Morning Catholic must-reads: 19/10/12

‘Writing in The Tablet this week John Haldane, Professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews, states: “The time is overdue to admit married men to (shortened) formation and ordination.”‘
If the Church followed every pet whim advocated by the Tablet as a timely idea (‘relevant’ to the needs of ‘our time’), well, there’d already be sharply dressed women priests or lay women and men in faux ‘ethnic’ drapery performing multi-gender-open-ended marriages in Stalinist living room style function suites, preaching on the health benefits of contraception, abortion and minimalist family size etc.

A once married man may apply for full and proper formation, and – if apt – for ordination in the priesthood of the Latin Rite(s) even now .. as they always have; but not while they are currently married, any more than a single man might add promise of marriage to his already given promise of service to the Kingdom.

This is indeed simply an act of discipline, and it can change – as it has, case by case, for specific reasons – yet discipline in the church catholic is not for philosophers to direct (and Lord forbid that day should ever fall on us).