I suppose it is good that three English bishops emeriti, Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth, Thomas McMahon of Brentwood, and John Crowley of Middlesborough have put their names to letters supporting the idea of married priests.
Reports indicate two serving bishops have also expressed support. However, while three letters have got into The Tablet (4 and 11 July), who in Rome will take any notice apart from those who ‘ticked off’ Bishop Crowley last time he flew this flag – in The Tablet, mind you – when he was still the bishop of Middlesborough? If married priests do get the green light the Church’s fortunes are not thereby simply going to change. Those married men are just going to slot into the gaps. It will be the same old. Or would all those people who are tired of clericalism, sexism, and indeed of “the same old” liturgy that clericalism set in place, now come flocking back?
Our Melbourne seer, the retired parish priest Fr Eric Hodgens, wrote a little book on the problem here, calling it New Evangelisation in the 21st Century but giving it the subtitle Removing the roadblocks. He concluded that the situation demanded “the removing of real negatives that block the way to the proper communication of the message and the experience of being Christian.”
I draw attention to the mention of experience. When Michael White and Tom Corcoran first tried to renew their parish in Baltimore and failed, they visited a Protestant evangelical church for ideas. They tell the story in their book rebuilt (2013). What they came away with was the realisation that people were there because pastors led them to experience ‘personal appropriation’ of God’s grace as well as a sense of ‘repentance’ that was ‘not just the sacramental action of absolution’.
Would our married male priests, just in from a bad week at the office or some messy emergency call on a Saturday afternoon in the plumbing trade, be up to engaging with faith life at this level? White and Corcoran, incidentally, were invited to the Sydney Proclaim 2014. As I write, Anglican vicar Nicky Gumbel of the Alpha course is facing up as guest presenter at Birmingham Proclaim 2015. I doubt if this will be enough. Our church needs to do a reality check before parachuting its married men into dying parishes.
Dr John N. Collins, Victoria, Australia
I can’t help but see the bishop’s obviously sincere contribution as a well-timed effort to fuel the debate preceding the coming continuation of the Synod on the Family in October (The Tablet, News, 4 and 11 July). A battle won on the relaxing of the celibate priesthood could be followed by women priests, gay marriage etc. etc. I don’t argue that these things are wrong, only that The Tablet needs to present both sides of the argument.
Our Roman Catholic Church is both traditional and sacramental; its priority has always been to promote and endorse the ‘Word of God’ in Holy Scripture and to interpret and support it through the medium of church tradition. Other Christian Churches have taken different paths, all, one hopes, leading to the same destination
I do not see the Christian Church as disunited; God is unknowable, and, therefore Christianity can speak in many voices, which may occasionally sound contradictory, but we grow as Christians in the dynamic tension of controversy rather than the mediocrity of compromise. It is good that we speak with many voices but imperative that one of those voices is the voice of the Roman Catholic Church that doesn’t compromise with the Word of Holy Scripture and that sees it as totally reasonable that a man called by God to serve as priest should be prepared to be celibate. May I have my Church back please?
Alan Munro, Hampshire
Despite the obvious challenges involved in ordaining married men the far greater question is this (The Tablet, News, 4 and 11 July); do we as a Church, an institution after all which has always maintained the centrality and importance of the Eucharist, believe that it can continue and flourish without a married clergy?
The notion that more and more parishes can be amalgamated to fill the gaps left by declining numbers of priests is to deny the importance of the local parish, which like the family, is a cell of the Universal Church.
I firmly believe that a celibate priesthood is a great gift to the Church but as one of your recent correspondents noted, the gifts that married priests and their families can bring to the Church enrich parish life in other ways. It is obvious now that there is room, (and plenty of it) for both. After all, for over half of its history, the Church has had married clergy. It really is time for a bit of creative thinking.
Dom Stephen Horton OSB, Gloucester
A growing slate of retired English and Irish bishops, including a post-80 cardinal, may have little to lose in calling for some married viri probati to be accepted for ordination (The Tablet, News, 4 and 11 July).
All the more laudable, then, are serving bishops such as Bishops Burns and Cunningham who raise their voices, but especially Bishop Leo O'Reilly of Kilmore who has listened to his diocese and, no doubt, to Pope Francis, before taking the practical step of bringing the twin questions of married priests and women deacons to his colleagues in the Conference of Irish Bishops.
Of course, while still serving, Bishop Willie Walsh aired the hotter twin questions of married and women priests ten years ago during Pope Benedict's first year, as did Bishop Brendan Comiskey over 20 years ago when Pope St John Paul II was still fairly fit and well and the saintly Cardinal Basil Hume was preparing to ordain at least ten married Anglican priests for Westminster. But today Basil Hume's successor in Westminster does not see the ordination of married men as a "pressing issue". Or perhaps even as an issue for the Catholic press!
Eddie Finnegan, London
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