Archbishop President of Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference calls for 'Viri Probati'
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Pope Francis' Synod of Bishops is set to discuss dropping mandatory celibacy for Latin-rite priests after Cdl. Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod, assured the Latin American Federation of Married Priests that their voice will be heard.
The call for married Latin-rite priests is being strongly backed by Abp. Sithembele Sipuka, the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, who is urging Rome to make clerical celibacy optional instead of ordaining women as deacons.
CELIBACY OPTIONAL, NOT OBLIGATORY
In a letter sent to Grech at the end of August, the Latin American Federation of Married Priests pleaded that "it would be very good and healthy for the Church" if "the ministry of the married priest were to be sincerely raised in a dialogue of priestly fraternity."
The federation asked for "celibacy [to be] be optional and not obligatory, thinking of the good of the Church and of Evangelization," noting that "we want to bear witness that being a priest and married is possible and fruitful, as were the first ones called by Jesus."
"On the contrary, on almost every measure, married priests are more active and committed to their ministry than are celibate priests."
"We recognize and support celibacy as a gift for the Church, but we also know that throughout history and time the obligation of this condition has caused many problems," the letter, signed by the federation's president Sebastián Cózar Gavira, said.
"We want to be taken into account, to be listened to according to the wishes expressed by the Synod itself, as brother priests," it added.
Citing the Synod's Instrumentum Laboris, the federation pleaded that "this is a need that is expressed on all continents and affects people who, for various reasons, are or feel excluded or marginalized from the ecclesial community, or who struggle to find in it the full recognition of their dignity and gifts."
TOP SYNODAL CARDINAL OPEN TO MARRIED PRIESTS
Responding to the federation's letter earlier this week, Grech stated: "The Lord knows how to make your cry present in the Synod hall."
The cardinal's openness to discussing optional celibacy contradicts his earlier position expressed in March, when he declared that the issue of married priests "has never been put on the table," nor will it be discussed in the working group dealing with the relationship with the Eastern Churches, which have married priests.
In a September 2022 interview, Grech clarified that Pope Francis' response to the question of ordaining married men "is not a rejection," but rather is "a question that hasn't matured yet." Grech added: "Yes. We need time!"
Grech's episcopal colleague from Malta, Abp. Charles Scicluna, created a stir in his traditionally Catholic homeland when he called for the Church to give priests the option to marry since the discipline of clerical celibacy "was optional for the first millennium of the Church's existence and it should become optional again."
"Why should we lose a young man who would have made a fine priest, just because he wanted to get married? And we did lose good priests just because they chose marriage," stated Scicluna, who will be representing Malta at the October Synod.
AFRICAN PRELATE CALLS FOR 'VIRI PROBATI'
Meanwhile, in his opening address at the Southern African bishops' biannual plenary gathering on Aug. 5, Abp. Sipuka said that the question of ordaining "matured and proven married men" ("viri probati") needs to be taken up at the forthcoming synod.
The archbishop reminded his fellow bishops that the Amazon Synod in October 2019 concluded its discussions "with a vote of 128 in favor and 41 against" a deeper exploration of the potential of viri probati.
Lamenting how southern Africa suffers from a massive shortage of priests, Sipuka stressed that a "viable solution [to the priest shortage] is needed."
"In rural dioceses, some outstations get visited by a priest once a month, which means that if [the faithful] are lucky, they get 12 Eucharistic celebrations a year, and when some mishaps occur and the priest cannot travel to these communities, they get less," he said.
"In both epistles commandment is given that only monogamists should be chosen for the clerical office whether as bishops or as presbyters."
The "source and summit of Christian life and a significant feature of our faith that is characteristically Catholic, and we wonder why our Catholics are not Catholic enough. How can they be Catholic enough when they are deprived of the major source of Catholic identity, the Eucharist?" Sipuka asked.
In an interview following his address, Sipuka cited the missionary Bp. Fritz Lobinger, who headed the rural diocese of Aliwal North in South Africa from 1987 until he retired in 2004.
Bishop Lobinger, who faced a shortage of priests in his own diocese, suggested that "married elders" from local communities should be ordained to the priesthood so that priest-deprived communities could have regular access to the Eucharist, Sipuka observed.
"While the viri probati concept is not original to us, the version Bishop Lobinger proposes is uniquely local and homegrown," he explained. "Many good and capable men have retired from income-earning jobs and are back in the rural homes where they grew up."
ST. JEROME INTERPRETS SCRIPTURE ON CELIBACY
While mandatory celibacy is a discipline and not a dogma required by priests in the Latin-rite church, married Anglican and Lutheran priests have been permitted to serve as Catholic priests.
While almost all Eastern rite Catholic priests are married (the episcopate is reserved only for monks), advocates of a married priesthood mention St. Paul's instructions in his pastoral epistles requiring bishops, priests and deacons to be the "husband of one wife" (1 Timothy 3: 2-5, Titus 1: 5-6).
In his commentary on the pastoral epistles, St. Jerome writes: "In both epistles commandment is given that only monogamists should be chosen for the clerical office whether as bishops or as presbyters."
"And indeed, it is under our control that a bishop or priest be without fault and have one wife," Jerome observes in his commentary on Titus.
Responding to the argument that married priests with families will have no time to look after their congregations, sociologist Fr. D. Paul Sullins compares the weekly working hours of married and celibate priests, and discovers that "a sizeable proportion of the celibate priests worked far fewer hours than did the married priests."
The priest-sociologist elaborates in his book Keeping the Vow: The Untold Story of Married Catholic Priests –
"The standard measures of ministerial commitment – workload, satisfaction, devotion, and dogmatism – fail to reveal any advantage of celibacy for commitment to the priestly role or ministry. On the contrary, on almost every measure, married priests are more active and committed to their ministry than are celibate priests."
"Married priests reported greater (job) satisfaction than did celibate priests on almost every measure," Sullins writes. In matters of orthodoxy, "married priests exceeded celibate priests in their support of the truth claims of the Catholic faith."
Pope John Paul II, however, while not citing 1 Timothy or Titus in his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, stressed that "priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound changes."
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
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