Celibacy & the future of the priesthood: priests should be married.

Years ago Austin Flannery, then editor of the Irish theological journal Doctrine and Life, asked me to write an article called "A Married Layman Looks at Celibacy." "We unmarried priests are always telling married laypeople about marriage," he said. "It's about time someone turned the tables."

In the same spirit, I want to say something as a married priest about clerical celibacy, and the alternative to it. At the age of forty--married, the father of two--I was received into the Orthodox Church. Six years later I entered the seminary, and was ordained a priest at forty-nine. I served as the pastor of a parish for ten years. I have observed both the celibate and the married priesthood. My uncle was a Catholic priest, and I talked with him frequently about his life. Like many Catholic boys, I considered becoming a priest. Having seen both approaches to priesthood, I can say that I believe the married parish priesthood is better from nearly every point of view, especially the pastoral one. But some caveats also have to be made.

First, something about the discipline. Priests in the Orthodox Church may be ordained after marriage; they may not marry once ordained to the diaconate or the priesthood. A priest or deacon whose wife has died must be laicized before remarrying. There is no stigma attached to laicization in such cases; a priest who marries after the death of his wife is free to stay as a lay member in the parish he formerly served, and is often deeply involved in its life.

There are sound pastoral reasons for these limits--or deadlines, as they may be seen to be. An unmarried priest who is free to court will have a relationship with every eligible unmarried woman in the parish that is quite unlike his relationship with other parishioners--not a good idea. In addition, this corresponds with the New Testament desire (see 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1) that bishops ("overseers") or deacons be "the husband of one wife."

Bishops in the Orthodox Church are unmarried, and are drawn from the monastic ranks. From the seventh century on, the Orthodox appointed monks to be their bishops, because monks had a better record for being doctrinally orthodox than people whose fortunes were more tied to the world and the courts.

It has been suggested that the charism of celibacy will be lost in the Roman Church, or at least denigrated, if married men are ordained. Given a culture in which a phrase like "the charism of celibacy" is laughable to many, a culture in which virginity is seen as something to be lost as soon as possible, this is an eminently reasonable concern. Catholics tend to see this in terms of the Catholic/Protestant divide, and celibacy is certainly considered strange in many Protestant circles. In the Orthodox Church, as in Roman Catholicism, monasticism has been a central source of spiritual strength, and celibacy is essential to the monastic calling. Our bishops are all, technically, monks.

The operative word is "technically." Monasticism is at its base a lay vocation; in theory, monks are made priests only if a priest is needed to provide the sacraments for the community. Many bishops, though, have little real monastic experience. They are unmarried and are professed as monks, but most have not had the long formation in the life of prayer that is the essence of monasticism. There are some sad examples of men who have remained celibate in the hope of becoming bishops, which is certainly far from the monastic ideal.

Nevertheless, it is powerfully inspiring to meet a bishop whose spirit is truly monastic--who has the "glorious liberty of the children of God" that should be exhibited by those who have taken it to heart. I have met three such bishops. I will not embarrass two of them by naming them here, but one is dead, and I will name him: the witness of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom is the reason I am Orthodox. The other two likewise conveyed the sense of what Irenaeus said, that "the glory of God is humanity, fully realized."

I am not sure that this power of genuinely charismatic celibacy can be communicated when celibacy is made a legal necessity for all priests. One of the bishops I mention above told a young man who wondered whether he should marry or become a monk: "If you don't understand that you would go crazy if you were anything other than a monk, it's not for you." It was a necessity for him, and I know he lives it well and consistently.

The healthiest celibates I met as a Catholic tended to come from communities of men or women who could bear one another's burdens; there, a generous and sometimes truly inspiring life was possible. But, although I knew many likewise inspiring parish priests, I also saw situations in which they had at best one or two close friends, usually other clerics, drank a lot, and avoided most other forms of human contact. It chilled me. When, as a young person, I thought of becoming a priest, I didn't consider the diocesan priesthood, which seemed isolated in all the most unhealthy ways, but the monastic orders. (I don't want to make it seem that this was a prolonged and agonized decision process. When I began dating the woman I would marry, I remember standing in a chapel and praying, "If you want me to be a monk, Lord, you have to make it really clear .... I don't seem to be heading in that direction.")

Encouraging and inspiring as truly charismatic celibacy can be, there are other necessary pastoral roles. It is helpful if a priest whose daily work involves him with married people and families is himself married and a father. Many parishioners have told me that they would find it difficult to go to confession to a priest who didn't know what it meant to have adolescent kids, or how to make up after an argument with a spouse. They wanted to know that I knew enough about "what it's like" for the discussion to go where it had to go. I must say here that I had Catholic confessors who were profoundly good listeners and very helpful in just about every area, and that this need for personal identification can be overstressed. But in fact the married priesthood does work better here, and discussions are more frank and practically helpful.

Although polls should not be taken as a way to run the church, it is interesting that while most polls show the majority of lay Catholics are open to the ordination of married people, I have not met one Orthodox who believes that the parish priesthood should be restricted to celibate males. There may be one, but he or she has not yet been located. That may say something about the pastoral implications of a married priesthood.

An argument that has been advanced in favor of priestly celibacy suggests that the person who is not committed to one woman or set of children is free to love all. This should be seen as nonsense. It should not be necessary to point out that if you cannot love one woman or child in the flesh, you can't love anyone, much less everyone. I do not mean at all that celibates cannot love deeply, but this argument won't do. Celibacy is a form of fasting from something good, not a freedom from the limitations of loving a particular person. And the associated argument from practicality--an unmarried priest can spend more time on ministry--has two sides. On the one hand, I have not in fact found celibate priests to be harder-working or more dedicated than the married Orthodox priests I know. Frankly, some celibates become adolescent in their approach to their schedules, regarding their time as their own, and resent interruptions in a way that most parents learn to drop after the first child or two. The other side of the question is the possibility that if a married priesthood increased the number of available priests, the celibate priests who are now stretched thin on the ground might not be burning out so frequently--though burn-out is also a problem for Orthodox priests, for Protestant ministers, and for rabbis.

Now to some caveats. When celibates betray their vows, as Catholics have seen in excruciatingly painful detail, the whole church suffers. We Orthodox have not, so far, had a comparably painful trial. But when Orthodox priests who are bishops betray their vows of celibacy, or married priests are unfaithful, the church suffers. Just as some Catholic priests are men whose sexual problems led them to embrace celibacy in the hope that it would cure them, some Orthodox priests married too fast, in order to be ordained immediately after graduation from seminary, or ignored or suppressed the fact that their orientation was homosexual; some have remained celibate, hoping that that state would fix what they experienced as a disturbance. (This is quite different from the situation of a homosexual priest who is committed to the vow of celibacy.) When priestly marriages fall apart (or when the vow of monastic celibacy is betrayed), the whole community is wounded, and great damage is done within the married priests' families. This is not a frequent occurrence, but it is always painful, and leads to feelings of betrayal.

In the Americas there is another complication. (I can't speak of the Orthodox abroad.) Although the church is under the oversight of the bishop, who assigns priests, the church in practice is often congregational in governance. That is, a priest who might be assigned to a parish is interviewed by the parish council, which can tell the bishop it doesn't want him. This is not a bad thing, but in some parishes it leads to a mentality that sees the priest as a hireling of the parish. The priest's wife is often seen as an unpaid fellow hireling, and she is just as prone to being subjected to parishioners' judgment and criticism. While father-knows-best clericalism ought to be avoided, so should the congregational alternative.

One practical question is often brought up: Could the average Catholic parish afford a married priest, with his family's needs? It isn't easy, but it should be noted that most of the parishes in the Orthodox Church in America, my own jurisdiction, are relatively small--from one hundred to three hundred families--and that while most are not wealthy, they manage. For the most part, though, we do not have the parochial schools that many Catholic parishes maintain, and this makes a difference.

It should not be assumed that the priest shortage in the Roman Catholic Church would end if Catholicism were to accept married priests as the norm in the Roman rite. The Orthodox Church in America is currently able to staff its parishes, but within five to seven years, if the priests who are entitled to retire choose to do so, we will face a severe shortage. Salaries are not usually very high; one is unlikely to make more than a barely adequate salary. Most priests are able to feed and educate their children pretty well, but it isn't easy, and it frequently means that a wife is working and carrying her husband on her health-insurance policy. In a society which stresses affluence as a goal, few men are attracted to a life that means hard work and little material reward.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If the priesthood were a financially attractive proposition, it would draw hordes of people you wouldn't want to see working there. It has to be said, though, that even a married priesthood in our kind of culture does not attract a flood of candidates. Some people have noted the large number of convert priests who serve Orthodox parishes, and take it as a sign of health. It isn't. As a convert, I am happy to have discovered Orthodoxy. But I know that not many Orthodox parents encourage their sons to consider the priesthood.

Taking all of this into consideration, I remain convinced, having seen both arrangements, that a married parish priesthood is important, and a better idea than the alternative. At the same time, the celibacy that is central to the monastic witness should be encouraged and even celebrated in a society that has exalted sex--especially sex freed from parenthood and commitment--to nearly idolatrous levels. Still, monks, with the exception of the very few who can be healthy hermits, need monastic community. So do single men and women: not necessarily the community of the monastery, but more community than the church usually offers--a pastoral need that all Christian confessions need to address. Meanwhile, the blessed and sacramental community of marriage is the place in which most Christians find their way to salvation. The priests who minister to them should share it.

Rev. John Garvey is an Orthodox priest, a grandfather, and a Commonweal columnist.