The Eastern lung of the Catholic Church has long carried some sense of being treated as unequal partners in the Universal Church. Recent developments have re-opened some old wounds. In this commentary Dr Kania addresses one issue, the treatment of married Eastern Rite priests, both by bishops who have been out of step with Vatican policy, and uninformed members of the lay Church in a number of countries who have treated married Eastern rite priests and their spouses in totally unChristian ways. Possibly sparked by the increasing number of Eastern-rite Catholics now resident in Western countries, Dr Kania has informed the editor of Catholica of instances in English-speaking countries of the wives of Ukrainian Catholic Church priests receiving hate-mail from more conservative sectors in the Latin Church. This commentary looks at some of the history of this issue and the official position of the Vatican as espoused by a long succession of Popes.

Derided by members of the Latin Church for being a married priest…

After the ethnic cleansing of Galicia by Poland, Fr. Stanislaw Fedorovych (b. 1872, ordained 1900, d. 1964), a Ukrainian Catholic married priest, resolutely persisted in ministering to the remnant of parishioners in the city of Jaroslaw; (the only Ukrainian Catholics who were not expelled from the city were those of mixed marriages). While Latin Churches flourished in the city, the Ukrainian Catholic pro-Cathedral, The Church of the Transfiguration, was gutted and the frescos riddled with machine gun fire. A mound of rubble was placed in front of the main entrance of the pro-Cathedral, so that no one could come and worship according to the Byzantine Rite of the Catholic Church. However the Latin Church priests would open a side door, once every week, for catechetical training for children of the Roman Rite.

All this took place in a fervently Catholic nation, albeit, under the auspices of a Communist government. Fr. Fedorovych, now without an official parish, could often be seen in the city asking for food, and after his wife died the widower became the sole carer and provider for a daughter, a woman now in her forties stricken terminally ill with tuberculosis. In the post World Word II period, Fr. Fedorovych would be the target of much derision and abuse by the Latin Church majority of Jaroslaw, (one quite public exception being the friendship and support he received from the Polish Jesuit priest Fr. Opalinski) despite being cherished by his small number of parishioners as a gentle, humble, simple, and saintly man. In what may appear to some as macabre, Fr. Fedorovych, a man with little financial means, kept a casket hidden in his house, for he wanted his daughter on her passing, to be buried with dignity. It has also become part of tragic legend how this married priest, walked and searched the streets in order to find some cleric of the Latin Church willing to hear the final confession of a married priest's daughter. A Polish Franciscan priest would eventually come to administer her the Last rites.

As for Fr. Stansilaw, he was to die in his home in Jarsolaw in 1964, destitute and alone, a man born into an aristocratic family, a dedicated, dutiful priest, robbed of his parish and means of support, derided by members of the Latin Church for being a married priest.

The tradition of married clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches…

The tradition of a married clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches, takes its heritage from the very dawn of the Universal Church. For this reason, the Code of Canon Law of the Eastern Churches, contains Canon 373, a canon that states categorically:

"Clerical celibacy chosen for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and suited to the priesthood is to be greatly esteemed everywhere, as supported by the tradition of the whole Church; likewise the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive Church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor".

Married priests: "honoured" or "tolerated" by the Latin Western Church?

Pope John Paul II

As such it is a fanciful opinion held by some in the Catholic West that the tradition of married clergy is merely 'tolerated' by Rome. Pope John Paul II, gave Papal approval to this Canon, and as such all Catholics are required not to 'tolerate' married clergy in the Eastern Catholic tradition, but to give them due 'honour'. Moreover, Canon 375, extending on from Canon 373 clearly speaks of the witness that the married cleric offers to the wider community by stating: "In leading family life and in educating children married clergy are to show an outstanding example to other Christian faithful".

The notion that the Papacy 'tolerates' the Eastern Catholic clergy was popularised, quite ironically, by a Ukrainian Catholic priest, Fr. Roman Cholij who in a text entitled, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, (1988), referred to the tradition of married clergy in the Ukrainian Church as being 'tolerated'. That Fr. Chlolij's interpretation was indeed found later to be incorrect is evidenced by the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches being declared two years after his book was released, in which the Pontiff ratifies the married clergy of the Eastern Catholic Churches as being an 'honour' to the Universal Church. Fr. Cholij's text in large part is today perceived as a 'uniate' work, that is a step in the process of latinizing the traditions of the Eastern Churches. Additionally, Fr. Cholij, a celibate Ukrainian priest at the time of being the author of Clerical Celibacy in East and West, has also since the publication of this text, left the priesthood and married.

"Honour" is not followed through at the grass roots level of the Latin Church…

By seeking to hold up the married clergy of the East to ridicule, those narrow-minded quarters of the Catholic West, in effect ridicule the authority of the Universal Pontiff, not to mention as well, the Saints and Holy men and women of the Catholic East, who have defended the charism of married clergy over the centuries. A study paper published in the late-1990's at the time of the Polish ban of Ukrainian Catholic married clergy within Polish territory, also revealed that it is not unknown for the wives of married clergy in the diaspora to receive 'hate-mail' from 'conservative' Roman Rite Catholics calling the wives of the married Eastern Catholic clergy among other names: 'chattels', 'concubines' and worse. Such acts of baseness reveal far more about the lack of Catholicism issuing from the hearts of their authors than they do of the character of a woman married to a priest. Furthermore, those who criticize the wives of married clergy, have overlooked the fact that these women did not marry priests, rather they sacramentally married men who later became priests. In addition, despite the 'honour' that the Vatican through Papal approval extends to the married clergy of the East, time and time again, the Catholic East and her discipline of married clergy is held in derision by 'conservative' Latins, who in a lascivious fashion point amusedly at the minority of failed marriages of priests, as an argument against married clergy. While the marriages of married clergy sometimes do fail, their failure rate is indeed much lower than the marriages of laity.

Far from being a point of open conjecture, the existence of married clergy in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, to take just one example of an Eastern Catholic Church, has had the approval of the Pontiff, even prior to the publication of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches in 1990, for the Union of Brest of 1595 in Article Nine, clearly states: "That the marriages of priests remain intact …". This is clearly a non-negotiable area for discourse, for Article Nine, is one of the 33 Articles, that constitute the Union of the Ruthenian Church with the Holy See. If anyone seeks to remove the right of the Ukrainian Church to have married clergy, they in fact seek to tear at a Union that has given the Universal Church some of its most glorious martyrs and most loyal sons and daughters since 1595. They also seek to take on themselves an authority higher than the Papacy.

Catholicism cannot afford another incident as happened in the U.S. in 1929…

The Universal Church is well aware that it cannot afford a repeat of the Cum Data Fuerit incident (a document proclaimed in March, 1929 in which the Latin Church hierarchy took it on themselves to ban Eastern married clergy from serving parishes in the United States). The consequence of this being in 1929 that 250,000 Ruthenian Catholics took Cum Data Fuerit to mean a breach of the Union of Brest and in consequence joined the Orthodox Church. It would in effect take Pius XII till 1949 to halt the public imposition of Cum Data Fuerit, and then more than a decade later for the Second Vatican Council to state that: "Celibacy is not required by the priesthood itself, as is evident in the practices of the early Church, and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches" (No. 16 of the Decree Concerning the Ministry and Life of the Priest). A similar ban on married clergy was also enforced in Australia soon after World War II, a ban that was not lifted until a declaration was issued by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in May 1998. That such bans were ever enforced in the first place, is clearly because the Eastern Catholic Churches in the diaspora had little voice by which to defend their canonical rights.

Pope Benedict XV

Furthermore, among similar 'conservative; quarters of the Latin Church, a comment is sometimes made that the Eastern Catholic Churches must obey the Latin Church, for they are subordinate to It. That there is no primacy of the Latin West over the Catholic East is firmly upheld by Pope Benedict XV who stated unequivocally: "The Church of Jesus Christ is neither Latin nor Greek nor Slav but Catholic".[1] Being Catholic first and foremost, the Church embodies, unity in diversity, an equality of all the Rites, within a primacy of dogma. Pope Pius XII would encapsulate this in Orientalis ecclesiae, when he wrote: "Each and every nation of Oriental rite must have its rightful freedom in all that is bound up with its own history and its own genius and character, saving always the truth and integrity of the doctrine of Jesus Christ".[2]

Pope Pius XII

The Ukrainian Church, the Melkite Church, the Maronite Church, or any other Church that comprises the Eastern communion of Catholic Churches, does not occupy a position of ecclesiastical deference to the Latin Church, nor to the Roman Rite, nor need apologize for, nor be ashamed of, any Church discipline that comprises her charism; to postulate that the Eastern Churches must defer to the Roman Rite stands contrary to Papal teaching, for as Pope Pius XII clearly stated: "From all this it is evident that our predecessors have always shown the same fatherly love to the Ruthenians as to the Catholics of the Latin rite. They have also considered it most important to defend the rights and privileges of their hierarchy. When many Latins asserted that the Ruthenian rite was of inferior standing, and some Latin bishops even declared that the Ruthenian prelates did not enjoy full Episcopal rights and functions but were subject to them, this Apostolic See rejected these unjust and fanciful opinions." (Pius XII, 1945, §29) Anyone within the Catholic Church who teaches contrary to this Papal teaching, does so, on the basis of personal pride, for they seek to place the Pope beneath the foot-stool of individual whim and prejudice.

Pope Leo XIII

Perhaps Leo XIII's warning may also help check, the spreading of such rumours, of Eastern Catholics requiring a conversion from their 'baser' Eastern ways to the 'true' Roman Rite: "Any Latin rite missionary, whether of the secular or religious clergy, who induces with his advice or assistance any Eastern rite faithful to transfer to the Latin rite, will be deposed and excluded from his benefice in addition to the ipso facto suspensio a divinis and other punishments that he will incur as imposed in the aforesaid Constitution Demandatam. That this decree stand fixed and lasting. We order a copy of it to be posted openly in the churches of the Latin rite." (Leo XIII, 1894, §9, I).

Murdered for their faith: Bl Nicholad Tsels'kyi (l) & Bl Roman Lyzko

The married state characterizes nearly 95% of the clergy of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the largest Church in the Universal Church after the Latin Church. Ukrainian Catholics respect and honour their priests, be they celibate clergy or married men, and in this they have the support of the Holy Father who in 2001, beatified not only the celibate hierarchs of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, but also beatified married clerics such as: Blessed Nicholas Tsehels'kyi of Ternopil and Blessed Roman Lyzko; the former who wrote to his wife from the Soviet prison in which he was to perish for his faith: "My dearest wife: the feast of the Dormition was our 25th wedding anniversary. I recall fondly our family life together, and every day in my dreams I am with you and the children, and this makes me happy … I give a fatherly kiss to all their foreheads and I hope to live honestly, behaving blamelessly, keeping far from everything that is foul. I pray for this most of all".

Be the priest celibate or married, there is no greater evidence as to the depth of his Faith, than his willingness to die for his Faith and his Faithful, and that should be the sole qualification of his worth to the Church as a priest, and not whether as part of his life, he has been called by additional vocation, to love a woman as Christ loved His Church. In conclusion, the Holy See has called married clergy in the East, both 'hallowed¹ and 'honoured¹, and as such, when they are discussed as a treasured part of the Universal Church, this communion of priests should be discussed from such an initial point of reference and with the respect that is due them.

PostScript: In the course of this article criticism has been levelled at some members of the Latin Church and their failure to understand that the Catholic Church comprises Rites of equal status. There are also some wonderful examples of much being done within the Latin Church to affirm the unity in diversity within the Church. One such example is the receipt of the Holy Eucharist by Eastern Catholic infants in Latin Churches, such as is the case with Dr. Kania's 22 month old son, who receives communion every Sunday through the species of the Blood of Christ, administered to him by the Dominican Friars of Blackfriars Priory, Oxford. A decision was made by the English Dominican Province to provide Timothy John Kania with the Holy Eucharist, on the basis that he, being baptized, confirmed and having received the Holy Eucharist, as is the norm of the Eastern Church as a baby, is now entitled to receive the Eucharist as any other fully initiated member of the Catholic Church, be they Ukrainian or Latin. Such actions speed up the day that the Church can witness to the reality of "Breathing Deeply, With Both Lungs".

Footnotes:
[1] Benedict XV (1917) Dei providentis
[2] Pius XII (1944) Orientalis ecclesiae, §26

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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