A few newsrooms bungled their reporting this week on Pope Francis’ recent remarks on priesthood and marriage, but media’s overall coverage was mostly accurate.
That’s a nice change of pace for an industry that regularly misconstrues and misrepresents the Roman pontiff.
Francis said this week that the Church is looking for ways to address the crisis of declining vocations. The scarcity of priests has become a real problem in certain areas, especially in South America, but the solution isn’t to rewrite the traditions of the priesthood, he said.
“The issue of voluntary celibacy is frequently discussed, especially if there is a shortage of clerics. But voluntary celibacy is not a solution,” Francis told the German newspaper Die Zeit.
The pope’s interviewer followed-up with this question, “What about viri probati, those men of proven virtue, who are married but can be ordained deacons because of their exemplary Catholic moral conduct?”
The phrase viri probati is Latin for “tested men” or “proven men.”
The pope responded, “We need to consider if viri probati could be a possibility. If so, we would need to determine what duties they could undertake, for example, in remote communities.”
“In the Church, it is always important to recognize the right moment, to recognize when the Holy Spirit demands something. That is why I say that we will continue to reflect about the viri probati,” he added in his interview, which was published Thursday.
First, it’s important to recognize from the outset that Francis’ remarks were made in reference to a specific question about ordaining viri probati as deacons. The question wasn’t exactly about opening the priesthood to marriage. Second, not all deacons are married, but all deacons are men. Deacons may assist in the Catholic Mass, but they are unable to celebrate it. Lastly, the concept to which Francis was referring, viri probati, is not new. It has its roots in the first century, dating back to the earliest Christians.
With these points in mind, here’s a sampling of how the press covered the Die Zeit interview:
From AFP: “Pope Francis says may consider making married men priests.”
From CNN: “Pope signals he’s open to married Catholic men becoming priests.”
From Time magazine: “Pope Francis Wants to Consider Ordaining Married Men as Priests.”
From USA Today: “Pope Francis open to allowing married priests in Catholic Church.”
From The Guardian: “Pope Francis: married men could be ordained to ease priest shortage.”
These and similar headlines perhaps hint at something that’s not quite so, but they’re not obviously false.
What can be criticized, however, is flat-out inaccurate reporting. Luckily for Francis, many newsrooms, including Yahoo, the Associated Press, the Huffington Post and USA Today, did a decent job covering his remarks. The competition could learn a thing from this.
CNN reported inaccurately, for example, that Francis, “indicated he would be open to a change in the rules governing eligibility for the priesthood.”
Time magazine also had this head-scratcher of an opener: “Pope Francis has stirred Catholics around the world with his relatively open comments on homosexuality, abortions and climate change, but his latest statement hints he may be looking at moving the Church toward loosening one of its most stringent rules.”
Interestingly enough, and despite that overloaded lede, the Time article actually goes on to say this, “Francis is not interested in completely removing the Church’s celibacy rule, but he said married men who are already involved in the church — called ‘viri probati’ — could be useful.”
The chief problem with both reports is that they suggest the Church’s longstanding celibacy tradition is a question of Catholic doctrine. It’s not.
Though the Roman Catholic Church usually demands celibacy of its priests, there is no doctrinal prohibition on married men becoming priests. This is, in fact, a practice that Saint Paul described in his first letter to Timothy, and continues to be the practice in Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches.
“Catholicism does include 23 Eastern churches in full communion with Rome whose clergy are allowed to marry,” Crux rightly noted this week. “In the United States, there are also a few hundred former Protestant ministers who’ve entered the Catholic Church as married men and permitted to remain married after being ordained as Catholic priests.”
Hot Air’s Ed Morrisey explained it further, writing earlier this week, “[T]he commitment to priestly celibacy is a practice rather than a doctrine within the Latin Rite, one which goes back as a requirement for at least a thousand years.”
“Other rites within the Catholic Church do allow for married priests, but the determination of rite membership depends on baptism,” he added.
For the Church, celibacy is not on the same level of importance as, “the requirement for priests to be male, which means the episcopate could change the rule if called to do so by the Holy Spirit in concert with a pope,” he added.
One theory holds that Francis is toying with the idea of elevating deacons so that they can provide sacraments to those in distant locations who otherwise cannot get them. If that’s the case, that would likely be a temporary fix, meaning the pope is exactly not flirting with any sort of permanent or revolutionary change to one of the priesthood’s longest standing traditions, as media have suggested this week.
To put it plainly, Francis may be open to the idea of elevating the one position, not rewriting the other.
At any rate, the overall handling of Francis’ interview has been okay. It’s a nuanced topic, and the pope himself is not the most precise speaker in the world. Some newsrooms didn’t get it quite right, but most did. If you read about this story this week, chances are you were given the correct information.
