Friday, October 17, 1997
Dear brother in Christ,
Rejoice in the Lord!
I am sending this note as a personal communication, not for publication, although I have made the thoughts contained in it public at meetings of our own Synod of Bishops meetings and to Old Calendar hierarchs in Greece, as well as in lectures and talks to Orthodox groups.
I ask your forgiveness for being forward about these matters and taking your time, the more so since I realize that you have much work on your hands already.
There are references which occur in Voithia's Web reports to "celibate clergy." There is a very serious matter here. The Orthodox Church recognizes married priests and monastic clergy, but there is no place for something called "celibate clergy." In the Orthodox Church, one is either a married priest or a monastic. If one is a monastic, then the dwelling place is a monastery. The idea of "celibate clergy" is a most serious error. I would never tolerate the idea of a "celibate priest" in my Archdiocese. If a person who desires to be a priest is not married, he has to become a monk and live in a monastery. I must say that I am speaking only for myself, and I do not pretend to speak for other hierarchs. However, it seems to me that there is great danger in violating the Tradition of the Church in these regards or introducing the Roman Catholic practice of having "celibate clergy." For my part, if a man came to me and said he wished to be a parish priest but did not wish to be married, I would want to know the reasons why he did not want to marry. It is one thing to send a mature monk-priest out to serve a nearby parish which is without a priest, so long as he can return to his monastery in a short time, and does not live outside the monastery. It is quite another to have artificial monks and decorative archimandrites living solo and serving parishes on a full time basis. These things are not normal and certainly not in accord with the Tradition of the Orthodox Church or the best interests of the faithful or the nominal monk-priests.
I have no way to address these problems in the Greek Church, or any other except within my own Diocese, but I would like to respectfully suggest to you that these are problems which do need to be addressed because they are part of the "abnormal" structure of current Church life that are symptoms of the overall illness. The problem of having "celibate clergy" needs to be addressed at some time along the way, for reasons that should be obvious, aside from the matter that it is not in the Tradition of the Church. The same must be said of "monastics" who disdain to live and struggle in actual monasticism and live in monasteries.
When the Church resolved to select bishops from among the monastics, the intention was not simply to have single men as bishops, but to select hierarchs from among men who had struggled to a certain spiritual condition. It is understood by the holy fathers and the Sacred Tradition that one passes from purification to illumination to glorification. These are concepts which are not even taught any longer in our churches, and most of our people are no longer even aware of the concept. Nevertheless, the idea is not simply to have bachelors for bishops, but to select men who are aware of this concept and have striven in monastic life to a special level of maturity and at least attained to illumination. If this were not so, what would be the point in having unmarried hierarchs? The Church had a substantial and significant reason for her decision to take the hierarchs from among experienced monastics, not merely permanent bachelors who have had a pair of scissors waved over their heads (sometimes only the day before they were consecrated). Perhaps our monasteries no longer produce such men, but they do produce men who have struggled with their passions and attained a modicum of humility, compassion arid inner moral strength, all of which are absolutely necessary for offering a leadership to the Church which is cooperative and depends upon respect rather that fear. Respect is not available "on demand," though fear may be, and so we see an attempt being made to "control" rather than lead, and this attempt at control appears to be resorting to a kind of "terrorism." This is all so unnecessary arid destructive. Think what all this does to the faith and resolve of our young people.
I am only inviting your attention to these matters and suggesting that at sometime they need to be addressed because they are a part of the whole problem, and there is little value in solving only pieces of the problem without looking at the whole thing. There really is an illness and covering the symptoms will do little to heal the sickness.
Again, please forgive me for being forward, but these are matters which are a deep and sincere concern to me because I love the Church and live for it, and now that someone is finally taking a position about the illnesses that beset us, it seems that it would be tragic to miss the opportunity to address the whole picture.
Also, I do appreciate your defense of priests who have been dismissed or punished capriciously, often because they are seen as not being politically correct to a given hierarch or group.
Your brother in Christ,
<signed>
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
Ya know, the basics of religious life should be the basics of every persons life. Many people are realizing this, which is why holiness movements are on the rise in Christian body as a whole.
