A couple interesting questions have come to my attention, in light of recent events. These questions are complex and multifaceted, and I'll admit that I'm no expert in questions regarding the priesthood -- a canon lawyer or someone involved in priestly formation and direction would be more fully educated regarding these questions. Still, I do have some knowledge of these things, and so I'll do my best to share what I do know in a way that is (relatively) succinct and easy to understand.
First question: What constitutes excommunication? Are priests never excommunicated? What does it mean to say that a priest is "a priest forever"?
Second Question: [In regard to certain priests being unfaithful to their vow of celibacy], for me it always leads back around to the issue of "priests being married". I think the majority of Catholics agree. Not that married priests would not have their own set of issues. What do you think, Leslie -- 100 years from now, might they be able to marry?
Okay, here we go! First, let's talk about excommunication. There was a time in the history of the Church when excommunication referred to two different states. The first was called "minor excommunication," which referred to a person being barred from receiving Eucharistic communion because they were in a state of mortal sin and had not yet been to sacramental confession. This is, of course, a situation that can be easily rectified in modern times by going to confession! The second type, called "major excommunication," referred to a person who was formally declared by a bishop or by the Pope to no longer be in communion with the Catholic Church because of a very serious and deliberate act contrary to the Church's teaching. Only this latter definition of excommunication is in popular use today, and it means that the excommunicated person cannot receive any of the Church's sacraments or participate in her public worship until such a time as suitable reparation and satisfaction have been made. The Church always leaves a path to reconciliation open to excommunicated members, and it is the hope that their time of exile from the ecclesiastical community will be short-lived.
In regard to priests, yes, priests can be excommunicated. If they are, they not only face the same restrictions as an excommunicated lay person, but they are also forbidden from the administration of the sacraments or other sacred rites and they may not exercise any acts of spiritual authority. This does not, of course, mean that an excommunicated person (lay or cleric) ceases to be a Christian -- they are always a Christian by nature of their baptism (which brought about an ontological change, or changed the nature of a person's being). Similarly, a priest, having received the sacrament of Holy Orders and having been ordained a priest through Apostolic succession, once validly ordained, always remains a priest. He may be removed from his ministry due to excommunication, or he may be 'laicized' by his own request for no morally problematic reason. In either case, however, he remains a priest ontologically (or in his soul's nature of being). However, he can no longer exercise priestly functions. See this article on what an ex-priest can and can't do for more details.
In regard to the second question, let me answer this question from its end to its beginning. Do I think that priests might someday be able to marry? Yes. In fact, many priests already are married. There are more than 20 different rites of Catholicism, and in the Eastern rites, it is common to allow priests to marry (although they may not marry after being ordained, and they may not serve as bishops if they are married). Also, although the normal practice for Roman Catholic priests is to be and to remain unmarried, we do have some married Roman Catholic priests who, by a special pastoral provision, converted to Roman Catholicism after having previously served as married priests in the Anglican (or Episcopal) Church. For my local friends, you may be interested to know that the current priest chaplain at St. Mary's hospital is one of these married priests under the pastoral provision.
I have known several married Roman Catholic priests in the USA, and it has been an honor and blessing to know them. However, not one of them has argued in favor of priests in the Roman Rite being regularly married. Why, we may wonder? Here are a few of my own thoughts -- 1. Eastern Rite churches in the US are significantly smaller in numbers of parishioners than Roman Catholic parishes; 2. the demands of time and emotional, spiritual, and physical efforts devoted by the average Roman Catholic priest would significantly limit the time available to care for and support a wife and children; and 3. most of the married priests I know became Catholic when they were not in the midst of life with a young family, and I think they can see the serious challenges of being a married priest more realistically than we can.
Lastly, and most importantly, I want to say this very clearly: priestly celibacy is not the cause of any of their personal indiscretions, and allowing priests to marry would in NO WAY solve individual problems of abuse and infidelity. I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I'm just not sure why so many Catholics think that if priests could marry they would not have the problems that a very public few of them have had/are currently having. This argument makes NO SENSE! This becomes more clear when we look at similar indiscretions committed by men who are not priests. Let me try to illustrate by way of a couple examples:
1. Bob and Sue are married with children. All seems well in their marriage, until Sue learns that Bob has a serious problem with child pornography. I would hope that no one would suggest that if Bob had only had another wife, or a mistress, or even a prostitute, he would not have felt the need to resort to child pornography. Bob has some serious problems that cannot be resolved simply by having a wife.
2. Frank is an unmarried man, and a teacher. He is accused of having inappropriate relationships with several of his students. No one would say that this problem would not have come about if Frank could only have married. Frank could have married, but it clearly would not have resolved whatever deeper problems he had.
I suspect that there are a lot of underlying assumptions about human sexuality that play into the idea that priests need to be married, and I suspect that a lot of these ideas come from the perspective of modern secular psychoanalytical theories and such rather than from a philosophy of the human person that is compatible with Christianity. I'll get into this more tomorrow. I'm sure this is more than enough for us all to ponder for now!
As always, thanks for stopping by! Be assured of my prayers.
Peace and all good,
Leslie
