An archbishop argues for married priests

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