Former head of German lay Catholics wants married deacons to be ordained priest without permission from Rome

Canon lawyer Pulte: Sternberg's move on "viri probati" absurd

German bishops should dare to try to ordain married deacons as priests, suggests former ZdK president Thomas Sternberg. Matthias Pulte, an expert on canon law, supports the underlying concern - but considers the move harmful and warns of the consequences.

Matthias Pulte, an expert on canon law from Mainz, considers the proposal by Thomas Sternberg, former president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), that German bishops should ordain married men as priests without approval from Rome to be "absurd and ultimately counterproductive". "As a result, Mr Sternberg's proposal brings nothing but annoyance and damage for all concerned," Pulte writes in a statement available to katholisch.de. It is detrimental to the underlying, "certainly justified" concern, which Pulte says he supports, "because arbitrary violations of the law harden rather than soften the fronts". Sternberg, "as an experienced politician and church official", should actually know this, according to the church law expert.

Pulte explains that a local bishop does not have the authority to exempt priests from the obligation of celibacy. Only the Vatican can do this in individual cases. According to Canon 1047, Paragraph 1, No. 3, the local Ordinary also explicitly does not have the authority to dispense with the impediment of marriage. Bishops who unlawfully ordained married deacons as priests would therefore be performing a prohibited administration of the sacraments and thus incurring a penalty under can. 1336 §§ 2-4, if appropriate criminal proceedings or criminal decree proceedings were conducted. They could then be forbidden, among other things, to perform acts of leadership and ordination as penalties for atonement. For the ordained, this would also mean the danger of criminal proceedings, because he would be unlawfully exercising a priestly task. This would result in the imposition of a "just punishment", excommunication according to can. 1331 could not be ruled out in this context.

In an interview on Tuesday, Sternberg had raised the question of why a few bishops did not simply ordain good, theologically well-trained married deacons as priests. "If they did that, what would happen? What sanction options would Rome have then?" said Sternberg. The reason for his initiative is the wish of the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, to be allowed to ordain married men from the ranks of the Australian Aborigines as priests, because compulsory celibacy is culturally completely foreign to the Aborigines. 

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