Q. If he has time, can a priest have a part-time job?
A. Christ instituted the Ministerial Priesthood so as to set men aside for Himself to carry on His mission in the world. Priests are ordained to stand in persona Christi and to facilitate an encounter between the Mercy and Love of the Father through the sacraments and the laity.
Those whom Christ called to the priesthood were created to be priests. Given the awesome responsibility such a calling entails and the necessity of God’s grace to fulfill this calling even if imperfectly, a priest’s full attention needs to be on living out his priesthood.
As such, the Church in Her wisdom has established legal restrictions on priests participating in activities that are unbecoming or foreign to the clerical state (CIC c. 285 §1). While our minds might jump immediately to actions that are sinful, in this context “foreign” does not mean activity that is sinful (there are plenty of laws about that later in the Code) but rather those things that are incompatible with the clerical state due to inherent conflicts between the life of a cleric and the activity that is being restricted.
The first example of this that the Code uses is prohibiting clerics from assuming “public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power” (CIC c. 285 §3). Priests cannot be a governor, or senator, or be a judge in a secular court, or any other similar secular office.
Priests are to be focused on the things of Christ, not the world, and are to be a “symbol and instrument of unity and fraternity amongst all people and apart from any ideological and political confrontation” (Arrieta, Code of Canon Law Annotated). Overtly participating in the political quagmire that is the United States (and other countries) distracts priests from the work of the Gospel and damages their credibility as a representative of the Church and as such the Church forbids it.
While not strictly forbidden, the Church establishes, unless they receive permission from the Church, “Clerics are prohibited from conducting business or trade personally or through others, for their own advantage or that of others” (CIC c. 286). This gets more to the heart of the question. Priests are not allowed to conduct business, even if it is meant to help others. A priest would not be able to work a part-time job, even if he were to donate his salary to a worthy cause. A priest’s primary obligation is to “fulfill faithfully and tirelessly the duties of the pastoral ministry” (CIC c. 276 §2, 1). This means that everything a priest does should be in the spirit of fulfilling his ministry, and working at Chick-fil-a or Home Depot does not do that.
It can and does happen that a priest’s ministry is something that appears to be a secular job. The clearest example of this is with teaching, whether in colleges or high schools. In the Diocese of Lincoln many of our priests teach in our schools. The difference here is that the bishop is assigning them to do this and therefore is part of their ministry, and the priests who teach do not get paid for it, even those who teach a secular subject. Priests who teach at universities would also need to be assigned to do so by their bishop. Priests who are unattached to a bishop or a diocese are by law rogue and, given that every priest promises obedience to his bishop at ordination, it also means that each rogue priest has betrayed his promise.
The final issue raised by the question is the “if he has time” part. Again, the primary focus of every priest is fulfilling his ministerial obligations. Everything a priest does should be toward this end. This does not mean priests have to work 24/7. Taking time to pray every day, taking their day off, using the vacation time that they are given, all of these things are to help them fulfill their ministerial obligations by ensuring that they do not get burned out.
Working a job on the side that is not part of their assignment, even if they donate their salary, is different. It takes time and energy and attention away from their primary obligation of fulfilling their ministerial obligations and as such they are forbidden from doing so.
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.
