PF as YA

Jerry Friedman · 21 Apr 2009, 04:26 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:26:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) PF as YA
In-Reply-To: <e815e3c90904201442l76aa96c4o941d0bb7811d231d at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <988282.64235.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>


--- On Mon, 4/20/09, Matthew Weber <palaeologos at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Matthew Weber <palaeologos at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) PF as YA
> To: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com, "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 3:42 PM
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 2:33 PM, Jerry Friedman
> <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>wrote:
> > --- On Mon, 4/20/09, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
> <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > > The relevant question here -- and it's one
> which I
> > > don't know the
> > > answer to -- is,
> > > "what if a widower becomes a priest and it
> turns out
> > > his wife isn't dead after
> > > all?" My guess is that this would become an
> exception,
> > > because neither the
> > > sacrament of matrimony nor that of holy orders
> can be
> > > "undone."
> >
> > As I recall, there's such a thing as a conditional
> baptism.
> > You're making me wonder whether there's a
> conditional
> > ordination in cases where there's some doubt about
> whether
> > the wife is really dead.  Of course, if there's
> much
> > doubt, I imagine the widower couldn't be ordained,
> but
> > what about the case of a shipwreck or plane crash
> where
> > it's practically certain that no one survived, but
> no
> > bodies were recovered?
...

> No, a conditional ordination would be when there's
> doubt that a person has
> been ordained validly.  Sacraments *sub conditione *are
> administered when
> there is some kind of doubt as to the validity of a
> previous bestowal (as
> also with baptism or confirmation; the RCC will
> conditionally re-baptize or
> confirm if an initiate is unsure whether he has been
> previously baptized or
> confirmed, or if the person has been baptized with a
> non-Trinitarian formula).
...

Thanks for the information.  It seems that if they could
baptize on that condition they could administer other
sacraments on other conditions, but I believe you that
they don't.

> There is no dogmatic or doctrinal prohibition against
> married priests in the
> RCC.  It is purely a matter of discipline.  A married man
> *can* be a priest;
> the Roman Catholic Church just doesn't ordain married
> men.

So occasionally they face the question of whether a
supposed widower really is one.  If I understand you
correctly, accidentally ordaining a married man wouldn't
be a disaster, so this may not be that big a deal.

I didn't think about, but the question must come up
far more often in the case of supposed widows and
widowers who want to marry again, and I'm sure ways
of dealing with that have been developed.

Jerry Friedman

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