Group of Catholic and Orthodox Officials Endorses Marriage for Some Priests - NYTimes.com

paign: nyt2014_sharetools_mkt_topstories_478QW -- 247890, creative: sharetools_mkt_nytnow_split_466WL -- 369801, page: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/us/catholic-and-orthodox-officials-endorse-marriage-for-some-priests.html, targetedPage: wwNews of a the North American-Catholic Theological Consultation seeking the Catholic Church to end its ban on married Catholic clergy of the Eastern Catholic Churches serving outside their patriarchal territories in the West, even in the diaspora lands of the USA and Canada that are outside the historic "West" but which were largely first evangelised and served by Roman Catholics.

 

The ban came in because of Irish and other Roman Catholic bishops objecting to married Eastern Catholic clergy coming with their own flocks as refugees or immigrants to north America. The RC bishops believed celibacy to be the true Catholic discipline and the Eastern tradition as an abuse undermining the Latin rite's adherence to priestly celibacy. They wanted to impose celibacy on Eastern Catholics, The ban proved highly counterproductive because one group of Greek-Catholics (Greek = using the Greek, ie Byzantine, rite) with great reluctance, rather than repudiate their own tradition, broke communion with their Latin rite fellow Catholics and entered communion instead with the Russian Orthodox. In recent years the ban has been circumvented by ordaining men in Eastern Europe and transferring them to north America so that, technically, the Eastern Church is keeping to the discipline imposed by Latins and not ordaining married men in North America. Now the Orthodox are saying to the RCs, "If you want union between us, and it is true that you say you don't want to impose your Latin jurisdiction over us and expect nothing of us for unity to be realised that did not obtain prior to the Great Schism, then we cannot help looking at how you treat Byzantine Christians already in communion with you. You try to control them in the diaspora. You won't let the synods of their Churches set up their own structures and episcopal appointments outside their homelands because you think that it is the prerogative of the Roman Catholics to make such arrangements. You call them sui iuris, but you stop short of recognising their autocephaly. And here, even though the ordination of married priests is a normal tradition among us in the East, you seem so fearful of your own Latin tradition being undermined by it that you forbid it. If you want union with us, however, you have to let us be ourselves and not interfere with our own life and tradition, or try to manage us. We have as much right to exist and organise ourselves in the West as you believe you do all over the world. So if you are serious about respecting us and restoring communion, you should show it by getting rid of your prohibition on something that is in fact integral to our pastoral and priestly ministry. If you don't, it tells us what you really think about Eastern Catholics - and about us."

 

The article that follows makes a slight error in reporting the call for Eastern Catholic priests to be allowed to marry. In fact the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are already at one of this. No ordained priest is permitted to marry. What is being called for is acceptance that already married men in the Eastern Churches be eligible for and permitted to be ordained priest. This is the norm in Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches (unmarried priests being seen as celibate or technically monastic) and it should not, need not, be a Church dividing issue.

 

 

In a step that is sure to fuel the debate over mandatory celibacy, a high-level group of Catholic and Orthodox officials is calling on the Vatican to allow Eastern Catholic priests serving in North America to marry. Eastern Catholic priests are already allowed to marry overseas, but not in North America, with limited exceptions. This year, a married man was ordained as a Maronite Catholic priest in St. Louis with the permission of Pope Francis.

 

The request carries significant weight because it comes from the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, whose Catholic members are appointed by the conferences of bishops in the United States and Canada. The Catholic delegation was headed by Archbishop Joseph W. Tobin of Indianapolis, who worked for several years as a high-level Vatican official.

 

“This action would affirm the ancient and legitimate Eastern Christian tradition and would assure the Orthodox that, in the event of the restoration of full communion between the two churches, the traditions of the Orthodox Church would not be questioned,” the group said in a statement on Friday.

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Group of Catholic and Orthodox Officials Endorses Marriage for Some Priests - NYTimes.com