Heading a southern Lebanese diocese that goes from the sea then east
two-thirds of the way along the border with Israel, the one problem
Melkite Archbishop George Bakhouni of Tyre says he doesn't have is
finding priests.
In fact, the archbishop said, he's surprised bishops and other
leaders of the Latin-rite Church aren't more interested in the Eastern
Catholic Churches' experience with ordaining married men.
''Christianity survived in the Middle East because of the married
priests,'' the bishop said. Because they are married with families and
homes, they tend to stay even when conflicts and hardship send many
celibate priests fleeing to safety.
The archbishop met at the weekend with a small group of Catholic
journalists visiting Lebanon with the Catholic Near East Welfare
Association, a North American agency supporting Christians in the
region.
For the archdiocese's 10 parishes, ''I have 12 priests. Eight of them
are married and four are single, but two of the singles are serving in
Italy,'' the archbishop said.
''We always propose this to the Latin Church because you are Catholic
and we are Catholic, but we always feel a lot of reticence when we
mention this issue to the Roman Catholic Church. I don't know, but I
think it could be helpful to allow a married person to be a priest.''
Dogma
The celibacy rule for priests in the Latin-rite Church has always
been defined as a Church discipline, not a theologically or scripturally
based dogma that is unchangeable.
The archbishop knows all the arguments against relaxing the celibacy
requirement in the Latin Church, but in his experience, ordaining
married men is the most naturally pastoral response to every Catholic's
need for regular access to the sacraments.
In little villages where there may be only 20 or 30 families, he
said, it would be hard to find a single, celibate priest who would be
happy to live and minister there. And that handful of families would not
be able to support him.
The Eastern tradition, he said, is ''to choose someone who has his
own work in the particular village, a good man, a faithful man, a
Christian man. He will study a little bit, some theology and philosophy,
and he will be ordained''.
The archbishop said it doesn't matter that it's impractical to send a married man to the seminary for six years.
''We don't want all of them to be doctors or theologians,'' but
witnesses. Priests don't all have to be well spoken orators; they could
even be fishermen, like the Apostles, he said.
The important thing, he said, is that they live exemplary lives among
their fellow villagers, know a bit of theology and the Bible and that
they are available to celebrate the sacraments.
SIC: IC/IE