The meeting for the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian region has approved a final document which calls for the ordination of married men as priests and for women to be considered for diaconal ordination.
One of the document’s most anticipated and likely controversial items is the call by the synod fathers for the ordination of proven married men, so-called viri probati, in the face of an acute shortage of priests in many parts of the region.
“Many of the ecclesial communities of the Amazonian territory have enormous difficulties in accessing the Eucharist,” the document says, while noting that some communities go for months, even years between visits from a priest.
The document proposes “to establish criteria and dispositions on the part of the competent authority… to ordain as priest suitable and esteemed men of the community, who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive an adequate formation for the priesthood, having a legitimately constituted and stable family, to sustain the life of the Christian community.”
These criteria, together with each individual paragraph of the text, was approved by a two-thirds vote of the synod’s voting members.
Bishop Erwin Kräutler, the retired head of the Xingu prelature in Amazonian Brazil, told reporters that the proposal for the ordination of married men was not a surprise.
“It is what we expected, of course,” Kräutler said. The article passed by a margin of 128-41.
The synod’s final document explicitly linked the proposal to allow the ordination of married men to ministry in “the most remote areas of the Amazon,” but recognized that several of the synodal participants “were in favor of a more universal approach to the subject.”
The synodal document also called for new and enhanced ministerial roles for women in the life of the Church in the region.
The bishops also recognized that in the Amazon “the majority of Catholic communities are led by women,” and asked “for the institution of a ministry for ‘women’s leadership of the community’ to be created and recognized within the service of the changing demands of evangelization and community care.”
The bishops also noted that “in a large number of these consultations, the permanent diaconate for women was requested.”
During the press conference on Saturday, Paulo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Communications confirmed that the pope hoped to issue a post synodal apostolic exhortation “within a relatively short period of time.”
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
The Vatican permits ordained, married Protestant clergy to become Catholic Priests. The door is already ajar. The only question is how far.
Anyone will be allowed to be a priest now, because you know, they wouldn’t want to discriminate…
Who would want to take the difficulties of being married and add to them the difficulties of being a priest?
No Church of Apostolic origin, Catholic or Orthodox, has ever had women deacons. As I’ve noted before, deaconesses are not the same as deacons. One needs simply to look at the history, ministries and ordination rites of deaconesses to know that they were not ordained to the Sacrament of Holy Order. Cardinal Muller already studied this and wrote a book on it. This will only make our reunification with the Orthodox more difficult, IF this happens. As an Eastern Catholic, I’ll leave my Latin Catholic brothers and sisters to determine if ordaining married men to the priesthood is appropriate for your particular Church. That said, it is not the solution to a priest shortage. (Faithful evangelization and catechesis result in single men answering the call to the priesthood.)
It appears they did not address the Pachamamas. That issue should be clarified. Some officials were saying they weren’t our Blessed Mother, while others were saying they were, under the title Our Lady of the Amazon. They seem to be a grotesque, inappropriate image of Our Lady, if that’s what they’re supposed to be. And, why did the Pope apologize only to those offended by their removal from a church and not to those offended by pagan idols being placed in a Catholic church in the first place?
Our Pope is a Jesuit. But it seems he rarely thinks and acts like one! I have enjoyed reading all about St. Ignatius’ methods and rules for discernment, as stated in his “Spiritual Exercises,” and this has helped me a great deal, in my life! I have often wondered, especially since Vatican II– how our Popes and Church leaders pray, and make their big decisions– which at times have seemed very poor! Are they truly being led by the light of the Holy Spirit?? Or something else??
Our “Post – Christian Pope…
https://spectator.org/the-post-christian-pope-and-the-pacha-idols/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=2e67bf307c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_28_01_35&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-2e67bf307c-104427405
Throughout my adult life I’ve been saying, “If you want to get married, don’t become a priest.” The logic seems simple to me. Some are suggesting allowing priests to marry as a way to stop the clergy sex-abuse scandal. Since the offending priests seem to be victimizing young men, allowing priests to marry women would be like providing a seafood dinner to a steak lover. Looking at Protestants, marriage among pastors is as mandatory as their oratory skills. Unmarried pastors are usually marginalized, given administrative positions, and eventually disappear. Maybe the Catholic Church is taking the longer view here. If Catholic priests were permitted to marry, it would become mandatary in about a generation. That would make the priesthood less inviting to the homosexuals who are currently causing so many problems. Maybe each order of priests should be allowed to decide for themselves to allow marriage.
Homosexual priests are going to marry other homosexual priests and possibly some altar boys.
The Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church generally wants its priests to be unmarried. The Anglican Priest who converts is an exception. Most of us in the US don’t relate to the Eastern Rites of the Roman Catholic Church, and there are many. Most of them allow married priests. I think that sometimes it’s good for us who live in this part of the world that we are not the church of northern Europe, but of the world. Not allowing priests to marry goes back to the day when bishops and priests owned the church property and money and left it to their wives when they died. So, someone made up a “religious” reason to have unmarried priests and now it is part of our history. It’s not about religion, its about power.
Married priests will not solve everything. Just google “Indianapolis priest facing allegations of Kidnapping”; to see. The priest in the article converted from a Christian denomination to become a married Catholic priest. When he allegedly caught his wife in the back seat of a car with another man, “all hell broke loose”.
On radio stations sermons have been given on how some very well known and admired Protestant medical ministers had wives, and sometimes children,who died early deaths because they could not take the conditions in the missionary countries. Some wives returned home, breaking up their own families, just to survive.
Charity should begin at home
To help clarify: no Church of Apostolic origin (Catholic or Orthodox) allows their priests to marry. Rather, in such particular Churches, as they’re called, married men as well as celibate men may be ordained to the priesthood. And, of course, a priest or deacon is not permitted to marry again if his wife dies. Easy way to remember: Does anyone want their parish priest on Catholic Match?! And, I don’t think that is what is even being considered. In the West or Latin Church, of course, celibacy has generally been the discipline for priests for more than a thousand years and the Eastern Catholic Churches also value celibacy. (Bishops always come from the celibate clergy.)
In First Timothy, chapter 3, verses s1-13, Paul list the qualifications of various ministers: It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. read more.
He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
By the way, the priest in that article WAS ALREADY MARRIED before he entered the Catholic Church as Deacon Anderson has informed us is the custom.
Our Pope and his clerics never did listen to and tackle honestly, the true problems of the Catholic Amazonians, in their Synod! All they did, was impose their own liberal garbage on the Synod– complete with a ceremony of fake pagan “idols” — instead of honestly discussing real issues– and figuring out how to bring CHRIST to the Amazon region, as missionaries used to do!! And forget the sick, power-hungry, evil, unChristian feminists, screaming for “deaconesses!” They do not love CHRIST!! They worship themselves! Amazonians do not need the Catholic Church to “concoct” a “deaconess” for them! Ridiculous! Get St. Mother Teresa’s nuns to go and serve their needs– and invite Catholic lay women to humbly, prayerfully, lovingly come and help them! And a “married priesthood” of poor, uneducated “viri probati” indigenous natives, and their wives and children– are not needed! Instead– assign a good missionary religious order to go to the Amazon region! They would LOVE that mission!!
I also wish that their could be a distinction between ordination and a lifetime of parish ministry. People live much much longer than they did in the 16th century, yet we expect men to carry out the same job, possibly in the same location, for decades upon decades. I think there could be a lot more willing to go into ministry if they knew that they could re-up their parish work for 5 year intervals, but would then be free to pursue other interests like running a small business, take a job, go back to school to study a new field. Their sacerdotal status wouldn’t change…they would still be ordained and would still be able to return to parish ministry. In yesterday’s world, when you chose an employer, you were expected to be loyal to that employer (and the employer to the employee) for life. Nobody believes that anymore. It is not at all uncommon for people to have 2 or 3 careers and maybe 10 or more jobs throughout their life. The Church would benefit enormously from the experience of priests who have from time to time had to earn a living, perform competitively in the labor market, and have to interact with a variety of supervisors, peers, and supervisees. If parish ministry (not the clerical state) had the possibility of time-limited service and they could be ordained after being married, I think the priest shortage would go away in a generation.
Now that the work of our Jesuit Pope is complete, could he please retire?