Pope Paul VI

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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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Pentecostalism from soup to nuts: A (near) complete history of this movement in America

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Pentecostalism from soup to nuts: A (near) complete history of this movement in America

In early January, The Conversation, an academically oriented website affiliated with Religion News Service, ran an explainer with this headline: “What is Pentecostal Christianity?”

That’s a big, complicated question. While I appreciated the article’s emphasis on how Pentecostals are a little-noticed component in American Christianity, it was very much a Cliffs Notes version of a complex, 123-year-old movement. And it didn’t even mention the Charismatic Renewal movement, a massive spiritual shift in the 1960s that brought millions of mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics into the wider Pentecostal fold.

Pentecostalism has hit the news in recent years with revelations of the “Trump prophets,” but their rise has a long back story that few journalists understand. For many years, pentecostals have been seen as evangelicalism’s crazy sister and media coverage has hardly been incisive.

Thus, tmatt suggested that we post the following comprehensive look at the history of the movement here in the United States. I wrote this as a backgrounder for a meeting of religion reporters at the University of Maryland in 2000. I have updated it twice because the movement keeps on shifting. Some of this will sound very basic, but it’s important to know who the main players have been.

———

Without a doubt, the portion of Christianity known as Pentecostalism was — by far — the fastest-growing movement of the 20th century, going from zero members on Jan. 1, 1901 to 644 million adherents worldwide now. It is the primary expression of Christianity in the Global South. It is the one form of Christianity to mount a serious challenge to the growth of Islam, mainly because of its appeal to the very poor and its reliance on the miraculous.

During my travels in places like India and Egypt years ago, I was told by religious leaders that the heavy hitters in evangelism in Hindu and Muslim contexts were the Pentecostals. When I was in Israel researching a piece on the country’s messianic Jews, my sources told me half of them, at least, were charismatic. The world’s largest churches in Korea and Nigeria are Pentecostal.


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That big abortion scoop that Time forgot, and other tales from the news magazine era

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That big abortion scoop that Time forgot, and other tales from the news magazine era

Nostalgia time (or even Time).

Many articles have chronicled the shrinkage of America's newspapers, but last week The New York Times reminded us of other print media carnage in feature titled, in the print edition, "Where Have All the Magazines Gone?" Online, that’s “The Magazine Business, From the Coolest Place to the Coldest One.”

Alexandra Jacobs lamented the decline or demise of "the slicks" of yore with their cash, cachet and celebrity editors, naming no less than 30 of them. Their fall is "deeply felt," she confessed, and causes a "strange ache." The mags filled the dual role of both "authoritatively documenting" events of the day and "distracting from them," offering their readers stylish and entertaining fluff.

Also last week that first aspect, news gathering, was featured in a magazine that survives and thrives, The New Yorker. A "Talk of the Town" item brought to mind the old Time-Life News Service, whose corps of staffers and stringers served those two weeklies, with reporting exploits that were often anonymous and unheralded.

Remarkably, Time is still in print and marks its centennial next March. Disclosure: The Guy was a Time-Life correspondent before and after two decades writing Time's religion section.

The whole country is chattering about Politico's revelation of a draft Supreme Court majority ruling that in coming weeks will presumably return abortion for decisions by each of the 50 states.

That’s a huge scoop. But few recall that Time scored an equally big scoop when the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling abolished all abortion laws nationwide?

Enter David Beckwith, a young Washington Bureau hire fresh out of the University of Texas Law School. Roe was a Texas case and Beckwith perked up when the Washington Post -- in the barely-noticed July 4 edition -- ran an odd item lacking byline or named sources with inside dope on the Supreme Court's abortion deliberations coming up for an unusual re-hearing.

Beckwith spent subsequent months cultivating sources, gathered string, and was first in print the following January 22 flatly asserting the sensational news that the high court would soon order legalized abortion across the nation.


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Crucial question in all those newsworthy abortion debates: When does life begin?

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Crucial question in all those newsworthy abortion debates: When does life begin?

THE QUESTION:

When does life begin?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Those four words are regularly posed in the current abortion debate, so let's scan the lines in pregnancy that have been drawn by experts — religious and secular — in the past.

Pre-scientific cultures spoke of "quickening," typically between 16 and 18 weeks, when the mother first feels the unborn child moving in her womb. A famous example involves the unborn John the Baptist in biblical Luke 1:41. Some ancient Jewish authorities in the Talmud, and Roman and Greek philosophers, supposed that the unborn child "formed" earlier, at 40 days.

Then there's "viability," when a fetus can live on its own outside the womb, typically reached around 23 or 24 weeks, or somewhat earlier or later in individual cases. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion before that point in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and after viability when there are risks to the mother's health, broadly defined.

The high Court on December 1 hears a case from Mississippi, which defied the Roe ruling and bars abortions after 15 weeks on grounds that the fetus experiences pain by then. A Missouri law, also under court challenge, puts a ban at eight weeks when "everything that is present in an adult human is now present in your baby," according to the American Pregnancy Association. The Court temporarily left in place a ban in Texas (likewise in 13 other states) after six weeks, when pulsations can be diagnosed at what eventually becomes the fully formed heart.

Many modern Christians believe that life begins at conception (sperm first meets egg) or implantation (fertilized egg attaches to the mother's womb) while some put the line a bit later at twinning (after which multiple pregnancies do not occur).

Note the brief filed last month in the Mississippi case by pro-choice religions including "mainline" Protestant churches, non-Orthodox Judaism, Unitarian Universalists and others. It says "numerous religious traditions posit that life begins at some point during pregnancy or even after a child is born."


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Should Roman Catholicism allow more married priests? Women at altars as deacons?

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Should Roman Catholicism allow more married priests? Women at altars as deacons?

THE QUESTIONS:

Reviving big Catholic issues: Should priests be married? Should women be deacons?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Those two epochal changes in Catholicism are posed to Pope Francis in the final report from an October synod for Catholic delegates representing South America’s Amazon region. Francis expects to issue his formal response in a pronouncement by the end of the year.

Catholics in that region can go for months, even years, without seeing a priest due to a severe shortage that is fostering evangelical Protestant inroads. Therefore the synod proposed that well-proven men (viri probati) be ordained as priests even if married, an experiment in bending the celibacy rule that liberals hope — and traditionalists fear — could spread elsewhere.

Partly for the same reason, the report also asked for renewed study of ordaining women as deacons, which Francis has already agreed to authorize, though delegates did not advocate this change. The synod also recommended a new recognized ministry of “woman community leader,” and urged more participation for women in church decision-making. (Only men were voting delegates at the synod, which women attended as consultants and observers.)

Female deacons would be revolutionary, and that change seems unlikely though not impossible. The celibacy that is mandatory for (most but not all) Catholic priests is considered a matter of discipline, not doctrine, and thus subject to change. Since celibacy has provoked so much discussion, and is the more likely to occur, The Guy treats that topic first.

The New Testament records that Peter, regarded by Catholicism as the first in the line of popes, was married. Jesus taught that some would choose to live as unmarried “eunuchs” for the sake of God’s kingdom (Matthew 19:12), and a biblical letter of Paul speaks of  a “special gift” to remain unwed (1 Corinthians 7:1-9). For both, this was singleness chosen voluntarily by certain Christians, not a requirement for all those in ministry.

In early Christianity, the choice of celibacy became more widespread as clergy sought to signify total dedication to church service.


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Concerning NPR, 'green frogs,' Humanae Vitae and the Vatican family life conference

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Does anyone remember my "green frog" image from a few years back?

That old post opened with a flashback to my days long ago at the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, in that amazing university town in the middle of the kingdom of Illinois farm country.

I was a brand-new journalist -- working as a copy editor and, yes, the paper's part-time rock columnist. However, the news editor knew that I grew up as a Texas Baptist preacher's kid and that I was active in a local Southern Baptist church, of the "moderate" stripe. Thus: 

Every now and then an angry reader would call and accuse the newspaper of being prejudiced against all religious people. ...  Even when these readers had a valid point to make -- especially concerning errors -- they tended to go completely over the top in their criticism of the staff at the newspaper. In voices that would get more and more enraged, they seemed determined to accuse the editors of sins against God, as opposed to sins against the standards of journalism.

The news editor would bite his tongue and try to listen, as people accused him of taking orders directly from Satan. But after awhile he would roll his eyes, place his hand over the telephone mouthpiece and stage whisper across the news desk, "Mattingly, there's another GREEN FROG on line one. You take this call."

So that's the origin story for my "green frog" image, related to religion news.

Here at GetReligion, I still hear from "green frogs" all the time. I reject about 75 percent of the offerings to our comments pages and here are the two most common reasons: (1) The comments are not about journalism, but about the reader's own views about religion and, usually, politics. (2) The writer simply has an axe to grind about journalism -- period.

However, every now and then someone sends me a link to a person who has valid points to make about a piece of mainstream reporting and has managed to keep her or his wits while doing so. That brings me to a recent NPR report with this headline -- "50 Years Ago, The Pope Called Birth Control 'Intrinsically Wrong' " -- and an interesting GetReligion-esque take on that story's overture.

So here is the top of that NPR report, complete with its crucial hyperlinks. This is long, but essential to understand what follows:


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New York Times asks this faith-free question: Why are young Americans having fewer babies?

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Here's something that I didn't know before I read the rather ambitious New York Times feature that ran with this headline: "Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why."

Apparently, if you ask young Americans why they are not choosing to have babies -- even the number of babies that they say they would like to have -- you get lots of answers about economics and trends in what could be called "secular" culture.

That's that. Religion plays no role in this question at all.

For example: In a graphic that ran with the piece, here are the most common answers cited, listed from the highest percentages to lowest. That would be, "Want leisure time," "Haven't found partner," "Can't afford child care," "No desire for children," "Can't afford a house," "Not sure I'd be a good parent," “Worried about the economy," "Worried about global instability," "Career is a greater priority," "Work too much," "Worried about population growth," "Too much student debt," etc., etc. Climate change is near the bottom.

You can see similar answers in the chart describing why gender-neutral young adults are choosing to have fewer children than "their ideal number."

Now, what happens if you ask people why they ARE choosing to have children? If the question is turned upside down, do issues of faith and religion show up?

It's impossible to know, since it appears that -- for the Times team and the Morning Consult pollsters -- religious questions have nothing to do with the topic of sex, marriage (or not) and fertility. Hold that thought, because we'll come back to it.

So what do Times readers find out about the reasons people give to have more children, even more than one or two? While it appears that no questions were asked about this issue, it's clear some assumptions were built into this story. This summary is long, but essential. Read carefully:

“We want to invest more in each child to give them the best opportunities to compete in an increasingly unequal environment,” said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who studies families and has written about fertility. At the same time, he said, “There is no getting around the fact that the relationship between gender equality and fertility is very strong: There are no high-fertility countries that are gender equal.”



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Plan for this must-cover Godbeat item in 2018: The 50th anniversary of 'Humanae Vitae'

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Plan for this must-cover Godbeat item in 2018: The 50th anniversary of 'Humanae Vitae'

Rightly or wrongly, most papal encyclicals land in newsrooms with a thud.

But there were no yawns in 1968 when Pope Paul VI issued his birth-control edict “Humanae Vitae,” which provoked a global uproar inside and outside his church.

Retrospectives will be a must item on reporters’ calendars around July 25, the 50th anniversary of this landmark. News angles include a monthly series at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University to rethink the doctrine, which started in October and runs through May 24. The listing (in Italian) is here (.pdf).

Paul declared that Catholicism, “by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.” The Pope believed this fusion of the “unitive” and “procreative” aspects in marital acts is mandated by “natural law” as defined by predecessor Popes Pius XI (1930 encyclical “Casti Connubii”), and Pius XII (1951 “Address to Midwives”). Paul concluded the recent development of  “The Pill” changed nothing.

Though the pope said priests were bound to support this teaching, many joined lay Catholics and Protestants in opposing the church’s “each and every” requirement. Pope John Paul II later supported predecessor Paul, and recently so did Pope Francis, though with a twist. 

Key themes for reporters to assess:

First: Many analysts argue that the wide-ranging dissent on the birth-control pronouncement has weakened the church’s over-all moral authority.


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Associated Press serves up Pope Francis for dummies: Affirm the doctrines, ignore the rules?

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As he so often does, Deacon Greg Kandra looked at a news story about the Catholic church and summed it up in a crisp one-liner, a skill honed to a fine edge during his quarter of a century with CBS News. At his "The Deacon's Bench" blog (must reading for journalists on the Godbeat) he proclaimed: "BREAKING: The pope is still Catholic."

Pope Francis is Catholic? As opposed to what?

That's a big issue in the mainstream press, these days. Kandra's ironic headline pointed readers toward this Associated Press report from the recent papal stop in the Philippines, which began like this:

Pope Francis issued his strongest defense yet of church teaching opposing artificial contraception, using a Friday rally in Asia's largest Catholic nation to urge families to be "sanctuaries of respect for life."
Francis also denounced the corruption that has plagued the Philippines for decades and urged officials to instead work to end its "scandalous" poverty and social inequalities during his first full day in Manila, where he received a rock star's welcome at every turn.

The "sanctuaries" quote led into a very interesting passage that deserves close attention. You see, it is one of those doctrine-affirming statements that Francis often makes, yet these affirmations tend to draw minimal mainstream media coverage, especially in comparison with the waves of coverage that have followed some papal remarks that, when edited, seem to undercut orthodoxy.


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