Last night SuperHusband observed that one reason protestant ministers struggle so much with employment, is that there is a glut of bible-college and seminary graduates.   You want your child to attend a Christian college.  Christian colleges specialize in preparing students for church work.  Christian students are eager to do church work. Ten years ago in a boom economy, the roofing companies knew it and circled like vultures*.

Celibacy is a definite barrier to entry.  You may have had an inkling.

So we asked ourselves last night, what would happen if you did open the gates to ordaining married men?  Would the catholic church face a vocations-glut the way protestants do?

We suspect what we would see is a significant jump in late vocations.  The inability of a priest to re-marry is a strong discouragement for younger men with families, for good reason.  Men rightly don’t want to find themselves with a brand new baby and no mother to care for it.  If your wife dies, you need to have a plan B for who is going to help you rear your children, and remarriage is a pretty good plan B under ordinary circumstances.

These exact reasons are why young, pious catholic married men aren’t rushing off to become deacons.  Who are the deacons?  Older men whose children are grown.  Or at least grown enough, and the wife past the age of childbearing.

So that’s what we guess.  Open the gates of priestly ordination to married men, and we’d expect to see a vast conversion of deacons-into-priests.  Not 100%, necessarily.  But that is where the married priests would mostly come from — or reasonably should come from.

Economically there all sorts of interesting implications, but I’ll refrain from more crass calculating.   Suffice to say that celibate young men are still your best value per sacramental-salary-dollar.

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FYI Even though I can see the practical benefit to ordaining a significant percentage of our permanent deacons to the priesthood, I’m not convinced it is “the solution”.

Two reasons:  One is concern that the former-deacons will end up in an employment vortex of a similar nature to what our protestant kin suffer.  And that reason alone is enough to proceed very cautiously.    The other, more pressing, is concern that ordaining the permanent deacons is a band-aid of a solution.  Maybe even a bad band-aid.

My sense is that our shortage of vocations is caused by a deeply spiritual wound in the church.  One that can only be healed by precisely the kind of self-abandonment  and commitment to the gospel that lifelong celibacy entails.  We as a church suffer from a case of “Do you really mean what you say?”

A young man willing to pass over all the joys of marriage in order to serve Christ?  That’s a guy who means what he says.

 

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*In our area, since that time we’ve had a surge in immigration.  The would-be youth pastors have been supplanted by workers even more cash-hungry.  The best of whom are strong, competent, hard-working, loyal, and unlikely to be called off to the mission field without notice.  And legal, too.  Good for the roofing companies, not so great for the bible students.

 

 

 

Dear Catholic Friends,

We need to talk about this whole married priests things.  Because no doubt some of you read Simcha’s post, and you thought, “Well, sure, those are difficulties.  But protestant pastors and their wives deal with these little parish politics all the time.  Surely we can do it, too.”  And the answer is of course we can.   We could even have sermons about tithing.

But here’s what you need to know: Protestant ministry does not have the job stability of the catholic priesthood.

See most of us only know about protestant ministers from the front facade.  Church, steeple, open the doors and there’s the minister, his wife, and their denominationally-appropriate number of little people.  We think, ha!  This works just like the catholic church, only with wedding rings!  He goes to seminary, he gets assigned a church, his family helps out with vacuuming the pews and folding bulletins, what a life!

And we assume all this works just like the catholic church in another respect: Once a priest, always a priest.  Just do a half-decent job, and the diocese will find a little spot for you somewhere.

No.  It is not like this, anymore than getting  PhD means you’ll soon be a tenured professor.  If we could magically put clerical collars on every former pastor in America, you would drop your coffee.  Yes, your coffee, because that really friendly older guy working the morning shift at Starbucks?  The one that doesn’t say “ya know?” every other word?  He’s probably a former pastor.  (Or a PhD.)

One neat thing about being a a bachelor is that you don’t have a family to support. Men really understand this, which is why historically being a bachelor has had such appeal.  If there isn’t much work in your chosen profession, it isn’t the end of the world.  A friend with an empty couch, a few bucks for groceries . . . you can live on very little if you must.  It works out well for the catholic clergy:  In the unlikely event that there is a sudden glut of catholic (celibate) priests, well, it’s not exactly an employment crisis.  Always room in the rectory for one more bunk.

But if you’re a married minister, it’s another story.  Your church can only afford so much in the way of salaries, and there might not be a congregation hiring full-time, professional-wage staff just now.  But your kids still need to eat.  You can’t just take that assisant-vicar’s co-helper rotation with the minuscule stipend, and philosophically chalk it up to a time for extra prayer and fasting.   You’ve got to make a living.  A real living.  So you go back to doing whatever it was you did before you were ordained — construction, retail, maybe a professional position if you’re lucky and you have the skills.

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Now friends perhaps you think I exaggerate.  Perhaps you think I am using my broad powers of imagination to promote an arch-conservative agenda.  So allow me to give you a list of the “where are they now” of my personal, real-life friends who are former or current married protestant ministers.  All of these men have been through seminary.  They are intelligent, capable, competent, and could hold their own in the ranks of the catholic clergy.  (Which is saying something — I am surrounded by good priests.)  These are not internet friends, these are real guys I speak to in person on a regular basis.  So I’m leaving them as anonymous as I can:

Exhibit A: Was a senior pastor with significant experience, then his church let him go.  Returned to graduate school, earned a PhD, worked in a church position while in school. Couldn’t get a full-time job after.  His wife works full-time now, he homeschools the kids and cobbles together a combination of a freelance preaching gigs, ministry events, and other odd jobs.  (Need a tree cut down?)  Just picked up an adjunct teaching job he hopes will go full time.

Exhibit B: Pastor in a major denomination, congregation laid him off after decades in the ministry.  Applied for positions at other congregations within the denomination, no job offers.  He and his wife both found part-time work that gradually led to full-time work. She works in a nursing home, he works at a grocery store.

Exhibit C: Currently employed, full-time pastor with a major denomination.  And his wife works full time anyway, because there is no way . . . . Repeat: No Way they could pay their bills otherwise.  I know this because these people live in my neighborhood.  And you don’t live in my neighborhood because you are trying to impress anybody. Children attend public schools (no private school tuition), wear hand-me-downs, they drive old cars.  Normal modest middle class life, if you don’t count the part about every spare moment being utterly devoted to the needs of the church.

There are more, but I’ll stop there since you are begging for mercy.  But any more of this starry-eyed dreaming, and you’ll be sent to do rounds with the minister’s wife for penance.

Sincerely,

Jennifer.

 

 

 

Simcha explains why married priests are a bad idea.  H/T to Mrs. Darwin, since “D” comes before “I”, so I saw it there first.

Funny thought from the other week.  So I was sitting standing at mass and two of my students (from separate class-years) were serving that day.  And my very-attentive-to-the-Gospel self thinks:

1.) “Oh yeah, they’d make a great couple”.  Which leads to . . .

2.)  “Well, yes, allowing girls to serve at the altar does foster vocations.  Just maybe not the vocations we had intended.”  Which causes me to conclude . . .

3.) “Then again, where do priests come from?  You need the one vocation if you mean to have the other.”

So that’s what I think about while I am doing my best to look like I’m paying attention, but slip on my effort to actually be paying attention.  Yep, that’ll come up in confession. Again.

–> For the record, I have no particular opinion on whether girls should be altar servers*.   Either my pope, bishop, and pastor know what they are doing, or else if they are failing spectacularly then thank goodness that one it isn’t on my head.  I figure my layperson watchdog powers are better served if I just stick to worrying about the ten commandments.

But I thought, hmmn.  Maybe someone in the hierarchy has actually thought about this?  And having a little catholic match-making service in the sacristy is all part of the program?  Sort of long-range strategic plan.  How else do you expect the thirty practicing catholic kids in the city to actually get to know each other?

Or not.  But my goodness I’m definitely with Simcha on encouraging our youth to pick just one vocation at a time.   I have yet to meet a priest or a married man who isn’t sufficiently poured out with just the lot God gives him.

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*I do think that in parishes where only boys serve on the altar, it is important to have some counterpart role for the girls.  Could be something completely different.  But a specific place where they can serve in the church from an early age.  Ideally something that fosters uniquely feminine vocations.  There is a longer missive associated with this, but I save it for another day.