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PAGE 2 GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1963 CONVERT PRIEST ASSERTS Council Should Liberalize Celibacy Rule in Clergy Shortage Following is one of a series of articles by experts on ques tions up for consideration when the Second Vatican Council re convenes next September8. The author was received into the Catholic Church in 1955 after serving for 16 years in the Anglican ministry in England. Unmarried, he was ordained a Catholic priest after four years at the Beda College in Rome. Since 1959 he has worked at the Catholic Inquiry Forum in Montreal, also lecturing on ecu menical subjects at Montreal’s Loyola College and at the Uni versity of Ottawa. BY FATHER WALTON HANNAH (N.C.W.C. News Service) MARIETTA DAILY JOURNAL fC4t (ZOldUtUiOM CALL: 428-1545 TO SUBSCRIBE A new look at the recruit ment and training of priests will certainly be on the agenda of the ecumenical council at some stage. The shortage of vocations in some countries is already acute. To some extent this can be made good by making great er use of the lay apostolate; far too many priests are bogged down in administrative jobs that the laity could well take off their shoulders, and there is a crying need for intensively trained lay men and women as instructors and catechists. There are untapped resour ces of late or delayed voca tions from men in adult life who could still give many years to an active priesthood were there more special seminaries for their training, and more bishops who would encourage them. The experience of the Alterations Tuxedos Rented "Clothes Tailored For You" TAILORS - CLEANERS Men's Wear 106 W. Court Sq DR 3-2366 Decatur, Ga. • MINTING • • LITHOGRAPHING RYBEHT ^ COMPANY TRinity C/ 530 FORREST ROAD. N. f. 5-4727 5trvi»t Atlanta Sinet 1911 ATLANTA. GEORGIA Place Your Classified Ad Today In The Georgia Bulletin Phone: 231-1281 Where Insurance is a Profession, Not a Sideline SUTTER & McLELLAN Mortgage Guarantee Bldg. JA 5 2086 IfctfRIENDLT STORES that GIVE YOU MORE jr t m, ’ VALUE-VARIETY-SERVICE Dunaway’s Rexall Drug Stores For over 40 years serving the Health and Home needs of Marietta and Cobb County LOCATED LN THE FOLLOWING AREAS 1300 Church St. 537 Fairground St. 30 N. Park Square 2322 Roswell Rd. ALSO AT Jonquil Plaza Shopping Center, Smyrna Belmont Hills Shopping Center, Smyrna Beda College in Rome has amply proved this point. THERE IS also the problem of the convert Protestant minis ter. A small category numeri cally, perhaps, yet they have their own special experiences and insights of great value to the Church. St. Paul, brought up in the strictest sect of the Jews, a pharisee of the Phari sees, made full use of his in timate knowledge and under standing of the Law and Pro phets to expound the i r fulf ilm ent in Christ. So too the priestly convert from the Protestant ministry can, perhaps uniquely, see the Catholic religion as the fullness of God's revelation in the perspective of the incom-1 plete truths held by our sepa rated brethren. Not all convert Protestant ministers discover a vocation to the Catholic priesthood, even if they happen to be unmarried. Not all are suitable; just occa sionally a restless misfit in a Protestant ministry will be come a Catholic for less than adequate reasons. But in far too many cases a married clergy man finds the Faith, accepts it with heroic sacrifice, and then finds that an active life of full time service to God abruptly ends. HE FINDS himself trying to adjust in middle life to some un familiar secular profession. If he has teaching ability he is lucky, but not all Protestant ministers (or Catholic priests either, for that matter) have abilities in that profession. They miss their ministry tra gically, and surely the Catholic Church is missing something too. There is wastefulness here. But what is the answer? A courageous trail was blaz ed by Pope Pius XII in allow ing four German Lutheran min isters to become Catholic priests and, by special indult, to retrain their wives. A few similar ordinations have fol lowed, Including one in Den mark. Fairly recently, a mar ried Lutheran seminarian be came a Catholic, and was or dained to the priesthood. From the canonical point of view there is no reason why this policy could not be extended to other countries, Celibacy of course is an ec clesiastical discipline, and is not part of the divine law. Priests of the Eastern Rites may be married before their or dination. There is no tradition in the Catholic or Orthodox Churches of priests marrying after ordination. "The only body claiming valid orders which al- Leroy's Auto Service Tune Up - Front End Alignment Automatic Transmission 4011 P'tree Rd. CE. 7-1288 This Ad Worth 50< ON ALL TYPES OF ELECTRICAL REPAIRS AT Home & Hobby Shop BELMONT HILLS SHOPPING CENTER PHONE: 435-5122 R. S. SEELEY, MGR. HOURS: MON.-FRI. 4:00-12:00 P.M. FRI. - SAT. 4:00- 2:00 A. M. NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 427-2774 2547 ROSWELL ROAD MARIETTA, GA. East Marietta Shopping Center Lpws their priests to marry is the Anglican Communion, and their claim to valid orders has of course been repudiated by the Catholic Church. BUT EVEN among Catholics of Eastern Rites there is a cer tain pressure to impose celi bacy, particularly in the New World where through emigra tion and escape through the Iron Curtain, East and West meet in parallel parishes. Even in Europe It is becoming difficult, if not impossible, for a married man to be ordained in the By zantine Rite, and convert mar ried Orthodox priests some times meet with every discour agement in continuing to exer cise their priesthood as Catho lics. There are at least four mo tives behind this, and all of them have a bearing upon the problem of the married Pro testant convert minister. First, there is the whole force of Christian tradition and teaching from earliest times that the perfect chastity of celi bacy is the higher and more angelic state In itself, apart from all practical considera tions. Dedicated virginity, sac- rifically undertaken by the priest from supernatural mo tives, is therefore required for ordination to major orders. The Orthodox accept this ideal for the episcopate. The Latin Church of the West in early centuries imposed it also on the diaconate and priesthood, and rather later on the subdia- conate also. SECONDLY, there are the many practical and economic difficulties which arise in fit- AN ALTAR BOY NAMED "SPECK" “Do you have any church mice?” ting married clergy into a pa rochial framework designedfor celibacy. Thirdly, there is the desire to avoid scandal among the sim ple faithful of the Latin Rite who have never heard of mar ried priests in communion with the Holy See. Fourthly, there are the strongly entrenched forces of traditionalism and conserva tism which tend to look upon the Latin Church and Latin cus toms as the Catholic norm, and other traditions as tolerated deviations which should not be allowed to affect (one is almost tempted to write infect) the man stream of Western Christen dom. LET US examine these fac tors in their application to the EDUCATOR ASSERTS Public Attitudes, Not Law Barring School Tax Aid CHICAGO -(NC)— Public at titudes, not public law, stands in the way of tax support for U. S. private education, accord ing to a leading figure in a nationwide study of Catholic schools. The "great obstacle" to tax support of U. S. private edu cation "is not the public law but public unwillingness," de clares George. N. Shuster. SHUSTER, assistant to the president of the University of Notre Dame, is a member of the three-man policy and guid ance committee for a nation wide study of Catholic grade and high schools now underway. The study is being underwritten by a $350,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Shuster expresses his views in a signed editorial in the Feb- urary issue of Extension maga zine, published here. Noting publl'c reluctance to use tax funds for private edu cation, he says: "SOME DAY there may be a different story to tell, but right now nobody can say when that day will dawn." BY NON-CATHOLIC He adds: "Certain forms of Federal aid, notably intheform of loans, would help somewhat, as would the sharing of local facilities with public schools. But it will be wise not to be too sanguine about the results of such measures." Since Federal aid for Catho lic schools seems remote, Shuster proposes two steps to be taken now. "The first," he writes, "is to maintain and if possible improve standards established in the Catholic school system by its teaching Religious. The second is to con centrate on the overall pro blem. It is a very sizable pro blem, indeed, which will re quire the development of new methods and undoubtedly a new organization." SHUSTER, a former presi dent of Hunter College, New York, says the Religious comm unities which staff the nation's Catholic schools have made "heroic efforts" to meet the challenge. "Today," he writes, "the Intellectual and profess ional qualifications of the Reli gious are quite unbelievably better than they used to be." He cautions that if lay teach ers engaged to teach in Catho lic schools "do not meet the same standards, they stand out like sore thumbs and arouse Catholic-Protestant Tide Seen Flowing parental wrath. The truth is that it is almost impossible at present to employ an ade quate lay staff. The reason is the cost of living, plus the general shortage of good teach ers which plagues die public schools as well.** The Catholic schools study, with which he Is associated, should throw light on decisions "which everybody realizes must be made," Shuster writes. "These grow out of the charact er of the Catholic educational problem and the Catholic edu cational situation. "THE PROBLEM is how to convey to the Church’s people whoever and wherever they may be a living awareness of the meaning oI their Faith in terms of the individual person, the family and the social order. Everybody knows about the pro blem but not one can tell you how to solve it. "We can, however, see the Catholic educational situation rather clearly," Shuster con tinues. "We have a school sys tem which coordinates relig ious and secular learning. We also possess a good deal of experience in how to deal with the immense population the sys tem does not and cannot reach. There are release - time arrangements, Sunday schools and other devices. EVen so, the sad fact is that a large portion of the Catholic surface is hardly scratched at all, part icularly in urban areas." married convert clergyman. No one would wish to dispute the validity d the first point, or question the value of perfect chastity. However, even in the West there are two standard! among the priesthood, the dio cesan, and the monastic or re gular. To take but one point pf difference, the latter alone are vowed to poverty, which is again a higher Christian ideal. But the Church realizes In principle that it is not necessary that the priestly life as such should embody all the counsels of per fection, and that this applies to celibacy as well as poverty. As for practical difficulties, they are indeed many and va rious. Each rectory is a center of communal celibate life, the pastor with his curates, and the married convert clearly could not fit into this frame-work at all. But with a little imagina tion many other spheres of ac tivity could be opened to him. There are teaching positions, convert centers, hospital and convent chaplaincies, and many specialized apostolates. The younger ones could perhaps be come service chaplains. One often hears, as another objection, "I could never make my confession to a married priest" — as if the seal of confession would somehow be endangered in domestic intima cies. But Byzantine Rite Catho lics, and the Orthodox too, make the very opposite objection: "I could never make my confession to a celibate priest, he wouldn’t understand my family prob lems." NEITHER objection is surely insuperable, given good will and understanding. As for econo mics, even quite small Byzan tine parishes in America have no more difficulty than Protes tants have in maintaining a family in the presbytery. The avoidance of scandal and the force of traditional latiniz ing conservatism are factors which require great patience and much education. The very fact that in recent years Eas tern Rite parishes have appear ed side by side with Latin pa rishes is slowly making its im pact. Their vernacular litur gies naturally attract the at tention of the liturgical avant- garde, and there are grounds for hope that western Catholics are beginning to realize that the Latin rite, Counter-Refor mation devotions, western spi rituality and ways of thought, and Latin customs (including clerical celibacy) are not the universal norms of the Catholic Church. Changes and reforms will certainly emerge from the pre sent general council, and this has attracted so much publicity that Catholics everywhere are being conditioned to expect change-conservative elements perhaps with some apprehen sion. A NEW wind is blowing through the Church. The in creased interest in ecumenism and a more charitable approach to our separated brethren is helping us to realize that, al- YOUR ADVERTISERS SUPPORT YOUR PAPER SUPPORT YOUR ADVERTISERS though religious insights, and that a custom or tradition Is not necessarily wrong or un-Catho- lic just because Protestants happen to follow it. All these factors are helping to broaden both our minds and our sympa thies. Bold experiments have today a better chance of being successfully accepted than at any time since the Council of Trent. Tomorrow the chances may be even brighter. Another suggestion for mak ing a more valuable use of con vert clergy is the establishment of a permanent diaconate which would be open to married men. There is plentiful precedent for this in the early Church, and among the Orthodox today. Such a step would in fact restore a primitive practice in a way which would go far to meet the needs of the 20th century. In the sacramental order, of course , there has been no change, and can be no change. The diaconate is a major order. But in practice the Church, treats it almost as a minor or der, and like the minor orders it has become a mere stepping- stone to the priesthood within the seminary. WILHELM S chamoni’s "Married Men as Ordained Deacons" first appeared in German in 1953, and two years later in an English translation. It has been very widely read and reviewed. Several bis hops are known to be interest ed in the idea, and it may well be raised at the council. An order of permanent married deacons could be of Inestima ble help in catechizing, preach ing, baptizing, and assisting with Holy Communion, thus to some extent making good the shortage of priests. COGGINS SHOE STORE SHOES FOR THE FAMILY 46 W. PARK SQ. MARIETTA, GEORGIA PHONE 428-6811 NELSON-RIVES REALTY. INC. 3685A dHIrmont Road CHaMBLEE GEORGIA Knrmrrly Sml-Nel Rralty I'u,, Inc. Howard C. Nelson, President Ernest M. 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He cited the "wise and beloved" Augustin Cardinal Bea, S. J., head of the Secre tariat for Promoting Christian Unity, as one of the "many magnificent human beings" in the Catholic Church. "CONTACTS with such men do away with border, breed and birth," Dr. Horton said. Some 600 ministers and lay men attended the second annual midwinter meeting of the United Church of Christ, formed by the merger 18 months ago of the Congregational Christian Chur ch a;nd the Evangelical and Re formed Church. FATHER B1GGERS, PASTOR OF ST. JOSEPH’S PARISH MARIETTA SHOWN WITH A GROUP OF YOUNGSTERS WHO BOWL EACH FRIDAY "THE GAME ALL AMERICA ENJOYS" Get your Club Together Come out and Bowl Studant. 35< P.r Gam. Adult. 50< Par Gama OPEN 24 HOURS BELMONT BOWL 185 Chtroka* Rd. Phonoi HE 5-3201 Smyrna, Georgia