Q. With all the talk regarding priestly celibacy, I’m wondering, practically speaking, what would happen if the Pope got rid of celibacy?
A. There is nothing inherent to the Sacrament of Holy Orders that would prevent married men from being ordained. The first Pope, St. Peter, was married. For the first two or three hundred years of the Church, married men could become priests.
Today, Eastern Rite Catholic priests can and do marry and they are just as Catholic as celibate Latin Catholic priests. There are married Latin Catholic priests who function in the Church, though that is limited to converts to the Catholic faith who were married prior to their conversion to Catholicism. Celibacy is a discipline the Church adopted, and therefore the Church could change.
What would happen if tomorrow Pope Francis decreed an end to the obligation of priestly celibacy? Maybe not as much as people would expect. The assumption (and it might be a correct one) is that all priests already ordained would be able to get married. However, the clear Tradition of the Church has been that, while married men can be and are ordained, priests did not marry after they were ordained. This is enforced in the Eastern Rite Churches and even applies to permanent deacons, who cannot marry after they are ordained, or remarry if their wife dies. It is possible that this Tradition would be continued and only priests ordained after the decree would be able to be married.
If all priests are able to get married, it raises some very interesting practical questions: For parishes that have multiple priests, does each priest get his own rectory for his own family? Does the parish pay for that? Would priests be allowed to date parishioners, given the real concerns about power dynamics that could cause? What happens if a priest dates a parishioner and they break up, leaving the poor woman in a situation in which the man to whom the Church entrusts the care of her soul is now her ex-boyfriend, and is hearing her confessions, and she has to see him if she wants to go to Mass at her parish?
It is March in the Diocese of Lincoln, which means speculation on priest appointments is running rampant. If priests were married, would their families be expected to move every few years? What if a priest’s wife doesn’t want to? Does the promise of obedience to the bishop outweigh the martial vows made to a wife?
A whole new host of issues would arise if the obligation to celibacy were lifted for all priests. Even if priests already ordained were able to marry, I am not sure how many would. The push for an end to priestly celibacy seems to come more from lay people than priests. I can speak only for myself, but, as someone who lives celibacy, I think it is essential for the Latin Church to maintain it and, if given the option, I would not pursue marriage. I do not think I would be alone in that.
Celibacy has given me the freedom to be part of the lives of many families in a way that I would not have been able to if I had my own family to attend to. It is not always easy, but neither is marriage. Every vocation has its challenges, but in my opinion, the benefits of living an authentic celibacy far outweigh the negatives, even if those who do not live celibacy cannot see that.
Those in favor of ending priestly celibacy seem to believe that by eliminating it all the issues with the priesthood will be fixed. They think that vocations will go way up if priests were allowed to marry, and there would be fewer instances of priest abuse cases.
I think these arguments are deeply flawed. Eastern Churches do not have a larger percentage of their faithful entering the priesthood even though they can marry. As far as allowing celibacy as a means of diminishing priest scandals, this line of thought betrays a profound misunderstanding of sexual abuse and its causes. Even on a simple statistical level, it fails to take into account that, percentage-wise, most statistics indicate Protestant minsters who are permitted to marry commit crimes of sexual abuse at around the same rate as Catholic priests, and below the rate of the general population.
The arguments around priestly celibacy are, for those who genuinely care about the Catholic Church, rooted in a desire to have more and better priests. But the reality is, there is no one fix for that. We have to do the hard work of fostering vocations through prayer, fasting, and witness. To have more fully integrated priests, the Church needs to improve (and is improving) formation in the seminary. Allowing priests to marry may seem like the easy, simple answer, but all it will do is create new problems, without actually solving the old ones.
This question was answered by Father Caleb La Rue, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
