Pope Francis

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Will the Catholic Church allow married priests in the western Latin rite? Should It?

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Will the Catholic Church allow married priests in the western Latin rite? Should It?

QUESTION:

Will the Catholic Church allow married priests in the Western Latin rite? Should It?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The new year began with the surprise revival of this perennial issue by a prominent Catholic insider who asserted that the mandate for priests to be unmarried and celibate “was optional for the first millennium of the Church’s existence and it should become optional again.”

This came in a media interview with Archbishop Charles Scicluna, 63, named by Pope Francis in 2015 to lead the church in the nation of Malta. As he indicated, celibacy for all priests, not just those under vows in religious orders, was not made an absolute rule till the Second Lateran Council in A.D. 1139. Back then, one reason was to stop corrupt bishops from handing sons their lucrative posts.

Catholicism is the only branch of Christianity that imposes this requirement.

Sciclina is an especially influential figure due to his 2018 appointment by Francis to a second post as Adjunct Secretary of the Vatican’s all-important agency on doctrine. Over the years, the Vatican has also entrusted the archbishop, who holds doctorates in both secular and canon law, to prosecute delicate cases of sexual abuse by priests.

As Scicluna noted, the Catholic Church has long welcomed priests who marry prior to ordination in its Oriental and Eastern Rite jurisdictions, centered in Ukraine, India, Lebanon and in the Mideast. Such is also the tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy, which ordains married men, but requires celibacy for bishops. (Catholicism occasionally ordains married Protestant ministers who convert, such as Anglicans and Lutherans.)

The archbishop asked, “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.” He said “experience has shown me this is something we need to seriously think about.” For one thing, some priests cope with the rule “by secretly engaging in sentimental relationships” and “we know there are priests around the world who also have children.” Therefore “if it were up to me I would revise the requirement.”

Was Scicluna nudging delegates who next October will attend the second and final session of Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops at the Vatican?


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Why not cover these stories? GetReligion kept asking about attacks on Catholic churches

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Why not cover these stories? GetReligion kept asking about attacks on Catholic churches

There have been many big stories on the Catholic beat since I started contributing to GetReligion in November 2018.

Over the last five years, I have written about Catholicism as it related to doctrinal fights, politics, education and even sports. In between, we had a pandemic. Brother, has it been a busy time.

Over that time, I looked at mainstream news coverage regarding these issues and the growing importance of Catholic news media in the digital age. Catholic media is crucial, in large part, because of the many important religion stories that way too many elite mainstream newsrooms are ignoring.

No story has been bigger — in terms of both importance and reader interest — than church fires.

Churches have been targeted in the United States and around the world in what has easily been one of the most underreported (in some cases not reported at all) stories of the last decade. The problem? When it comes to press coverage, not all religious sanctuaries are created equal.

In my final post here at GetReligion, let’s take a look back at this trend.

In terms of news, the biggest was not an act of arson, according to authorities, but an accident. It was on April 15, 2019 that a structural fire broke out in the roof space of Notre Dame in Paris, a medieval Catholic cathedral and one of the biggest symbols of Christianity throughout the world.

By the time the fire was extinguished, the 12th century gothic house of worship’s spire had collapsed, its famed rose window destroyed, most of its roof wiped out and its upper walls severely damaged.

I was in my office at The King’s College in New York City when I saw the news alerts. I had already filed a post for GetReligion — ironically! — regarding a rash of fires at churches across France during Lent.

That new post — with quick rewriting by me and speed editing by tmatt (who was across the hall on that day) — went online while the fire was still burning. It instantly went viral.

Here’s how that went down, as recounted by a tmatt post the following day:

Here at GetReligion, my colleague Clemente Lisi had, days earlier, written a feature about the recent series of fires and acts of vandalism at French churches. Lisi and I quickly rewrote the top of that post and put it up about 3 p.m. EDT yesterday. The headline: “If churches keep getting vandalized in France, should American news outlets cover the story?”


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Same as it ever was: In religion news, sex wars about doctrine remain the story in 2024

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Same as it ever was: In religion news, sex wars about doctrine remain the story in 2024

Looking ahead at 2024, The Guy seems to recall hearing that there’s a U.S. presidential election going on.

If so, that will inspire ample chatter about the religion factor. There are important elections in other nations, including Taiwan last Saturday and probably Britain. Jews and their Christian allies will be closely monitoring the Israel-Hamas war.

All that said, it’s clear that debates about various angles of sexuality and gender will dominate the year’s religion news. Again.

Start with next October’s second and final session at the Vatican of Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops concerning “Synodality,” a fuzzy buzzy word for enhancing members’ involvement in church life through a process behind closed doors.

Sidestepping synodality, Francis pre-empted his Synod with the December 18 go-ahead for Catholic priests to provide church blessings for same-sex couples plus those in as-yet-undefined “irregular” situations. Expect Catholics to agitate through the year against this historic innovation, especially in Africa (where bishops seem to believe that synodality may include listening to bishops in growing churches).

We can forget Synod action on female priests. But will there be concrete proposals to the Pope to enhance women’s church leadership otherwise, especially by ordaining them as deacons? If that includes altar duties, it will be a massive, historic change.

There’s a tiny possibility the Synod would issue a dramatic call to abolish the 885-year-old mandate that priests be celibate and unmarried (excluding Eastern Rite clergy and Protestants who convert). Or not. Did the influential adjunct secretary at the Vatican’s agency on doctrine, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, issue a Synod signal January 7?


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#DUH -- Church of Rome is not the only global flock wrestling with same-sex blessings

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#DUH -- Church of Rome is not the only global flock wrestling with same-sex blessings

Bishop Martin Mtumbuka of Malawi pulled no punches when passing judgement on the Vatican's stunning declaration that Catholic clergy could bless couples living in "irregular relationships," such as same-sex unions.

This "looks to us like a heresy, it reads like a heresy, and it affects heresy," he said. "We cannot allow such an offensive and apparently blasphemous declaration to be implemented in our dioceses" in southeast Africa.

The Fiducia Supplicans ("Supplicating Trust") document triggered debates around the world, but negative reactions have been especially strong in Africa, with strong protests from bishops' conferences in Malawi, Zambia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Angola and other nations.

"The Church of Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small," wrote Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the former head of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. "It has the task of announcing the Word of God in front of Western Christians who, because they are rich, equipped with multiple skills in philosophy, theological, biblical and canonical sciences, believe they are evolved, modern and wise in the wisdom of the world."

Cardinal Sarah endorsed the declarations from African bishops and added: "We must encourage other national or regional bishops' conferences and every bishop to do the same. By doing so, we are not opposing Pope Francis, but we are firmly and radically opposing a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and Tradition."

These tensions resemble doctrinal fault lines seen during the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, noted historian Philip Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" and "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions" and many other books.

"Religious faith and fertility are linked and it's easy to see that around the world," said Jenkins, reached by Zoom.


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Podcast: Yes, churches in Africa are 'growing,' but what what does 'growing' mean?

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Podcast: Yes, churches in Africa are 'growing,' but what what does 'growing' mean?

I realize that I have used this Anglican-wars anecdote before on this website. But, hey, GetReligion is closing its doors in a few weeks and this will almost certainly be my last chance to use it here.

To be honest, this parable from the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison of South Carolina — an evangelical Anglican scholar who is now in his mid-90s — was the perfect way to summarize the issues covered during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Host Todd Wilken and I were discussing two important news reports about the escalating Catholic doctrinal wars about same-sex blessings, and this pulled us back to some themes from our top stories of 2023 podcast. One of the new stories was from The New York Times (“Blessing of Same-Sex Couples Rankles Africa’s Catholics”) and the other from the Associated Press (“How to deal with same-sex unions? It’s a question fracturing major Christian denominations”).

Like I said, these were must-read reports, but there were “ghosts” in them worth exploring. This brings us to the aforementioned Allison anecdote from several decades ago:

Needless to say, [Allison] has witnessed more than his share of Anglican debates about the future of the Anglican Communion, a communion in which national churches are in rapid decline in rich, powerful lands like the United States, Canada and England, but exploding with growth in the Global South.

During one global meeting, Allison watched a symbolic collision between these two worlds. Bishops from North America and their allies were talking about moving forward, making doctrinal changes in order to embrace the cultural revolutions in their lands. They were sure that Anglicans needed to evolve, or die.

Finally, a frustrated African bishop asked three questions: “Where are your children? Where are your converts? Where are your priests?”

The big question: What does it mean when journalists say that a church or religious movement is “growing”?

Usually, this is a reference to mere membership statistics. But notice that this is not how that African bishop defined church life in his growing corner of the Anglican world.


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Reporters! Seek a variety of 'Internet' priests when covering hot-button Catholic issues

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Reporters! Seek a variety of 'Internet' priests when covering hot-button Catholic issues

The Vatican’s decision to allow priests to bless couples in what they called “irregular relationships” continues to get lots of media attention.

The language in this confusing decree, issued last month, included individuals in same-sex relationships, which unleashed a flurry of news coverage. The issue was kept alive in the news after bishops — primarily from Africa — pushed back. That forced the Vatican to issue a clarification last week aimed at quelling dissent.

Journalists working on this story have largely done a poor job in quoting diverse views about this topic from the very men who are supposed to bestow such blessings — priests. I did that very thing on Jan. 4 at Religion Unplugged, where I serve as executive editor, when the Vatican issued a news release to clarify their original declaration. Here’s what I wrote for those of you who need a refresher:

Three weeks after announcing that Catholic priests could bless individuals in same-sex relationships, the Vatican published a clarification … following backlash — and even widespread confusion in many cases — from prelates across the world.

The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a news release that it wanted to “help clarify” the many reactions to Fiducia Supplicans, a decree issued on Dec. 18. In it, the Vatican urged a “full and calm reading” of the entire document to better understand “its meaning and purpose.”

The original decree had been signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernandez, who serves as the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Dec. 18 document, the Vatican said, was “clear and definitive” in regards to Catholic doctrine regarding church teaching on marriage and sexuality. Again, the Vatican said any blessings are for individuals — not the union — and must not be “liturgical or ritualized.”

“Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the tradition of the church or blasphemous,” the latest statement added.

Quite of few bishops, especially in Africa, were doing quite a bit of explicit doctrinal distancing, if not outright slamming. That’s a newsworthy development, for sure.


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When is Christmas? CBS has no idea how complex that question is right now in Ukraine

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When is Christmas? CBS has no idea how complex that question is right now in Ukraine

Christmas is complicated, if you sweat the details. At the gym I frequent here in Oak Ridge, the management took down all of the Christmas decorations on December 26th.

I asked why. I was told: “Christmas is over.” I asked if they had heard of the “12 days of Christmas.” A staffer said, “Yes,” but assumed that was before the 25th. Another staffer quietly said that she would leave the decorations up until January 6th. It’s safe to assume that she attends the local Catholic parish or another liturgical church.

Hang in there with me. I am working my way toward a stunningly one-sided CBS News report that ran with this headline: “Ukraine snubs Russia, celebrates Christmas on Dec. 25 for first time.”

The key is that America has shopping-mall Christmas and then liturgical-calendar Christmas. Several years ago, I wrote an “On Religion” column noting that when Siri is asked, “When is Christmas?”, an Apple iPhone answered: "Christmas is on … December 25, 2012. I hope I have the day off." Then I asked, “When is Advent?” That led to this “conversation.”

Siri searched her memory and said: "I didn't find any events about 'Ed Fant.' "

Trying again: "When is the Advent season?"

Siri cheerfully responded: "I am not aware of any events about 'advent season.' "

After several more "BEED-EEP" chimes the Apple cloud ultimately drew a blank when asked, "When does the Christmas season end?" Alas, Siri didn't understand the term "Christmas season."

This morning, I asked Siri: “When is Orthodox Christmas.” I was told that Christmas Day is on January 7th.

Ah, but that isn’t accurate in most Orthodox Churches in America. Why? That’s complicated and the fine details are relevant to the CBS News report about Ukraine.

Many people are aware that the Orthodox follow the ancient Julian calendar, instead of the Western Gregorian calendar. However, in many lands shaped by European culture, the Orthodox (this includes my parish) follow a modified Julian calendar that manages to put Christmas on December 25th, but Pascha (Easter) remains on the date that fits the Julian calendar.

Trust me, there is much more that can be said. But here is the key: This is basically a collision between cultures shaped by European culture and those shaped by eastern Orthodox culture.


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Fiducia Supplicans news flashback: 5-star case of the medium being the message

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Fiducia Supplicans news flashback: 5-star case of the medium being the message

Here is a fact from life on the religion beat. Several times a year, a religion-beat reporter is going to be approached by an editor who wants him or her to make a photo-assignment for a religious holiday or a story with some kind of religion hook.

They don’t want Southern Baptists in gray suits (or even megachurch tropical shirts). They don’t want Pentecostal believers in church clothes with their hands in the air. (Well, if there were snake-handlers in urban zip codes near elite newsrooms, they’d be big hits with newsroom photo-desks.)

Reporters know what editors want — pictures of Catholic rites. Catholics photograph well. That’s why there are 100 movies about Catholics for every one movie about run-of-the-mill Protestants. (Episcopalians will do, every now and then, especially since they always are several decades ahead of Rome on the historic “reforms,” such as female bishops, etc.)

This brings me, belatedly (I’ve had other things on my mind), to Fiducia Supplicans and what makes that complex and, I would argue, intentionally confusing document so newsworthy and historic.

This was a papal chess move that, in the fine print, stressed that its creators did NOT want to produce photo ops that looked like same-sex marriages. But the big news is that it did precisely that in the media that matter the most — newspapers and television networks in New York City and other deep-blue media environments.

It’s all about the staged visuals. If you look at Fiducia Supplicans from a photo-op perspective, the key New York Times story was perfect. The headline: “Making History on a Tuesday Morning, With the Church’s Blessing.”

These blessing rites had been taking place in Europe for several years now (and privately, we can assume, in North America). The elite press ignored those events, even though — from a church history perspective — they were just as important as blessing rites In. New. York. City.

But anything in New York City, with America’s most important (and Pope Francis favored) priest in a starring role is obviously more important than something in Germany. Right? Now it’s time to celebrate.


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Top five Catholic storylines mainstream journalists need to watch heading into 2024

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Top five Catholic storylines mainstream journalists need to watch heading into 2024

This was a very busy year on the Catholic beat. A decade after Pope Francis replaced the then-retiring Benedict XVI, the consistently progressive pontiff has very much been the focal point of plenty of news coverage in 2023.

Pope Francis was named the top religion newsmaker of the year by members of the Religion News Association. That was before his decree that priests should offer blessings to same-sex couples. The mainstream news coverage of that decision was precisely what press critics would have predicted.

Thus, Catholic media will — once again — be required reading for everyone who wants to better understand what’s going on. Mainstream media sources, while always the center of our attention, aren't the best place to get news and information out of this Vatican. GetReligion readers will not be surprised by that statement.

Plenty of what went on this past year will spill over into the next. I again expect 2024 to be another very busy year. Can you say “synodality”?

Here are my five storylines to watch for in the new year:

(5) Pope Francis’s health

I had this on my list last year. A year later and it remains a major storyline after the pope turned 87 earlier this month.

The pontiff has had so many health scares that Catholic News Agency published a timeline of his hospital-level issues in 2022 and updated the story file this fall. In November, the pope suffered a bout of pneumonia that forced him to miss the United Nations climate conference held in Dubai.

A key thing to look for regarding Francis’ death is what will transpire afterwards regarding the College of Cardinals, the men actually tasked with electing a new pontiff.

Over the last decade, Francis has elevated many bishops. Pew Research found that Francis had elevated fewer Europeans throughout his pontificate, but he has favored bishops whose views are sympathetic to his own.


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