Catholic bishops support ordination of married men as priests in Amazonia, milestone

Cardinal Beniamino Stella, prefect of the Vatican clergy office, said the ordination of married men could respond to this “sacramental emergency”. During a press briefing on Thursday, however, he also stressed that he believes celibacy is a gift worth protecting.

Married men are already priests in Eastern Catholic Churches faithful to the Pope in Lebanon, Ukraine and elsewhere. (They cannot serve as bishops.) And Anglican priests who convert and are ordained in the Catholic Church can remain married.

But generally speaking, for about 1,000 years, the Catholic Church has forbidden marriage to its priests and demanded celibacy, although this is not a requirement of Catholic doctrine.

At the beginning of the Church, married men often became priests, although they sometimes stopped having sex with their wives, an extension of what historians say was the abstinence required of Jewish priests before they did. enter the Holy Temple. Over time, ordination came to be seen more and more as a church marriage, and Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians was often cited in support of celibacy.

“A single man worries about the things of the Lord, how he can please the Lord,” the letter read. “But a married man worries about the things of the world, how he can please his wife, and he’s divided.”

In the Middle Ages, when married aristocrats with children filled the ranks of bishops and cardinals, fatherhood became a financial concern for the church. Priests who bequeathed property to their sons were at risk of losing Church property. The popes of the 11th and 12th centuries insisted on abstinence.

This rule remained in the books for a millennium, although the social upheavals of the 20th century and the exodus of men from the priesthood led to a reconsideration during the Vatican Council II of the 1960s.