Belgian bishop: No married priests would be ‘fatal blow’ to synodal process

(LifeSiteNews) — Belgian Bishop Johan Bonny has said that if the Vatican does not allow married priests, it would be “a fatal blow to the credibility and implementation of the entire synodal process.”

Bonny announced in March this year that he plans to start ordaining so-called “viri probati,” proven married men, to the priesthood by 2028. The bishop of Antwerp confirmed last month that he is currently training married men to become priests.

In a new interview published in the October issue of German Catholic magazine Herder Korrespondenz, Bonny said that he is “confident that by the end of the synodal process in the fall of 2028, an appropriate solution” regarding the ordination of married men to the priesthood will be found.

“It would be a fatal blow to the credibility and implementation of the entire synodal process if no solution were reached by then,” he stated.

“My confidence is based on Pope Leo XIV and the way he exercised the office of bridge-builder. Like a good father, he knows what his children need, and that is not the same everywhere or for everyone.”

“I do not want to launch a public campaign, but as a bishop I must be able to provide a response to the acute shortage of priests in our diocese,” Bonny told Herder Korrespondez.

“In June, I traveled to Rome on my own initiative to present my predicament to the Dicastery for the Clergy and the General Secretariat of the Synod. I was warmly received and given ample time to explain the situation in my diocese,” Bonny relayed, adding that “discussions are also continuing within our Belgian Conference of Bishops.”

“At the same time, I am holding personal conversations with several potential candidates regarding their further formation. In doing so, I feel encouraged by the many positive responses I have received to my pastoral letter,” the Belgian bishop said.

While the French-speaking parts of Belgium are doing fine in terms of the number of priests, “all Flemish dioceses are suffering from a severe shortage of priests,” he lamented.

“The number of domestic vocations is insufficient both in the seminaries and in religious orders. We are barely above zero. Before my visit to both dicasteries in Rome, the president of the Belgian Bishops’ Conference presented me with a letter in which the Bishops’ Conference supports my request and asks Rome to take seriously the possible ordination of ‘viri probati’ seriously.”

Bonny showed that he would not stop at breaking with Church discipline, tradition, and canon law by ordaining married men, but that he would also like to ordain women, in violation of Catholic doctrine.

He described a report from the Synod on Synodality on female ordination, which ultimately rejected the female diaconate, as “painful.” The Belgian prelate stated that “the arguments used are theologically weak and anthropologically outdated. They have lost their persuasive power. They seem contrary to what the Spirit is saying to the churches today.”

Bonny is known for his opposition to Traditional Catholic teaching, having been a longstanding supporter of same-sex “blessings” and LGBT advocacy within the Church. In 2023, he also contradicted Church teaching on assisted suicide, claiming that euthanasia could be morally acceptable under certain conditions.

Regarding married priests, it was understood from the earliest days of the Church that men were to become celibate upon their ordination to the priesthood if they were already married. In the early Church, married men were permitted to be ordained priests only on the condition that they became “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 19:12)

St. Paul expressed concerns about the difficulties faced by a married cleric: “The married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.” (1 Cor 7:32)

Early Church outlines the law of continence

Pope Leo the Great penned in his letter to the bishop of Narbonne:

The law of continence is the same for the ministers of the altar, for the bishops and for the priests; when they were (still) lay people or lectors, they could freely take a wife and beget children. But once they have reached the ranks mentioned above, what had been permitted is no longer so. (Epist. ad Rusticum Narbonensem episcopum, Inquis, III., Resp. PL 54, 1 204a.)

The Council of Elvira (c A.D 305) pronounced very clearly upon the practice of marital relations after ordination, stipulating it is “entirely forbidden to have conjugal relations with their wives and to beget children.” The Council of Aries (A.D. 314) went further by stating that the reason for this continence was due to the fact that “they are serving the ministry every day.”

These decrees were not new revelations, but rather “a reaction to the prevalent nonobservance of a traditional obligation that was well known,” as Cardinal Alfons Stickler notes in his text The Case for Clerical Celibacy.

St. John Chrysostom wrote, “The priest must be so pure that, if he were to be lifted up and placed in the heavens themselves, he might take a place in the midst of the Angels.”