Catholicism For Dummies. Rev. Kenneth Brighenti
but the parish or diocese provides his necessities. Honoraria and gifts from baptisms, weddings, and funerals differ from parish to parish and from diocese to diocese, but it’s very important to note that a priest never charges any fees for his services. Free will offerings are often made to him or to the parish, but it’s sinful, sacrilegious, and rude for any cleric to ask for money while performing his sacred ministry.
Canon law (see Chapter 11) guarantees every priest one day off per seven-day week and one month (30 days) of vacation per year, not including the one-week annual retreat. If you think 30 days of vacation every year seems like a lot, keep in mind that most people get two days off per week. Priests work an extra 52 days each year to earn their 30 days of vacation!
RELIGIOUS (REGULAR) PRIESTS
Religious priests are referred to as regular because they follow the regula, which is Latin for “rule,” the structured life of a religious community. The Rule refers to how a religious order trains, lives, governs itself, and practices. Religious priests are more commonly known as order priests after the religious order that they belong to, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, Benedictines, and Augustinians. They wear particular habits (religious garb) and take solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They don’t own their own cars or personal possessions. Many use community automobiles that everyone in the order shares. They have the clothes on their back and little else. They don’t get salaries like diocesan priests but are given an extremely modest monthly allowance to buy toiletries and snacks, as well as to go out for dinner or a movie once in a while. If they need to buy something expensive or want to take time off for vacation, they must ask permission of the superior who authorizes the money to be given them or for the bill to be paid.
They normally live together with three or more (sometimes more than 20) members of the community in the same house, sharing everything: one television, one computer, and so on. This arrangement encourages them to recreate together, because they must also live together, pray together, and work together. Unlike diocesan (secular) clergy who get small salaries and pay taxes, religious clergy own nothing. If they inherit anything whatsoever, it goes to the community or to the order, whereas a diocesan priest could inherit the family home but would also have to pay all the taxes and upkeep.
Deacons
Deacons are the clergy next in the hierarchy, right after priests. Permanent deacons are men ordained to an office in the Church who normally have no intention or desire of becoming priests. They can be single or married.
Transitional deacons are seminarians, students in training for the priesthood, at the last phase of their formation. After being a deacon for a year, they’re ordained a priest by the bishop.
THE CELIBACY ISSUE
Celibacy has been normative for the Latin (Western) Church since the fourth century and mandatory since the 11th. Married clergy, however, always existed in the Byzantine (Eastern) Churches. The Latin Church has allowed some married clergy from other Christian denominations to get ordained to the Catholic priesthood if they convert to Catholicism, but typically, Catholic priests of the Latin (Western) Church are celibate.
A man may be ordained when he’s single or married if he’s Eastern Catholic, but after ordination, a single cleric can’t marry, and a married cleric can’t remarry if his wife dies, unless they have small children and he receives a dispensation from Rome. Marriage must precede ordination according to Eastern tradition, or it can never be received. This is the ancient tradition of both the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. So even if celibacy were made optional in the Latin Church, it wouldn’t affect those who were unmarried at the time of their ordination.
Some Anglican, Episcopalian, and certain Lutheran ministers who are married and wish to convert to become Catholic priests have been allowed to enter the sacred ministry because their marriage occurred prior to their ordination as Catholic clergy. But celibacy has been so much a part of the Western Catholic Church that even scandal won’t erode its role and importance.
Deacons can baptize, witness marriages, perform funeral and burial services outside of Mass, distribute Holy Communion, preach the homily (the sermon given after the Gospel at Mass), and are obligated to pray the Divine Office (150 psalms and Scriptural readings for clergy) each day.
Permanent deacons, especially those who are married, have secular jobs to support their families. They help the local pastor by visiting the sick, teaching the faith, counseling couples and individuals, working on parish committees and councils, and giving advice to the pastor.
Monks and nuns, brothers and sisters
Technically speaking, monks and nuns live in monasteries (from the Greek monazein, meaning “to live alone”), buildings that have restricted access to the outside world, allowing them to spend as much time as possible in work and in prayer. Monasteries are places where only women as nuns reside or where only men as monks live. Few monasteries have guest accommodations, and the monks or nuns live a monastic type of spirituality, such that they all gather in the chapel to pray together, they all eat together, and they all work somewhere in the monastery — cooking, cleaning, and so on.
Religious sisters, on the other hand, live in convents, a word that comes from the Latin conventus meaning “assembly.” Convents offer more open access inside and out to the secular world. Residents typically live and pray in the convent but work outside in schools, hospitals, and so on. Friaries (from the Latin word frater meaning “brother”) are the male version of convents, a place where religious men called brothers live and pray together. Their work is done outside the friary.
You can find hundreds of different religious orders, communities, and congregations in the world today. Each community and order bases its spirituality on the founder of its congregation; for example, St. Francis founded the Franciscans, St. Clare founded the Poor Clares, St. Lucy Filippini founded the Religious Sisters Filippini, and Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity. Some communities specialize in teaching and others in hospital work. Some engage in several active apostolates, and a few devote themselves to a cloistered life of contemplative prayer.
For example, the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Sisters of Mercy, Religious Sisters Filippini, Dominican Sisters, Daughters of Charity, and Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius often work in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes. But Carmelite, Dominican, Poor Clare, and other nuns stay in the monastery and pray, fast, and work for the sanctification of souls. You may have seen Mother Angelica and the other Poor Clare nuns on television from time to time and noticed that even while they’re in the chapel, they’re separated (cloistered) from the general public. Cloistered nuns live and stay in the monastery, whereas religious sisters work outside the convent.
In contrast, the sisters in parochial schools aren’t nuns but religious sisters; they don’t live in a cloistered monastery but in a convent, and they teach in the parish school.
You can tell the order of the monk, nun, sister, or friar