The cruel fate of 'failed sky pilots'

Desmond O'Grady reviews the Synod of married priests and asks what is the Vatican's position
GERONIMO Podesta, formerly Bishop of Avellaneda, Argentina, attended the synod of married priests which concluded its week-long meeting outside Rome on August 31. He brought his wife Clelia with hint.
Amos Durosier, a former parish priest in Haiti, was there also with his wife Arlette and their four children together with over 100 other delegates from 15 nations.
But there was no meeting with Pope John Paul 11 although the delegates requested it, no representative from the Church's central administration attended the Synod, and the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano ignored it as did Vatican Radio.
Nevertheless the Synod, decided to notify the Vatican of its conclusions: the need for abolition, of obligatory celibacy for priests; the married priests willingness to serve communities which are without priests; a conviction that "laicising" priests on marriage "degrades both women and the priesthood". In future, the married priests intend to hold an international meeting each year.
Some delegates had hopes of a conciliatory attitude by the Vatican following a recent statement by Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminster who foresees "the ordaining to the priesthood of married men in certain parts of the world as the only way to bring the sacraments of eucharist and reconciliation to the people".
1 he dejection of many delegates at the Vatican's attitude was expressed by the Italian Theologian Giovanni Gennari who said the Churcti was right to protest against. South African apartheid but it forgot its married priests who are "its blacks and the blackest of the blacks are the priests' wives." '1 0, which the short answer is that racism is intolerable because man has no choice of skin colour but priesthood and marriage are choices.
The synod delegates, claiming to represent about 70,000 married priests, say there is a general desire among them to resume working as priests. Pointing out that St Peter and other eminent early church figures were married, they argue that the priestly vocation is distinct from celibacy which was introduced as obligatory in the Latin Church in 1139.
However their hopes of resuming service as priests seem quite illusory. Even Cardinal Hume spoke of "ordaining married men" as pi iests and not of using priests who have married.
The late American Cardinal John Wright had a cutting phrase for married priests who wanted to continue seminary teaching: "failed sky pilots".
John Paul has not been so pithy but has emphasised that it is useless to ask Catholics to be faithful to their marriage vows if priests are not expected to respect the vows they freely take. (Synod delegates pointed out that John Paul has accepted
married Anglican, Lutheran and Polish national church clergy as Catholic priests after their conversion but obviously they have not broken vows which, for John Paul, distinguishes them from Catholic priests who marry). This Pope has slowed dispensations from the priesthood, readily grained under Paul VI, to a trickle. There are said to be 5,800 requests pending. Dispensations are granted only to those who should not have become priests (badly evaluated or under duress) or those in a situation which cannot be remedied (for example, already married). Procedures are slow 'and meticulous or, as some ex-priests claim, "cruel".
Some married priests and their wives (and ex-nuns) are treated poorly both by the Church and civil society but others are well integrated in both as delegates to the 'Synod 'acknowledged.
However many want something mote.
A recognition of a new form of apostolate precisely as married priests together with their wives. They want the Church to revise its attitude not only to the priestly ministry, but also to sexuality and women. They claim that this would make the Church more credible and realistic when it speaks on sex and marriage.
According to the married priests who argue in this way, the Church is not only wasting
zealous trained men when it ignores married priests but is resisting what could be a fruitful re-examination of attitudes. There were other synod delegates however who were far less ambitious. They would be satisfied if the Vatican made celibacy optional in the western 'Church without other changes of structures or attitudes.
Will the Church ever modify its discipline to allow married men to become priests?
It is unlikely to happen under John Paul II. For other churches, married priests have not proved a panacea for the vocations crisis. It could lead, as in the orthodox Church, to a clerical class system in which bishops are chosen only from unmarried clergy.
It has passed largely unobserved that the Catholic Church in the west reinstated married clerics when the Vatican Council revived the diaconate. Not much attention is paid to deacons but there are now several thousand — many of these reverends have wives. It seems the resurrections of the diaconate has not been a brilliant success. Anyone interested in the prospects of married men being ordained should take a look at married deacons.