Why Can’t Catholic Priests Marry?

I am often asked, “Why can’t Catholic priests marry?” This is certainly a long-standing debate and one that rages throughout history. According to Pew Research, 60 percent of Catholics believe priests should be allowed to be married.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis seems to be giving this issue real consideration. Politically, it would be a big movement for the Catholic church and, as such, he is treading carefully. But he has opened the door by suggesting perhaps priests could be married in those areas where there is a shortage of priests, such as the Pacific Islands and parts of South America. These are both places where there has been a significant rise in Catholicism.

A term being used is Viri Probati, which means “Men of proven Virtue.” The term is being used as a bridge to ending the marriage ban. Many in the Vatican are discussing this transition. But, as with all large organizations, change comes slowly.

It’s about discipline

The issue of having married priests has been with the church since at least 305 AD. At the Council of Elvira, married priests were asked to maintain a lifestyle of abstinence. Later, in 325 AD, at the Council of Nicaea convened by Constantine, a proposal to forbid married men to become priests was rejected.

It wasn’t until 1139 AD, at the Second Lateran Council, that an edict came out against married priests.

It is important to note that having unmarried men be priests is a discipline and not a doctrine. This means the pope can more readily change the rules.

Of all the reasons I have read in favor of this enacted discipline, the most prominent is the creation of a group “set apart.” Garry Wills suggested in Under God that the ban on marriage was adopted to lift the status of priests at a time when their authority was being challenged by nobles and others.

Separation of Church and State

In other words, the idea was to create a group that was freed from the politics of the twelfth century—a form of separation of church and state. In the preceding thousand years, the papacy and the church were influenced by political powers who sought to gain an advantage by controlling the church.

There is also ancient history from before Jesus’s time that has influenced the church. Early Druid priests were asked to not marry. This was also true of other pre-Christian religious sects. The thought was based on maintaining purity and a commitment to living a higher life.

Early Protestant reformers rejected the concept of having clergy not being married. It was viewed by Luther as a deviant lifestyle. Other than small groups like the Shakers, most Protestant sects still hold this position. It should be noted that Luther himself, a former Catholic priest, married a former nun whom he’d rescued from a German nunnery.

In 2012, a small scrap of parchment was discovered that quoted Jesus as saying, “My wife…” Scholars have reviewed this scrap and determined it was from antiquity and authentic. Does this mean Jesus had a wife? Maybe, but more likely it was the start of a quote about Jesus and the church. Jesus, in Revelations, is compared to a bridegroom, and his bride is New Jerusalem—the church of believers. So, while there has been speculation for centuries about whether or not Jesus was married, it is doubtful that he was.

Paul, in his letters, discussed marriage, and while he didn’t come out on either side, he left it up to the individual but cautioned that marriage could affect our following of Christ.

Biblically, there is no guidance about whether clergy should be married. The issue is one of custom and discipline.

It would be easy to say that those of the Catholic faith should follow the Protestant direction. However, the Protestant tradition was created by individuals like Luther who believed it was okay for clergy to be married and that to not marry was an invitation to lead an aberrant life.

Pope Francis currently holds the key to solving this issue. Because marriage by the clergy is not a doctrine, it could, in theory, be changed fairly easily. But tradition is not easily broken. There is still a large minority who believe that priests should not marry.

Pope Francis himself has said that chastity on the part of the priest is a real gift to the church. But, at the same time, he recognizes its potential impact on morality in terms of priestly conduct and the recruitment of future priests. He also realizes that this is a sensitive subject that could cause a schism in the church if not handled carefully.

Personally, I do think priests should be given the option to marry if they feel they can best serve the church through marriage as opposed to a life of celibacy. But that is a very Protestant view. There is something to be said for those who would choose to stay single as a symbol of their virtue.

The days when noblemen and kings could influence the church are long past and perhaps the rule is no longer needed.

There are places in the world that are growing in Christ that do not have enough clergy to guide them. Marriage can be a detriment to recruiting priests. Pope Francis recognizes this and has floated a trial balloon to potentially relax this discipline in those areas. Perhaps it is his way of easing the rules so that, eventually, all priests would be permitted to marry.

Pope Francis currently holds the key to solving this debate. I do not envy his position. Regardless of his own feelings, he has constituents on both sides of the argument who believe strongly in their views. This is a river he must try to navigate for the sake of the church.

Blessings, until next time,
Bruce L. Hartman

Dr. Bruce L. Hartman is the author of Jesus & Co. and Your Faith Has Made You Well.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Looking Deeper Before We Judge

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

John 8:7

She was an African American born in 1902 who grew up in southern Mississippi. Throughout her youth she endured segregation, learning where she could go and what she could say. It was a tough life that required her to be vigilant so as to not offend the white folks. As she approached her teen years she started to think about her future. She saw the jobs the older African American women had: most were wash maids, servants, or wives of sharecroppers. She saw them struggle to make a life. It was not the kind of life she wanted for herself.

At the age of eighteen, she gathered up what few belongings she had and walked twenty-eight miles north to the town of Natchez. It was bigger than her small, rural town—perhaps here she could fulfill her dream of a better life. She quickly found out that not much was different for an African American woman in Natchez.

The only job she could find that paid well was as a prostitute in a section of town called, “Under the Hill.” It was a tough place filled with brothels and bars and a place where people would sometimes disappear.

It was especially dangerous for a prostitute.

She learned her craft well and squirreled away a large amount of money. She also developed a clientele that included the powerful men of Natchez and the surrounding communities. By the age of twenty-three, she’d saved enough money to buy a house on Rankin street in an upper middle-class part of town.

Here she continued her trade, safe from the dangers of working on the riverfront. Over a few years, many came to the screen door in the back of her house, and she hired other workers of the night.

By 1930 she had a full-blown brothel operating in the heart of town. She would run the brothel for another sixty years.

She was clever in how she ran her business. She kept a black book containing the names of the powerful men who visited her. On Christmas, she delivered expensive liquor to the mayor, police chief, and local sheriff.

All promised to leave her alone.

She would not let black men into her brothel for fear of reprisal. Every day she had southern comfort food for her clients. She sold beer and kept a cheery house. Not only did the locals visit, but soon she became Mississippi’s most famous madam. There was an Army base nearby, and on Saturday nights, the young serviceman would line up for blocks, waiting their turn.

But there was another side to this successful and tough businessperson. She and her girls made food for the local orphanage and delivered it secretly to the back door. She gave generously to the local Catholic church.

She paid for neighborhood improvements. If a neighbor needed money for repairs, she gave it to them.

During the civil rights era, when many local blacks were arrested for peacefully protesting, she used her pull with local officials and had them released.

The FBI would visit her house early in the morning to get information about the Ku Klux Klan. Despite the danger, she told them all that she knew and was instrumental in eliminating the Klan from her community.

She had one rule that she never broke.

After one of her girls was murdered by a drunken client, she refused to serve anyone who’d been drinking. It was a rule that would ultimately cost her her life.

On July 4th of 1990, a young man appeared at her back door, belligerent and drunk. She refused him entry. He left and went to the local gas station where he filled up a canister with gasoline and then went back to her house.

This time, she came to the door with a pistol she kept for protection. The man threw gasoline on her through the screen door and lit a match. Not only did she catch on fire, but her assailant did too.

As he ran away, he looked like a running fireball.

The house caught on fire, and she stumbled to her bedroom where she collapsed with severe burns on 80 percent of her body. A young female firefighter who responded to the scene comforted her while rescue vehicles arrived. Barely alive and breathing heavily, her last moments were lived in agony.

She and her assailant both died the next day. Pastor O’Connor, the priest from the nearby Catholic church offered to arrange her funeral. It was the same church that she had helped many times over the previous sixty years.

During the next week, some of the parishioners complained bitterly about their church being used for a madam’s funeral. Despite this, the following Sunday, Pastor O’Connor delivered a fire and brimstone sermon about judging others. He quoted the above verse from John 8:7. It is the story of a woman who was stoned for leading a life as a prostitute. When Jesus arrived, he asked the crowd to only cast a stone if they had never sinned. As we all know, the crowd disbanded.

The woman’s name was Nellie Jackson, and you won’t find a Wikipedia page about her. But if you google her name, you can read her story from newspaper accounts, and in 2017, a local produced a documentary called Mississippi Madam.

If you watch it, you will discover that she attended many World Series—the last one in 1984 in Detroit. Her tickets were given to her by Bill Harrah—yes, the man who started the Harrah casinos.

Nellie was befriended and beloved by many.

Not because she ran a brothel but because she gave to her community. She was a person who listened to those that needed comfort. Those who worked for her loved her, and so did her clients.

I don’t write this to support brothels or to glamorize prostitution. I write it to tell a story about a woman who did the best she could when society tried to keep her in a box. Could she have become a doctor and saved lives? Could she have become a great stateswoman and fought for democracy? Maybe, but given her background it’s unlikely.

Jesus defended the prostitute because he knew one thing—we all fail. Ours is not to judge but to pray for understanding. Ours is not to hate, but to love. We are all made in the image of God.

Blessings, until next time,
Bruce L. Hartman

Dr. Bruce L. Hartman is the author of Jesus & Co. and Your Faith Has Made You Well.

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

Wanda: a Story of a Faithfully Lived Life

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians [3:14]

At our after-church Bible study, I went up to a woman and thanked her for giving us a wonderful testimony of a life lived fully with faith. Each Sunday after church, one hundred or so people gather for this Bible study group. It is definitely the largest I have ever attended. Each Sunday, one person gives a short testimony about their life.

This particular Sunday it was Wanda’s turn.

As I greeted Wanda after the Bible study ended, I noticed how frail she was. She walked with a cane, and her skin told the story of a woman whose earthly body was wearing down. But in her eyes, I saw a humble and joyous woman. Each time I told her that I was amazed at what she had accomplished, she said, “It wasn’t me; it was our Lord working within me.” She took no credit for anything that had happened in her wonderful life.

She had been very nervous speaking to this large group.

Her mouth was still dry as she talked with me, revealing exactly how nervous she had been. She confided that up to the moment she started speaking, she was sure she would fail. With a silent prayer, she started talking and held the audience’s attention throughout her riveting talk. Again, when I told her what a marvelous speaker she was, she said, “It was God and not me.”

When Wanda had first gotten married, she and her husband decided they would devote their lives to helping others and joined a missionary group that served in the States. First, they went to Colorado Springs for one year of training and received their certificates to be missionaries. Their early life was hard, with little in the way of financial resources, yet they continued.

They went to San Diego and worked in a house that harbored the poor. Wanda was a cook, cleaning lady, and baby sitter. Her husband was a general fix-it person. To supplement their income, her husband went to work with General Dynamics.

Later, she heard of a man who also worked as a missionary whose wife had died and left him with three young children. Through prayer, she felt that God was asking her to help this man with his children. She talked with her husband who, coincidently, had the same thing on his heart. So they approached the leaders of their missionary organization and mentioned they were willing to help him. They replied, “Thanks, but he is going to have a nurse help him.”

But Wanda had felt, through prayer, that God wanted her and her husband to help this man. She also felt that God had told her that she and her husband would have a child after they were done. By that time, Wanda and her husband had been married for seven years and had no children.

It looked bleak for them to be able to raise a family.

A couple of weeks later, the mission group called to say that the man could use their help after all. Wanda and her husband moved in at the mission where the widower was staying. For a couple of years, Wanda took care of the children while her husband and the widower worked in the mission.

When her assignment was over, she got a call that a young sixteen-year-old was about to have a baby and wanted to give the child up for adoption. They asked Wanda if she would care for the infant until adoptive parents could be found. She said yes. They took the baby, and her husband went back to work at General Dynamics. She applied to adopt the baby herself, and the mission she had been working for provided the money for legal help. After a few months, she and her husband became the child’s adoptive parents.

Later, another adopted child arrived.

Wanda now had the family she’d always wanted. Her husband got promoted and was transferred to Fort Worth, Texas, where he continued his climb up the corporate ladder. They lived there, raising their two children for thirty-four years.

Their children grew up and had kids of their own. Both ended up in the mountains of western North Carolina. When Wanda’s husband retired, they moved to Asheville to be with her children and grandchildren.

Today, Wanda has been married for sixty-six years and has grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has never stopped helping others. Through her church, she worked on many missions. Even today, at nearly ninety years old, she stills works for the Lord.

Wanda is frail today and slowing down, but her eyes are still bright. She will only thank God for the wonderful life she has led. While younger versions speed around and build their own lives, Wanda stays in the fortress of the life she built with God.

Blessings, until next time,
Bruce L. Hartman

Dr. Bruce L. Hartman is the author of Jesus & Co. and Your Faith Has Made You Well.

Photo by Nicole Honeywill / Sincerely Media on Unsplash