I've been thinking about those priests that "come over" with their families & continue serving as priests. How do those wives cope? Who will be the dad to his kids while he is the father of a parish?In our Bible study, we talked about one of our own deacons, who basically runs the parish's programs and physical plant. He took early retirement from a secular job to do this. A group member who knows his family pointed out that in addition to his own intense formation program, his wife had to undergo formation nearly as intense. (As the visitor recommends, their children are grown, and in fact one son is a priest.)I had a chance to speak with a woman in another state whose husband was being ordained a permanent deacon for their diocese. Their children were grown & starting their own families. She was concerned about the bishop encouraging younger men with younger families to discern the permanent diaconate. After the formation her husband received & realizing that he would/should be at total service of whichever parish he was assigned, she felt that allowing such young dads to become deacons was a great disservice to the wives, children & even parishes.
I live in [redacted] diocese & in our confirmation class last night we talked about deacons. Bishop [redacted] won't allow men with young families to enter formation for the diaconate. As he gets ready to retire, I'm realizing that he's on the ball in ways that I wouldn't have considered. He was at our parish for confirmation & as he was exhorting the teens to live & know their faith, I felt bad that so many of those families in ordinariate parishes will miss out on that wisdom because ". . .new Ordinariate attendees are mostly conservative lifelong Catholics who aren't quite ready for Latin but want to pretend they are back at St Francis Academy with Hayley Mills."
The members frequently ask my wife and me how these things compare with Anglican and ordinariate practices. I mentioned that for starters, an issue that came up in the Luke Reese scandal is that the wives of married ordinariate priests receive no formation at all, and certainly nothing equivalent to what married deacons' wives receive.
But also, Anglican priests simply don't have the workload of Catholic priests. I checked the website of the Episcopalian parish that serves the same community as our current Catholic parish. It has an 8 AM Sunday low and a 10 AM Sunday sung high mass. There is a weekday morning prayer at 8 AM, except Wednesday, when there is a eucharist. There is a weekday noon prayer, nothing on Saturdays, no confessions ever. English only. A rector, an associate, and a deacon serve the parish. (We were parishioners there in the 1990s, when we remember having to lean over two rows of pews to exchange the peace.)
At our Catholic parish, not far away, weekday masses are 6:30, 8:00, and 5:30, with additional novenas and other seasonal events. Saturday masses are 8:00 and 5:30. Sunday masses are 6:30, 8:00, 9:30, 11:00, 12:30 Spanish, and 5:30 LifeTeen. Confessions are Monday, Thursday, and Saturday late afternoon. The parish is served by a pastor, two associates, two deacons, and an additional priest-in-residence. Every priest celebrates mass and hears confessions in Spanish as well as English.
At least for the associates, they have heavy schedules of visits to the sick and housebound on weekdays. While my regular correspondent says, "[T]he idea that ordained ministry is a 'total service' incompatible with marriage and parenthood is romantic, IMHO. Doctors, fire fighters, the military, not to mention Orthodox and Eastern Catholic priests, several hundred PP and Ordinariate clergy, and those in Protestant ministry, manage to exercise their vocations," just comparing the workload between an Episcopalian and Catholic parish serving the exact same community, one in the hundreds, the other in the thousands, I have a hard time thinking the workload for Protestants vs Catholics is anything like comparable.
Add to that the pattern we see in Episcopal priesthood that's carried over in part to the OCSP, what I would call the "Bishop Paul Moore Jr phenomenon": Moore, in the process of burnishing his career, had nine children with his wife. His daughter Honor Moore in her memoir, The Bishop's Daughter, wondered, as the babies kept coming, who they were trying to beat. It appears, in fact, that Moore quite callously exploited his wife. putting her in the position of caring for the family while Moore frequently absented himself furthering his career. Beyond that, especially early in that process, Moore encouraged the local poor to come into the rectories and bishop's residences for handouts, adding to his wife's burdens while Moore, naturally, occupied himself elsewhere.
This leaves aside Moore's closeted gay life. The nine children probably served as a beard here as well. Ultimately, when Moore left Washington for New York, his wife stayed behind. It's hard to blame her.
We're beginning to see celibate seminarians moving to ordination in the OCSP, but although there appears to be some intent eventually to switch to a celibate priesthood, Houston is still ordaining young married men with families, and it continues not to give their wives formation equivalent to what the Church provides for the wives of married deacons. Beyond that, we certainly still see a number of OCSP priests faithfully following the Paul Moore Jr model, with Stakhanovite broods of children likely serving as hostages in addition to whatever else they're used for.
I don't miss being an Episcopalian.
