Description
Book SynopsisThese essays offer a historically rigorous dismantling of Western claims about the superiority of celibate priests.
Although celibacy is often seen as a distinctive feature of the Catholic priesthood, both Catholic and Orthodox Churches in fact have rich and diverse traditions of married priests. The essays contained in Married Priests in the Catholic Church offer the most comprehensive treatment of these traditions to date. These essays, written by a wide-ranging group that includes historians, pastors, theologians, canon lawyers, and the wives and children of married Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox priests, offer diverse perspectives from many countries and traditions on the subject, including personal, historical, theological, and canonical accounts. As a collection, these essays push especially against two tendencies in thinking about married priesthood today. Against the idea that a married priesthood would solve every problem in Catho
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“Married Priests in the Catholic Church makes an original contribution to the history of married and celibate clergy in North America, its pastoral implications, and, most importantly, the theological relationship between marriage and priesthood. I found it so captivating that I could not put it down.” —Radu Bordeianu, author of Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology
"This book is primarily concerned with the clergy of Eastern rites of the Catholic Church, which has a historic tradition of married as well as celibate clergy. . . . Clearly the issue of married clergy remains a stumbling block to East-West church reunification. Other contributors observe the joys and realities of married priests, their families, and their financial problems." —Choice
"Adam A.J. DeVille has done a great service for the Catholic Church by editing the collection of essays that make up Married Priests in the Catholic Church. . . . This book is a welcomed response to certain ideologies that view the Eastern Catholic churches and their married priesthood as a concession to be tolerated, at best, or a denigration of the priesthood of Christ, at worst." —Reading Religion
"The importance of this publication is that it will help members of both the Western Rite and the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church realize that the very different disciplines relating to marriage and priesthood in the Eastern churches and their offshoots in our Western world is not some exotic remnant or historical accident, but an ideal that exalts marriage and, in consequence, priesthood, and is certainly more solidly based on tradition than the mainstream Catholic tradition of the West." —Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies
"Married Priests in the Catholic Church... provides a summary of the challenges that unsettle some of the simplisticcaricatures of some interpretive understandings amongst priests and Bishops." —Reviews in Religion & Theology
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction—Adam A. J. DeVille
Part I. History Ancient and Modern
1. Was Priestly Celibacy an Apostolic Tradition? The Theological Stakes of a Historical Argument—David G. Hunter
2. From Antioch to America via Smyrna: Rethinking Married Priesthood and Parish Life with Ignatius, Alexis, and Polycarp—D. O. Herbel
3. Mandatory Celibacy among Eastern Catholics: A Church-Dividing Issue—James S. Dutko
Part II. Canon Law East and West
4. Recent Papal Pronouncements on the Admission of Married Eastern Catholic Men to the Priesthood: An Ecumenical Issue—Alexander Laschuk
5. Canonical Reflections on Clergy and Marriage—Patrick Viscuso
Part III. Ecumenical Considerations
6. Official Catholic Pronouncements Regarding Presbyteral Celibacy: Their Fate and the Implications for Catholic-Orthodox Relations—Peter Galadza
7. Married Clergy in The Anglican Tradition—John Hunwicke
8. The Gift to the Church of Married Clergy—Edwin Barnes
Part IV. Pastoral-Familial Life
9. Reflections on Two Vocations in Two Lungs of the One Church—David Meinzen
10. Growing Up in a Rectory: Using Oikonomia to Answer the Tough Questions Posed by the Children of Priestly Families—Julian Hayda
11. The Joys and Crosses of Clerical Families—Nicholas Denysenko
12. Marriage and Ministry: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective—William C. Mills
13. “What Did You Expect?”: A Reflection on Married Clergy and Pastoral Ministry—Andrew Jarmus
14. The Vocation of the Presbytera: Icon of the Theotokos in the Midst of the Ministerial Priesthood—Irene Galadza
Part V. Theology
15. Celibacy and the Married Priesthood: Rediscovering the Spousal Mystery—Thomas J. Loya
16. Married Priesthood: Some Theological “Resonances”—Basilio Petrà
17. Married Priests: At the Heart of Tradition—Lawrence Cross and Basilio Petrà
18. Conclusion: Toward a Theology of Married Priesthood—Adam A. J. DeVille
Appendix 1. The Toronto Tempest—Victor Pospishil
Appendix 2. Recent Views on the Origins of Clerical Celibacy: A Review of the Literature from 1980 to 1991—J. Kevin Coyle
Contributors List
Index
