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Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 12, 2021 8:12:05 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 13, 2021 9:12:08 GMT
I'll throw out a statistic, with the usual qualification from Mark Twain. The Greek Orthodox Church in Greece - the Church of Greece - has about 11,000 clergy. Only 3,000 are married. This is despite the fact they are public servants with state salaries similar to the scale Greek teachers have. The fall in the number of married clergy in the Eastern Churches isn't all about income.
By contrast in Ukraine, married clergy predominate. But many small villages are without priests as there are not enough celibate priests available. These villages cannot afford a married priest and his family.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 13, 2021 20:25:30 GMT
The Anglicans, at least in Britain and North America, seem increasingly reliant on non-stipendiary clergy - part-timers who have secular employment or are retired from their secular job. Part of the problem with utilitarian discussions of celibacy is that they occlude or gloss over the idea that freely chosen celibacy has a positive value as a form of witness to the Kingdom. (Robin Lane Fox - who is not a religious believer - has a brief discussion in his history of the classical world about what a radical step celibacy was - cutting oneself off from the prospect of family support in old age and rendering oneself dependent on the believers.) The Protestant rejection of celibacy - in contrast tothe Eastern Churches - has an unacknowledged influence on how the secular world, at least among Anglophones, view this.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 18, 2021 9:52:17 GMT
Yes, the Anglican communities world wide have been going this way for sometime. The German Lutheran Church, by contrast, still seem to draw a significant number of vocations, emphasising male vocations here. But this could be due to the wages offered by the Church Tax. I wonder how the Scandanavian Lutherans do.
Anyway, to reference the article cited above, one point that could be developed is the contrast between the priesthood and permanent diaconate in the East, as what is emerging as a permanent diaconate in the West is a lot more like the part-time Anglican ministry Hibernicus is talking about.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 21, 2021 9:27:54 GMT
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