Eastern Catholics explain tradition, value of married priests

[rug]

An Eastern rite priest leaves church with his family. (Orthocath.com photo)

11/14/2012 11:17:00 AM
Catholic News Service

ROME — In Eastern Christianity -- among both Catholics and Orthodox -- a dual vocation to marriage and priesthood are seen as a call "to love more" and to broaden the boundaries of what a priest considers to be his family, said Russian Catholic Father Lawrence Cross.

Father Cross, a professor at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, was one of the speakers at the Chrysostom Seminar in Rome Nov. 13, a seminar focused on the history and present practice of married priests in the Eastern churches.

The Code of Canons of the Eastern (Catholic) Churches insist that "in the way they lead their family life and educate their children, married clergy are to show an outstanding example to other Christian faithful."

Speakers at the Rome conference -- sponsored by the Australian Catholic University and the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Paul University in Ottawa -- insisted the vocation of married priests in the Eastern churches cannot be understood apart from an understanding of the sacramental vocation of married couples.

http://www.catholicsentinel.org/Main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=61&ArticleID=19830

[LiberalEsto]

1. One of my great-grandfathers was a married priest

in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was a theologian, scholar, university professor, and advocate of educating women.

[rug]

2. I hope you had a chance to talk to your grandparent about what it was like growing up.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Unfortunately not.

One grandmother died in Estonia years before I was born. Both my grandfathers died in Estonia when I was a little kid, so i never met them. And the other grandmother came to the U.S. with my mother, and died when I was 2. As for that priest great-grandfather, he passed away a long time before I was born. So it goes.