(LifeSiteNews) — A heterodox Belgian bishop said he is currently training married men to become priests.
Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium, announced in March his plans to ordain married men to the priesthood by 2028. Now, he says, he is providing for the theological and pastoral training of several candidates he has identified for the priesthood, LaLibre.be reported. According to Bonny, their training is comparable to that of seminarians.
The formation is being carried out “in a transparent but discreet manner, away from the media spotlight,” he stressed.
“The criteria applied to the candidates are the same as those for permanent deacons,” Bonny explained. Candidates must be at least 35, have the consent of their wives, a stable family life, and no very young children.
In June, Bonny told two cardinals about his plans: the prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, and the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Mario Grech.
The Curia cardinals reportedly told him they would discuss the matter with Pope Leo XIV.
Bonny said he is acting out of “necessity,” highlighting the shortage of priests in his diocese, which has fewer than 70 priests under the age of 70. Two-thirds of these priests are imported from other countries.
In a pastoral letter published on March 20, addressing the vocations shortage, he said that “the question is no longer whether the Church can ordain married men as priests, but when it will do so, and who will do it.”
“It is an illusion to think that a serious synodal-missionary process in the West still has a chance without also ordaining married men as priests,” he stated.
“There is a historical shortage of local priests in many dioceses. The number of unmarried men who want to become priests has fallen to just above zero,” Bonny wrote.
The Belgian bishop said that he would “make every effort to ordain married men as priests for our diocese by 2028.”
Bonny stressed that he intends to spend the next two years preparing for these ordinations with the Holy See and the Belgian bishops’ conference claiming that for, him and many other bishops, “the ordination of married men has become a matter of conscience. At that level, too, transparency, accountability, and evaluation are important for the credibility of the Church.”
He also attempted to use the clerical abuse crisis as justification for his controversial plan, stating that the “issue of sexual abuse continues to weigh heavily. Clerical subcultures and lifestyles have had their day.”
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, which would violate 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)
But 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 and stated 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.”