Excerpt #1: "Deacon Shainkiam Yampik Wananch leads a liturgy with indigenous Achuar people at a chapel in Wijint, a village in the Peruvian Amazon, Aug. 20. (Photo: CNS/Maria Cervantes, Reuters)"
Several years after the Amazon Synod ended in 2019, the Church continues to discern restoring the priesthood to baptized Catholics in the Latin Rite.
Perhaps, just perhaps, historians will look back at our time in the 2020s and say that the delay was needed as part of the continued discernment process. More time was needed for (more) married priests, as Cardinal Mario Grech said a couple of years ago after the Amazon Synod ended, "Yes, we need time."
From the viewpoint of a future Church that does eventually authorize Viri Probati, say in the year 2030 or 2040 or whenever, the Church of the future will say something like, "Ah, in Divine Providence, Rome moved slow in her wisdom on married priests. The desire for married priests happened way before Vatican II and Vatican III. We are grateful for married priests now, like married deacons. Oh, how did we ever do without them?" The mainstream Latin Catholics of the future of 2040 or 2050 will look in wonder at their restored married priests like mainstream Latin Catholics did decades ago in 1970 at restored married deacons. Some bright graduate students writing on married priests in the future may even cite this simple blog in their masters theses or doctoral dissertations somewhere -- and someday chuckle -- quoting this very paragraph with their next generation of AI or whatever new tech emerges then.
Those mature men reading this reflection in 2026, hoping and praying the Church allows more married priests, may pass to the next life before this happens in 2030 or 2040 or 2050. This may bring some personal sadness but there is consolation yet. For that, in those cases, we hopefully will be grateful for our efforts that the good of the Church as a whole was advanced somehow and God used our desire, work and efforts to serve or see more married priests return.
Or maybe not. The Roman Pontiffs from now until the Second Coming may simply confirm the status quo. And this post will be a moot point.
In any case, what is clear is that, whether married priests are restored for baptized married Catholic family men or not, the good of the Church and thus the salvation of souls were at stake.
That is the heart and message for us now post-Amazon and those the future. For those of any age desiring married priests in the Latin Rite now, we trust in Divine Providence -- now -- not just in 2030 or 2040 or 2050 or whenever. And images like those below of the Amazon Synod (and decades after decades of such similar photos since the Second Vatican Council to restore married priests) are part of the story.
So to the Church of the future that does eventually have restored married priests in the Latin Rite one day, carry the Gospel forward unto the end of the world, in season and out of season. Like a runner handing a relay race stick to the next runner, our efforts and labors for the great restoration and return of married priests were made for the salvation of souls, and handed onto you, dear souls.
We hand it in to you, so that the world may believe in Jesus Christ whom God has sent into the world.
Our Lady, Queen of the Clergy, pray for us.
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Except #2
"Father Terrence Curry, S.J., a missionary priest who now serves in the Diocese of Brooklyn, noted that the church has had married clergy in the past.
“A married clergy is not foreign to the Catholic Church,” Father Curry said, emphasizing that the issue would affect only diocesan priests who more regularly administer the sacraments, not priests from monastic or religious orders.
Part of being a priest, he said, is “voluntarily choosing in the diocesan world to be celibate.” If men don’t feel called to that life, he insisted, they shouldn’t become priests.
But Father Curry said he believes that married priests would be a “great step forward, in the sense that being a priest would be more normal” in some cultures."
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Source: https://thetablet.org/amazon-synod-married-priests-debate/
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