Rick Santorum goes after Herman Cain for not supporting a federal marriage amendment. On Meet the Press, Cain was asked if he supported amending the constitution in favor of defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. “I wouldn’t seek a constitutional ban for same sex marriage, but I am pro traditional marriage,” Cain said. Santorum responded: “I have been a long-time advocate for states’ rights. However, I believe as Abraham Lincoln did – that states don’t have the rights to legalize moral wrongs.” http://cvote.to/5r

Businessman Tim Burns is running for the chance to unseat Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA. Burns lost a special election in 2010 (and the November re-match) in the seat long held by Rep. John Murtha. Burns notes: “I ran in a district that had barely 29% Republicans, virtually no Independents and I ran against what was supposed to be John Murtha’s protégé and still managed to raise $2 million,” Burns argued. “I over performed for registration substantially.  If I did that then at the state level, I think I could win in a landslide.  I think you have to put that last campaign in perspective.” Sen. Bob Casey calls himself pro-life, but he voted for taxpayer funding for groups overseas that perform abortions, he voted for Obamacare, and he also voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. http://cvote.to/5o

Please pray for Students for Life of America employee Jon Scharfenberger, who remains hospitalized after a tragic car accident nine days ago. Doctors induced a 72-hour coma in Jon this morning. The accident took the life Jon’s co-worker Kortney Gordon and Kortney’s unborn daughter, Sophy. Two others in the car suffered injuries that were not life threatening. http://cvote.to/5s

It’s another amazing success for 40 Days for Life and they’re only half-way through their forty day campaign. As of yesterday, the volunteers known for praying outside abortion mills for 40 straight days have saved 229 babies from death. In Cherry Hill, New Jersey, nine children were saved – including a set of twins. http://cvote.to/5q

Check out the CatholicVote bumpersticker spotted on a car in a Church parking lot (naturally) up in Wisconsin. Have a cool photo of a CV bumpersticker? Send it in to info@catholicvote.org. We’ll post the best ones here on our blog.

Other articles of interest:

Contemplating a vocation to the priesthood? There’s an app for that. http://cvote.to/5t

A tongue-in-cheek Ten Rules for Great Parenting by Matt Archbold. http://cvote.to/5p

From the University of St. Thomas:

When seminarians from the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity of the University of St. Thomas gather for their annual group photo at the start of the school year on Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 7, it will be the largest such gathering since 1980.

The seminary is welcoming 30 new graduate-level seminarians this fall, bringing the total number of men studying for the priesthood to 100. They come from 19 dioceses and institutes of consecrated life in the United States, Ghana, Uganda and Peru. Forty-three of the men are preparing to serve as priests of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

It's a target. The Roman collar proclaims to the world, "JESUS IS LORD. And I will live and die by that credo."

I can’t think of any occurrences that signal hope for the future of the Church like the ordination of new priests.

Baptisms are necessary, of course, but baptisms are so frequently simply cultural events, “the thing to do,” or just to keep the peace with grandparents. First Communion is special indeed, but it, too, is more of a thing that happens as a child ages rather than a new commitment. Confirmation is little more than the Catholic graduation ceremony for so many who have not adopted the faith as their own but are being confirmed because mom and dad said so. Catholic marriages far-too-frequently include contraception and divorce to be a sure sign of much of anything. Holy Orders is different. You don’t happen into ordination. It’s not just a thing you do as a cultural Catholic, or a thing the Church does for you because you went through a few awkward but painless preparatory classes.

Seminary is at least six years long. It is an incredibly intense whole-person formation program. It is a time when the seminarian is testing himself and being tested, with both sides constantly evaluating whether the seminarian is still future-priest material. The scrutiny can be maddening at times, very welcomed at times, but always in the plan of God and thus always with a view toward the greater good of the individual seminarian and the Church.

And the men getting ordained these days are especially interesting cases because of the recent history of American Catholicism. A man ordained these days entered seminary well after the sex abuse scandal was in full swing. He endured the Apostolic Visitation of the seminaries in the first few years of his formation. He has no illusions about priestly prestige awaiting him upon ordination.

The process of getting into seminary included significant questioning and examination and psychological evaluations on the part of the diocese. Who knows what pressure may have been exerted by friends and family.

And yet he persevered, listening to what he believed was the “still, small voice” of God, beckoning him to something greater, and very much worth all the pain and difficulty.

Once in seminary he had to survive in one of the most rigorous academic programs the Church can muster, but academic achievement was only a fraction of what seminary expected of him. He had to learn to take care of himself physically, frequently being told he needed to exercise more and eat better. He was expected not only to assist at Mass daily, but to develop the habit of praying the liturgy of the hours, a rosary, perhaps a chaplet, and to make a daily holy hour. None of these, apart from daily Mass, were seen as absolute requirements, but failure to develop the habit for at least some of them was noticed. He was expected to develop social graces and an easy manner of conversation with anyone. He was expected to curb his vices, excising the abjectly immoral ones entirely, while developing the ability to moderate eating, drinking, smoking, watching T.V., playing video games, and partaking in other recreational activities prudently. And he was somehow supposed to acquire administrative and organizational skills, while also learning all the rubrics, rituals, details, and nuances of how and when to actually perform the sacramental functions  of a priest.

The man being ordained these days has no illusions about a cushy life and positions of prestige. He will be loved by many, but automatically suspect to so many others. He usually will be one of two or three priests responsible for two or more churches, in demand to attend women’s club meetings, pastoral council meetings, religious education classes, parishoner events, diocesan events, spend countless hours in the confessional, schedule hours on end of spiritual direction, marriage preparation and counseling, funeral planning and preparation, write homilies, respond to emergency sick calls, take Communion to shut-ins, visit the prison, the hospital, the retirement community, and whatever personal social time he can muster—because priests need to unwind with friends, too. Somewhere in there he has to get in his own absolutely essential personal prayer time, because if he isn’t communicating personally with God and listening to what God is saying, he has nothing worth saying to God’s people.

But the most important thing he will do is offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Without the priesthood we have no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, the “source and summit of the Christian life,” we lose our most intimate and real relationship with the Jesus Christ, the bridegroom of our souls.

New priests means a future with the Eucharist. New priests are made at ordinations. Ordinations are the culmination of the seminary process that, were it not for the seminarian’s intense love of God’s Church (that includes you and me) engendered by the grace of God and the prayers of the Blessed Mother, no one but the most masochistic of souls willingly would endure.

But it is a good thing seminary is so incredibly difficult. Seminary can be an incredibly gratifying time for a man who has responded to the call. The people of God are incredibly, massively, ridiculously generous, and they love their seminarians, whether the seminarian deserves it or not. Gifts, invitations to dinner, smiles and kind words, effusive thanks for responding to the call, being held up as some sort of model Catholic, mothers who bring their sons to meet the seminarian in the hope that their sons will be Just Like Him, being regarded as an expert on matters Catholic, and the incredible fraternity that develops within the community of seminarians. It can become a very comfortable life. So much so that the seminarian may not want to leave it when the time comes. But leave it he must, and he must not, once ordained, have an unhealthy desire to be back living the life he had at the seminary—the call is to the priesthood, not to the seminary. So it is important for those responsible for the formation of the next generation of priests to train them well—so well that they only desire to be priests, not seminarians, and are as well prepared as they can be for the hard life of a priest in this day and age.

St. Paul may have been a bishop (we may not think of him in those terms much, but he was a bishop), but he could just as well have been a simple priest or a seminarian when he said that if Christ had not been raised from the dead the “we are the most pitiable of men.”

But Christ has been raised from the dead, seminary does end, new priests are ordained, and thus the Church in her essential sacramental life shall live on.

The average age of men ordained to the priesthood in 2011 is trending younger with the average age for the 2011 class at 34, with more than half between the ages of 25 and 34. This is slightly younger than in 2010, and follows the trend over the past five years of ordinands becoming younger.

These figures stand out in The Class of 2011: Survey of Ordinands to the Priesthood, an annual national survey of men being ordained priests for U.S. dioceses and religious communities, conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a Georgetown University-based research center. The entire report can be found at www.usccb.org/vocations as well as on the bishops’ vocation Web site, www.ForYourVocation.org.  It is the 15th annual survey of ordinands commissioned by the Secretariat of Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Some other stats that jumped out at me:

Half between 25 and 34 years of age
Seventy-one percent were altar servers
Sixty-seven percent attended Catholic college
Four in five report that both parents are Catholic
A third have a relative who is a priest or religious
Nearly a quarter report having five or more siblings(!)

Finally, the number of priests to be ordained this year:

480 potential ordinands [were] reported by seminaries , houses of formation, dioceses, and religious institutes. They included 275 men being ordained for 128 dioceses and 54 ordinands for religious orders, such as the Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans.

Deo Gratias!

The aftermath has been about what I expected it to be: many people took the news in a spirit of curiosity and openness, and joined me in petitioning that the Holy Spirit will enlighten the proper authorities in the Church as they consider what is to be done.

Others immediately rejected the possibility that all clerics in the Latin Rite are bound to observe continence, and instead have responded by attributing a multitude of shady motivations to me and my father for raising the question in the first place (well, to be precise, my father raising the question with competence and me helping to raise its visibility).

In the hopes of keeping this conversation constructive, let’s focus first on what my father proposes may be done, if it is indeed the case that Church law requires married priests and deacons to abstain from sex. My father writes that there are ultimately only four paths forward:

1. Deacons and priests, even if married, must observe perfect and perpetual continence.

2. Canon law requires priests, but not deacons, to observe perfect and perpetual continence.

3. Canon law requires priests (and perhaps deacons, mutatis mutandis) to observe only periodic or temporary continence in regard to the celebration of the Eucharist.

4. Neither deacons nor priests, if married, need observe any sort of continence.

If you notice, No. 1-No. 4 follow a spectrum from most regulated to least regulated when it comes to married clerics and continence. My father has suggested that No. 1 is how the law of the Church currently reads. No. 4, however, is what the majority of married clerics currently practice. No. 3, surprisingly enough (as I explain below) is how many of the Eastern Churches treat married clerics. I think there may be strong reasons in sacramental theology to suggest No. 1 or No. 2 is the best approach.

My father expands on each of these options at-length here. My father also concludes with this:

I think it ironic, to say the least, that Western married deacons and priests, despite belonging to the Church that has unquestionably held with nearly absolute consistency for a celibate (and, even if married, a completely continent) clergy, have —doubtless for lack of direction— adopted an approach to continence that, not only has no support in Western law or tradition, but fails to satisfy even the mitigated continence expectations of various Eastern Churches.

Some people are not struck by the fact that, with no express approbation or endorsement by ecclesiastical authority, such a dramatic abandonment of Western expectations regarding an important area of clerical life has occurred in so short a time.

In other words, the fact that the current lived experience of married deacons and priests in the West, contrary to our long tradition in the Latin Rite of having a celibate (and indeed, continent) clerical state, is now even less restrictive than the mitigated requirements of some Eastern Churches for their married-ordained men, should at the very least give us pause. Maybe we need to take a deep breath and try to understand this issue with more clarity, instead of simply continuing as if there is no question here.

What I have just written above is the most important part of this post, and I would urge you to familiarize yourself with my father’s original argument that Church law requires married priests and deacons to abstain from sex with their wives, and also this page where he explains the four possible canonical and pastoral situations for remedying this problematic situation.

For those who are interested in the next (but related) topic, I would enjoin your patience and good will for a moment. The one reaction I was surprised to see was those who claimed I had ulterior motives in drawing attention to my father’s argument.

I have noticed that, in the absence of me saying everything things explicitly, my critics and those who disagree with me will often attempt to fill in the ensuing void with their own interpretation of my motivates and goals.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to fill in some of those gaps.

First of all, it’s not true that I took any “joy” in informing 15,000+ deacons and married priests that a case is to be made that the Church believes their ordination to holy orders requires them to abstain from marital relations. I have nothing but respect for these men. I know and admire many married deacons, others who are in formation to become married deacons. I know and admire married priests (both in the Latin Rite and in Eastern Churches).

I also love the Church. For years I pursued graduate studies in theology, only pausing after I had earned an M.A. (in moral theology and biblical studies) and an S.T.B as well. I still may go back for more. Because I love the Church and love her teaching, and because I grew up in the house of a Canon Lawyer, I love the Church’s law, and I believe fidelity to the law of the Church and to the Church’s teachings are of paramount priority for a Catholic.

After almost six years of covering Catholic news, it does not surprise me that confusion over proper catholic practice sometimes arises. As a sinner, I know how often I have failed to live up to the love of Christ, and to live up to His laws as they are presented by the Church. It also doesn’t surprise me that Catholics are sometimes ignorant about their faith and about the practices of the Church. I know I’ll be learning about my faith until the day I die, and I try to never shy away from opportunities to learn more about my faith and the practices of the Church.

So why did I take so long to publish my agreement with my father’s assessment of Canon 277? For one thing, the text of my father’s argument was not available online until only recently, so I could only link to it recently. Before this article was available online, I was aware that confusion was growing over this topic. So only after my father posted his argument online did I have the chance to alert others to what the actual argument really was, instead of people hearing second (and third-hand) rumors.

Some have suggested that I timed my posting to undermine the progress of the Anglican ordinariate established by Pope Benedict, because I fear the prospect of more married priests in the Church. This is such a low blow it almost does not deserve an answer, especially considering how quickly and how often I have expressed my sincere joy over the Anglican ordinariate’s creation, and my dedication to defending the ordinariate against those who are worried those Anglicans who accept the offer will be too “orthodox.”

Let me dispel some other misleading claims: I never suggested that married priests and deacons should immediately stop having marital relations. In fact I carefully avoided any such suggestion because it is not at all clear to me that this is the proper course. As for those who have snapped back when they have seen this argument, “well, I’m not going to obey that stupid teaching” – that says more about their (lack of) formation and more about their relationship to the Church than it does about the validity of the point being raised.

A last comment I have seen made about my decision to raise the visibility of this issue is that it was motivated by my “politics.” Now I’ll just come out and admit I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, except that the type of people who normally make this claim about my actions always tend to interpret my respect for being faithful to the Church’s teaching as a “political” move. Again, that says more about what some people think about the Church than about what (supposedly) motivates me.

To conclude, conversations about the requirement for continence applying to all those in the clerical state (including married clerics ) have been going on for some years and doubtless will continue. It is my prayer and hope that these conversations prompted by my father’s argument and my summaries will help us get closer to the right conclusion, and prepare our hearts to receive whatever clarification comes from Rome.

To all who have sincerely helped move this conversation in that direction, thank you.

I have been struggling to decide the appropriate way to help bring this issue before the Church’s attention.

Canon Lawyer Ed Peters

This little point, illustrated my father Canon Layer Ed Peters, has potentially huge consequences for many thousands of men already serving as permanent deacons in the United States (and around the world), and it also promises to impact the growing number of married Anglican and other protestant clergy coming into the Church through the ordinariate established by Pope Benedict and similar, previous provisions.

Simply put: the law of the Church says that permanent deacons, because they are clerics, are obliged to observe “perfect and perpetual continence.” In simple terms, permanent deacons are obligated by law to refrain from sexual relations with their wife once they are ordained. [Note: Celibacy is the state of being unmarried. Continence is abstaining from sex within marriage. Priests are required to be celibate (which presumes they are continent). Deacons are called to be continent.]

More than that, the same obligation to observe perfect and perpetual continence would seem to apply to married priests who obviously remain married after they enter the Church and are ordained as priests (this would seemingly apply to all married Anglican clergy about to be ordained as Catholic priests). Again, simply put, ordination to holy orders in the Roman Catholic Church always carries with it the obligation to abstain completely from sexual relations.

My father has published on his website CanonLaw.info a complete explanation for this argument, briefly, that we have fallen out of the habit of observing Canon 277 in the Church, but the law (and theology behind the law) remains unchanged. In addition, he has made available the PDF file of his 34 page academic article substantiating his argument. Fair warning: the argument is air-tight. There are, in my opinion, simply no loop-holes to be found.

Fr. John Boyle, an English canonist, also has a helpful post on his blog explaining my father’s argument step-by-step.

I believe this is a “Josiah moment” for the Church. In the Old Testament, we are told that the good King Josiah discovered the law of Moses, after it had been long forgotten, and had it proclaimed again to the people of Israel. In the West today, we have forgotten the Church’s discipline about one of the essential obligations that ordination to orders carries with it. We are now witnessing this forgotten law being discovered again. The question now is, “will we follow the law?”

There are more than 15,000 permanent deacons in the United States alone, and the great majority of them are married. I do not know the number of married priests, but we can expect their number internationally to increase as more married Anglican priests come into the Roman Catholic Church.

To the best of my knowledge, none of these candidates were made aware that ordination to orders in the Catholic Church carries with it the obligation to be continent. This presents an urgent pastoral situation that I trust the American bishops to address.

I know that returning to this teaching will be met with resistance by some (“Wait, this isn’t what I signed up for!”) but my hope is that permanent deacons (and the rest of us) can acknowledge the wisdom of the Church’s teaching and discipline. How we deal with the situation of permanent deacons who were ordained without full knowledge of the requirements bound up with their office remains to be seen, but my father includes some suggestions.

After all, the obligation to abstain from sexual activity elevates the dignity of orders, and increases the sign value represented by observing continence for the sake of God’s Kingdom. This is something that all unmarried priests (and transitional deacons) are already bound to observe. Including permanent deacons and married priests among those who are bound to observe continence matches the reality that all these men described above share fundamentally in the same sacred reality: holy orders. There are not “two ways” of being a cleric in the Roman Catholic Church, instead, one sacrament unites them all, and carries the same obligations for all who are ordained as clerics.

Following the law removes the ambiguity and double-standard that we currently witness in the Church, an ambiguity that those who argue for a married priesthood capitalize on whenever they try to make the case that permanent deacons and married priests being able to have sexual relations means that all priests and deacons should. Rather, the solution is for all priests and deacons to observe the same perfect continence, as has been the long-standing tradition in Canon Law and the Western Catholic tradition.

The obligation of deacons to observe perfect continence, furthermore, provides an opportunity the wives of these married deacons to make a praiseworthy sacrifice on behalf of the Church. As Father Boyle says:

If the future deacon were to become bound by the obligation to observe perfect and perpetual continence, this would involve the renunciation by the wife of her marital rights. It would be unjust for her to be deprived of these rights by her husband’s ordination, but she could willingly renounce these rights for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, as my father explains in detail, the way the Church’s law is written, it presumes that wives have a say in their husband’s decision to pursue the permanent diaconate – because wives have something to lose if their husbands decide to pursue holy orders. At the same time, they have something to gain if they decide to join in their husband’s decision to abstain from marital relations for the sake of the Kingdom.

I expect my father’s argument to spark a wider conversation in the Church. And I hope that before anyone starts making statements about this finding and drawing claims from it, they read my father’s explanation in full, because he has done his best to anticipate many of the misunderstandings that are sure to happen along the way as people grapple to understand the Church’s teaching.

I believe it is important for this conversation to happen before large numbers of married Anglican priests are brought into the Church. They, and their wives, deserve to know the Church’s teaching on the necessity of all clerics in the Catholic Church to observe continence. And those who are permanent deacons in America and the rest of the world deserve to know the sacred obligation which accompanies their ordination.

UPDATE: Here are links to the first round of reactions to this post. Below I will do my best to quickly respond to the most common reactions I am seeing in comment boxes:

• Previous: As I mentioned in the post above, English Canonist Fr. John Boyle agrees with my father’s conclusion
• Day 1: The Pertinacious Papist has read – and agrees – with my father’s assessment
• Day 1: The first prominent Deacon to respond is Deacon Greg Kandra. My father responds to Deacon Kandra here
• Day 2: The second (and far more substantial) response from a deacon has been posted by Deacon Keith Fournier
• Day 2: The third noteworthy response from a deacon is by Deacon William Ditewig. My father has responded to him here
• Day 2: Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture calls my father’s arguments “unassailable” and writes “some authoritative clarification is called for”
• Day 3: Ed Peters writes “Let’s avoid consequence-driven analysis“
• Day 4: John Martens at an America Magazine blog wrote an immature, partially-fabricated, hit piece, which my father responded to here
• Day 4: Deacon David Lopez has two helpful contributions: “There is no cause to panic” and his best attempt to respond
• Day 5: My father adds further focus to the debate: Addressing questions on clerical continence requires attention to Holy Orders as well as to Matrimony

Now I’ll do my best to respond to the most common responses I’ve read around the net:

“But if Deacons can’t have sex they’ll all leave!” – We must recall that the Church is not in the numbers game. Pope Benedict reminded us during his trip to the UK that the Church is not meant to be popular, she is meant to be faithful to the teachings of Christ and to her sacred traditions. The same (false) arguments that people make for married priests in the Western Church equally do not apply to married deacons. The Church has been praying for more vocations to the priesthood and has recently been blessed with a surge in young vocations – men who are willing to live chastely for the Kindgom. It is legitimate to also pray for mature men who are willing to practice continence as deacons.

“Canon Law is wrong/let’s change Canon Law back to the way it was.” – Here’s the thing: Canon Law (certainly since 1917) has always said the same thing about the requirements of holy orders. The way Church law reads now is not a typo or an oversight: it reflects the confirmed judgement and practice of the Church. Furthermore, the Canon Law on this point in question is not arbitrary – it is founded on the Church’s tradition and its theological understanding of sacred orders. The easiest way to understand this is to recall that, in the Church’s eyes, deacons and priests share in the same sacrament: holy orders. It should not surprise us to discover that they are called to observe many of the same personal disciplines as well.

“Sections 1 and 2 of Canon 277 are trumped by Section 3 – problem solved!” – What I think is good about this response is that it means the person claiming it is taking the law seriously. After all, one would only cite the law in support of your argument if you believe the law has standing (I share this view). Of course, to say that Section 3 makes it possible to dispense from the obligation for deacons (and all clerics) to observe continence also means you must believe that Section 1 obliges them to observe continence in the first place. In other words, arguments from Canon 277 presume that the starting-point for the Church when it comes to the obligations of deacons is for them to observe “perfect and perpetual continence.” Now, I know of no published examples where a bishop actually claimed to have used Section 3 to dispense from the obligations described in Section 1, which gets us back to where my father’s argument begins. UPDATE: my father Ed Peters has responded himself to this common question

[Fr. Thomas Boyle offers an opinion on the status of married Anglicans becoming Catholic:

Married men wishing to be priests in the Anglican Ordinariate will obtain a dispensation from the law contained in Can. 277 §1. This means that, not only are they dispensed from celibacy, they are also dispensed from continence.

Anglicanorum coetibus Art VI § 2: “The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.”]

FINAL POINT: THIS WON’T BE DECIDED BY US. The theological and pastoral questions raised by my father’s article go beyond the authority of any lay authority to decide definitively. It is up to the bishops of the Church, together with the competent authorities in Rome, to issue a clarification and enunciate a full and timely response to the theological and pastoral questions raised by this argument.

In the meantime, I will do my best to respond to the questions that are sure to arise in the meantime. And I would invite all of us in a spirit of prayer and humility to be attentive to the will of the Holy Spirit, who continues to guide the Church in all things.

Kenneth Smith had been a fixture in the highly rated Upperline Restaurant of New Orleans, Louisiana, where for the past 11 years he served as the executive chef. But after about two decades working there, he has moved out of the kitchen and into New Orleans’ Notre Dame Seminary, on his way to becoming a priest. CNN sat down this summer with Smith, 50, before he took off his apron. Below, in his own words, he explains how serving up faith is a logical leap. [Continue reading at CNN]

Props to the interviewer for letting this man’s good heart shine through.

The entire piece is well worth the time to read!