso (professor of canon law at the Antiochian House of Studies and past president of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America, and author, translator, or editor of several important recent books), "Canonical Reflections on Clergy and Marriage."

III: Ecumenical and Pastoral Reflections:

4) Victor Pospishil (†) (a deceased Ukrainian Catholic priest and canonist), "Compulsory Celibacy for Eastern Catholics in the Americas."

5) James Dutko (protopresbyter of the Carpatho-Russian Diocese of the USA), "Mandatory Celibacy among Eastern Catholics: a Church-Dividing Issue."

6) Peter Galadza (Saint Paul University, Ottawa; Ukrainian Catholic liturgical scholar and married priest), "Official Catholic Pronouncements Regarding Presbyteral Celibacy: their Fate and Implications for Catholic-Orthodox Relations."

7) Adam DeVille (associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology-Philosophy, University of Saint Francis), "Ending the Romanticism Around Marriage and Celibacy"

8) John Hunwicke (former priest and scholar of the Church of England, now in the Ordinariate, and author of this delightful blog), “Married Clergy in the Anglican Tradition”

9) Fr. David Meinzen (bi-ritual Byzantine and Roman Catholic priest, formerly of the OCA),  “Reflections on Two Vocations in the Two Lungs of the One Church"

10) Julian Hayda (undergraduate in Chicago and son of the late Fr. Pavlo Hayda), “Growing Up in a Fishbowl: Using Oikonomia to Answer the Tough Questions Posed by the Children of Priestly Families”

11) Christine Hayda (wife of Fr. Pavlo, mother of Julian), "Reflections from the Wife of a Priest."

12) Christopher Phillips (former Episcopalian and one of the first priests ordained in the 1980s under the Pastoral Provision; now rector of  the first parish erected under the PP), “The Peregrinations of a Pioneer of the Pastoral Provision”

III) THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS:

13) Lawrence Cross (a widowed Russian Catholic archpriest and scholar in Australia), “Married Clergy: At the Heart of Tradition”

14) Basilio Petrà (celibate RC priest and scholar in Florence; author of numerous works on marriage and priesthood), “Married Priesthood: Some Theological Resonances”

15) Thomas Loya (celibate Byzantine Catholic priest descended from a long line of married priests; pastor of the wonderful parish of the Annunciation Parish in Illinois),    “Celibacy and the Married Priesthood: Rediscovering the Spousal Mystery”

16) Irene Galadza (retired teacher and catechist, and presbytera at the incomparable St. Elias), “The Vocation of the Presbytera: Icon of the Theotokos in the Midst of the Ministerial Priesthood”

Conclusion:  Adam DeVille

Married Eastern Catholic Priests

I am working like a madman to get my third book done and submitted to the publisher by October. I'm not being immodest when I say that it will be the single-best collection ever published on the topic of married Catholic priests. There is nothing else out there remotely close to what will be in this book. That is a simple statement of facts. The book reprints two very important essays from several decades ago, including one that was privately circulated in Canada; but even more important, it includes previously unpublished historical research on early canons and debates about clerical continence; it includes ecclesiological and ecumenical reflections from Catholics and Orthodox; and it will include singular pastoral and theological reflections from married priests as well as an outstanding essay by one presbytera reflecting on the vocation of being married to a priest. I have to say I'm especially pleased with how the essays cohere together. Often collections are very uneven, but many of these essays, even without intending it, build off one another and mesh together in a felicitous fashion.

We're still kicking around titles, though I'm leaning towards something like A Primer on Married Catholic Priests though it will probably end up with something more academic and solemn: Married Eastern Catholic Priests: Historical, Ecclesiological, and Theological Reflections. We'll see. Suggested titles would be welcome in the comments below.

The contents:

I) Introduction: Adam DeVille

II) Historical Reflections:

i) David Hunter (University of Kentucky), "Priesthood and Sexual Continence: the Origins of a Western Tradition."

ii) J.K. Coyle (†) (deceased professor of patristics and history at Saint Paul University, Ottawa), "Recent Views on the Origins of Clerical Celibacy: A Review of the Literature from 1980-1991."

iii) Patrick Viscuso (professor of canon law at the Antiochian House of Studies and past president of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America), "Later Byzantine Developments in Priesthood."

III: Ecumenical and Ecclesiological Reflections:

i) Victor Pospishil (†) (a deceased Ukrainian Catholic priest and canonist), "Compulsory Celibacy for Eastern Catholics in the Americas."

ii) James Dutko (protopresbyter of the Carpatho-Russian Diocese of the USA), "Mandatory Celibacy among Eastern Catholics: a Church-Dividing Issue."

iii) Peter Galadza (Saint Paul University, Ottawa; Ukrainian Catholic liturgical scholar and married priest), "Official Catholic Pronouncements Regarding Presbyteral Celibacy: their Fate and Implications for Catholic-Orthodox Relations."

iv) Adam DeVille (associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology-Philosophy, University of Saint Francis), "A Married Priesthood is no Panacea."

v) David Meinzen (bi-ritual Ukrainian Catholic priest and RC university chaplain, formerly of the OCA), "Reflections from the Field: A Married Priest and His Family on Vocations and Pastoral Challenges."

IV: Theological Reflections:

i) Lawrence Cross (Eastern Catholic archpriest at the Australian Catholic University), "Married Clergy: at the Heart of Tradition."

ii) Basilio Petrà (Roman Catholic priest and ordinary professor of moral theology at the University of Central Italy), "Married Priesthood: Some Theological Resonances."

iii) Thomas Loya (Byzantine Catholic priest and pastor of Annunciation parish in Homer Glen, IL), "Celibacy and the Married Priesthood: Rediscovering the Spousal Mystery."

iv) Irene Galadza (retired Catholic teacher and vice-principal, catechist, and presbytera at St. Elias Parish, Brampton, Ontario), "The Vocation of the Presbytera: Icon of the Theotokos in the Midst of the Ministerial Priesthood."

Conclusion: Adam DeVille