The Roman Catholic Church just held its latest synod in the Vatican, this one concerning the Church’s affairs within the Pan-Amazon region. The R.C. Church has found it difficult to operate there, with lots of tiny congregations in small villages that are far-flung and difficult to reach, and on top of that, there’s been a crippling lack of priests to serve them.
Although this synod covered topics such as the Amazonian rainforests being destroyed at an alarming rate, it primarily was concerned with how the Church should work there. As the New York Times reports, one of its conclusions was that the priesthood in that region ought to be opened up to married men (Archive.Is cached article):
A summit of Roman Catholic bishops meeting at the Vatican recommended on Saturday that Pope Francis allow the ordination of married men as priests in the Amazon region, which would lift a roughly 1,000-year-old restriction and potentially revolutionize the priesthood.
It is the first time a grouping of bishops convened by a pope has endorsed such a historic change to the tradition of a celibate priesthood. The proposal is limited to remote areas of South America where there is a scarcity of priests but could set a precedent for easing the restriction on married priests throughout the world.
If Francis, who has already signaled an openness on the issue, accepts the bishops’ recommendation, he will turn the remote areas of the Amazon region into a laboratory for a Catholic Church looking to the global south for its future, with married priests and indigenous rites mixing with traditional liturgy.
The pope is expected to respond to the proposals by the end of this year.
The final document of the summit, noting that many of the faithful in the Amazon region have “enormous difficulties” in receiving communion and seeing a priest, proposed to “ordain priests suitable and esteemed men of the community,” who had already had “fruitful” experiences as deacons and who “receive an adequate formation for the priesthood, having a legitimately constituted and stable family.”
There are just a few things one needs to keep in mind about this supposedly-revolutionary change:
First, the R.C. Church already has some married priests. There are a number of Eastern Rite churches which are, effectively, part of the Catholic Church but allow for married priests. Also, married priests from other churches (mainly, the Anglican) who convert to Catholicism are allowed to be R.C. priests.
Second, the R.C. Church has faced a “vocation shortage” for decades, in almost every country it operates, but the shortage of priests in the Amazon region is particularly acute, and has been viewed as a distinct problem for years. Five years ago, this very proposal had already become a topic of discussion (cached).
Third, this synod didn’t go as far as to recommend women be allowed to become deacons; instead, the Vatican will “study” the history of women in the diaconate. Which means nothing will come of it.
In that context, then, this “viri probati” proposal (in Vaticanspeak) doesn’t seem bizarre or extreme. But you can’t tell that to the conservative faction of Catholicism. They’re just not having it — at all. They were all worked up about this synod even before it began. Cardinal Raymond Burke, perhaps the most reactionary Catholic hierarch in the US and one of the Pope’s main critics, bellyached about the synod’s “working document,” claiming it was an “attack” on Jesus himself (cached), and they’re still pitching fits now that it’s over.
Note that, unlike the majority of Cardinals, Burke has no organizational province. He’d held the pompous title of Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura — essentially, he was a canon law justice of the Vatican — but was dismissed from that post in 2014. Since then, he’s merely been head of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a ceremonial post that gives him control of pretty much nothing at all. Despite having had the organizational rug pulled out from under him, Burke remains influential among conservative Catholics.
Just before the synod ended, those conservative Catholics showed off their astounding immaturity, by stealing some Amazonian statues (which had been given to the Pope for the synod) and pitching them into the Tiber River (cached).The thieves’ contention is that they were “pagan fertility idols” and, thus, profane. Yeah, those Catholic conservatives certainly are a class act, are they not?
I note that the lack of Catholic priests is more severe in the Amazon region than most other parts of the world, hence this possible accommodation, but as I originally noted, priests have been in short supply for decades. The Church’s celibacy requirement certainly is an impediment to bringing young men into seminaries. At one time, societal and economic considerations sometimes made it worth it to become a priest, in spite of the celibacy mandate — for younger sons of nobility who stood to inherit little or nothing, or for middle-class men looking for career options — but the dawn of Enlightenment and the collapse of the feudal order in Europe rendered those apparent advantages moot. Making it worse is that only half of all Catholics (i.e. only men) are even eligible for the priesthood.
Thus, this is a problem that will not go away and may become severe in other parts of the world, as well. Synods dealing with this shortage only on a regional and contingent basis ultimately won’t help the Church. The Church’s celibacy requirement and refusal to ordain women are crippling handicaps — but entirely self-imposed.
Photo credit: Andrew Medichini/Associated Press, via New York Times.