Pope Francis said Monday celibacy for priests was a \u201cgift to the Church\u201d and not \u201coptional\u201d, nixing the prospect of married men being ordained.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonally I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church,\u201d the pope told journalists aboard his plane returning to the Vatican from Panama.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecondly, I don\u2019t think optional celibacy should be allowed. No,\u201d he said.The pope nevertheless conceded \u201csome possibilities for far flung places\u201d, such as Pacific islands or the Amazon where \u201cthere is a pastoral necessity\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Argentine pontiff has repeatedly said there is no doctrinal prohibition on married men becoming priests, and therefore the discipline could be changed.Celibacy was imposed in the 11th century, possibly partly to prevent descendants of priests inheriting church property.<\/p>\n
Some within the church believe it is time to join many eastern rite Catholic Churches in permitting married men to take the cloth. Married Anglican priests keen to convert to Catholicism have already been welcomed over.<\/p>\n
The Vatican\u2019s number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, suggested in an interview last year that the church could \u201cgradually look in depth\u201d at the issue, while ruling out any \u201cdrastic change\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pope Paul VI\u2019s refusal to open the door to the use of the pill in the Swinging Sixties saw many priests abandon their calling.Pope Francis suggested in 2017 that the church \u201creflect\u201d on the question of ordaining \u201cviri probati\u201d, married men of proven virtue, particularly in far-flung places where priests are thin on the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope Francis said Monday celibacy for priests was a \u201cgift to the Church\u201d and not \u201coptional\u201d, nixing the prospect of married men being ordained. \u201cPersonally I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church,\u201d the pope told journalists aboard his plane returning to the Vatican from Panama. \u201cSecondly, I don\u2019t think optional celibacy should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53705,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53703\/revisions\/53705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}