The Vatican said on Monday its plan to allow married Anglican priests to convert to Catholicism does not signal any change to its age-old rule of celibacy for the overwhelming majority of Catholic priests. It set out its position in a preface to Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution “Anglicanorum Coetibus” (Groups of Anglicans) regulating the admission of Anglican converts to Catholicism, including married priests and bishops.
“The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy within the Personal Ordinariates (the structure for ex Anglicans) does not signify any change in the Church’s discipline of clerical celibacy,” it said.
(Photo: Pope Benedict, 4 Nov 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)
The Vatican announced last month an initiative to make it easier for conservative Anglicans who feel their church has become too liberal to convert to Catholicism. This stirred widespread speculation on what it could eventually mean for the celibacy rule in the Roman Catholic church. There was also speculation about whether men who had left the Catholic priesthood to marry and later became Anglicans could return to the Catholic priesthood and remain married.
Bishop of Guildford Christopher Hill, Chairman of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity, said: “We note the publication of the text of the Apostolic Constitution and its complementary norms today. It will now be for those who have requested and at this point feel impelled to seek full communion with the Roman Catholic Church to study the Apostolic Constitution carefully in the near future and to consider their options.
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The Catholic Church is a communion of 21, now 22, local churches, each having its own episcopacy, rites and rituals.
There is nothing new about the move to invite the Anglicans in because it mirrors the creation of the various Uniate Eastern Catholic Churches, which worship using the rites and rituals of the Eastern/Oriental Orthodox, but profess unity with the Roman Catholic Church. Most of them have married priests as well.
Additionally, the Roman Catholic Church has been reordaining married Anglican clergy since 1980, so the married clergy part isn’t anything new.
- Posted by John R.