Warnings from a Wife

Extract

As the wife of an Anglican priest, and an Anglican myself it was with particular personal interest that I read Fr Adrian Hastings’s article on celibacy (New Blackfriars March 1978), in which he described how he had come to the decision that he was free as a Catholic priest to marry. My understanding of the church and the priesthood coincides with that of most Roman Catholics, except that I have always had difficulty in understanding what it was about priesthood and marriage that made them incompatible. In spite of this, and in spite of my undoubted support for Fr Hastings’s position, I want to draw attention to the disadvantages of a married priesthood. For me the practical and social side-effects are not theoretical but constitute part of my everyday experience. From this experience, and from my reflection on it for ten or more years, I have come to the conclusion that the clergy family plays a part in the ‘domestication’ of the church. By this I mean the tendency of the church to be a tame and cosy club shoring up the status quo rather than a prophetic and critical institution within society. I do not believe that having a married clergy causes the ‘domestication’ of the church; rather it upholds it and reinforces it. Thus, the erastianism of the Church of England, with its married clergy, is well known, but in the past all denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, with its celibate clergy, have taken up a similar conservative stance, associating themselves with the powerful in a divided society.