Married priests a wider precedent

NEWS ANALYSIS
Adrian Hastings examines last week's announcement of the ordination of two married men
Peter Cornwell I WAS ordained as a Catholic priest in 1955 and I married, more than 20 years later, in 1979. As a consequence I have, of course, been barred ever since from sharing in the Church's public ministry.
It is natural that I should be asked now how I react to the news that two former Anglican priests in this country, who have become Catholics, are about to be accepted despite the fact that they are married into the Church's priestly ministry. Should I not, perhaps, protest that converts are being privileged, cradle Catholics discriminated against?
Of course, I do not feel like that at all, and I feel sure that I speak in this for most of the hundreds of other married Catholic priests in this country who would deeply love to resume their ministry and many of whom are finked together for this purpose by an organisation called the Advent Group.
' There is no room for rivalry or jealousy. I would be profoundly happy to attend the Mass of David Mead-Briggs or Peter Cornwell. My first reason is a personal one in regard to them: their decision to join the communion of Rome in no way invalidates their priestly vocations or pastoral expertise. It is tragic how many married clergy in the past became Catholics at great personal sacrifice and were then offered next to nothing to do.
I have often thought sadly of that wise and learned theologian, Canon Edward Rich, author of Spiritual Authority in the Church of England, who became a Catholic in the 1950s and, from then on, exercised no ministry beyond that of sacristan in Westminster Cathedral. So I rejoice that the Church has at long last begun to change its policy in this area, as it has changed it in so many others.
Nevertheless, no one should be called to the priestly ministry simply to satisfy a personal need. Ordination ha§ to be related to the needs of the community and if certain people are ordained by the Church, then it is because such people are needed.
This latest decision represents the recognition that it is perfectly suitable for a man to be both married and a priest, and that such a person can be expected to exercise a fruitful ministry. As I am fully COtivinced that the f.7athMic Church greatly needs a married priesthood to work side by side with celibate priests, I welcome any move, however slight, in this direction.
Married convert clergy have, in fact, already been "reordained" in Australia,
Germany and the United States, and their ministry has undoubtedly been welcomed and fruitful. It is high time that it happens in Britain .199:
Yet the numbers involved in' this particular group must obviously remain small. It is illogical to accept a married priest, so long as he developed his priesthood-cum-marriage vocation as an Anglican or Protestant, but not if it happened as a Catholic. The two are essentially the same, as is the pastoral need to be met within the Church by such a ministry. We have many married deacons in this country, who were not converts but whose present ministry could be greatly enhanced by ordination to the priesthood. I hope some of them soon will be.
It is indeed more than odd that the Church has always recognised the utility of a married clergy for its "eastern" but not its "Latin" members. A married Catholic, if Lebanese and of the Maronite rite, for instance, is eligible for .ordination, while a married Catholic, if English and of the Latin rite, is not. If, however, the Lebanese man should move to England he somehow forfeits his eligibility within the same Church. In the United States,
Dyer quarter of a million Eastern rite Catholics have become Orthodox because they refused to forfeit this right: a fact which illustrates how very discriminatory and illogical the Church's law actually is.
The vocation to celibacy can be a wonderful and fruitful vocation. But it has nothing specific to do with the priesthood. The law of celibacy for all priests remains a piece of medieval legalism, opposed to both the letter and the spirit of the New Testament. Sooner or later it has got to go. Its consequences today are proving a pastoral disaster in too many parts of the world, a personal disaster in too many lives, and a grave obstacle for Christian reunion.
I hope very much that ordinations of former Anglican married clergy in this country will be multiplied and that this will prove a significant step towards overcoming what has become a major blockage of vision for the Catholic Church: its failure to recognise the profound congruence between the sacraments of priesthood and marriage.
Adrian Hastings, Professor of Theology in the University' of Leeds, is the author of two books recently published by Collins: In the Hurricane, a paperback, and A History of English Christianity, 1920-1985.