I hesitated before wading into the current public discussion about priests, marriage and celibacy. This is because I believe it to be an alienation from the real problems the Church, including the Archdiocese of Malta, and the country are facing. Besides, there are many more urgent and important problems that the Catholic community in Malta should be vociferous about but alas it is not.

I finally decided to write about the subject because the discussion is characterised by the conflation of two related but very distinct questions.

These are: Should the Church admit married men to the priesthood? Should the Church permit those who are ordained priests to marry after ordination?

Let me unpack them, starting with the first question.

The Catholic Church is a complex organisation comprising different rites (read ‘groups’ for an easier secular reading). The Latin rite – the one to which we belong – does not allow the ordination of married men.

When, in 2019, the bishops of the Amazon region met for a synod, they proposed that the Church should ordain married men of good repute to serve in these remote regions but Pope Francis did not accept their proposal.

Pope Benedict had given members of the Anglican Church permission to join the Catholic Church while keeping their traditions. A Maltese, who had become a priest in the Anglican Church and was married, is serving in Birkirkara. At first, many people were surprised, others shocked. Today, the community accepts him.

Another rite in the Catholic Church, known as the Greek or ‘oriental’ rite, allows the ordination of married men and seminarians can marry before ordination. I know of a respected married Maltese man serving the Greek rite community in Malta. In this case, it is not a question of priests getting married but of married men becoming priests. In this rite, if the wife of a married priest dies, then the priest cannot remarry.

There is then the question of men getting married after priestly ordination. This is, for example, the discipline in the Anglican and Lutheran Church. This would be a radical change for the Catholic Church as it could create more questions and challenges than the first option.

It is true that there are priests who leave the ministry to marry a woman but some leave to marry a man- Fr Joe Borg

Undoubtedly, if the Church adopts this option it will solve the difficulties that some individuals do experience. This is positive. However, only the naïve would think that this option would solve the problem of the progressively decreasing number of men wanting to become priests.

It is not clear which one of these two possibilities – both of which are doctrinally possible – Archbishop Charles Scicluna proposed during his interview with Times of Malta. At one point he said that priests should be able to marry. This seems to refer to the Protestant tradition. But in two instances he said that the Catholic Church (the Latin rite) should learn from the oriental rite tradition, that is, married men becoming priests. However, this would imply that the Church would still lose the ‘good priests’ the archbishop referred to, if they fall in love with someone after ordination. This lack of clarity creates confusion.

It is true that in the Catholic Church there are priests who leave the ministry to get married to a woman but there are also some who leave to get married to a man. Others leave because they could not tolerate any more the arrogant attitude of a bishop or a parish priest or the lack of empathy of other priests. Still others leave because of a crisis of faith or because they are tired day in day out celebrating mass to an ever-decreasing congregation of old people.

That is one reason why, at the beginning of this op-piece, I wrote that there are more urgent problems than the priesthood and celibacy that the local Church should and is authorised to confront and more issues about which it should be more vociferous.

This is not a ‘penis et circenses’ issue – to somewhat adapt an old Roman adage to this issue – as discussions on the social media and other fora seem to suggest. This is a serious subject the Catholic community has to tackle but mainly as part of a process of profound discernment because of the weighty pastoral and theological dimensions that are at stake.