Vatican stresses strict rules on ‘biritual’ clergy for Eastern Churches

The Vatican cautioned against overreliance on Eastern Rite priests in Western nations.

The Dicastery for Eastern Churches has reminded bishops of the Vatican’s strict criteria for approving priests to celebrate the liturgy for a ritual Church not their own — amid concerns that Western countries with a shortage of clergy are overreliant on Eastern Catholic priests.

Meeting of the Eastern Catholic Bishops of Europe, Westminster Cathedral, Oct. 28, 2017. Image credit: Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk

The dicastery issued the reminder in a letter to bishops, signed by its prefect Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, along with an extensive explanation of the regulations for approving ‘biritual’ faculties and governing the transfer of Catholics between Churches sui iuris.

The letter’s goal was to guard and emphasize the importance of the unique patrimony of each Church, which the Vatican department said “precedes and exceeds the choice of those who are part of it.”

The text, dated Nov. 22 and recently released in English, reminded bishops and eparchs of both Latin and Eastern Churches of the need to “correspond faithfully to the prescriptions and spirit of the canonical legislation implementing the Second Vatican Council.”

Of the 23 Eastern Churches sui iuris in communion with the Holy See, 10 have eparchies, the functional equivalent of dioceses, in the United States, including the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syro-Malabar Church.

Eastern Catholic Churches are often highly concentrated in particular countries or regions, and each has a unique liturgical and theological patrimony and history.

War and periods of sustained violent persecution can result in large diaspora communities in different places. For example, following the war in Iraq, many Chaldean Catholics moved to the U.S. Today, there are an estimated 181,000 Chaldean Catholics in the Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, covering the eastern half of the United States.

In some places, however, there are communities of Eastern Catholics, either newly arrived or long-established, who do not have sufficient numbers of priests of their Eastern Church. In such cases, the local Latin bishop is often asked if any of his priests might be willing to learn to celebrate an Eastern liturgy and serve those communities.

In such cases, however, the dicastery reminded bishops (both Latin and Eastern) that priests may only licitly celebrate the liturgy of their own Church “unless the law establishes otherwise or unless he has obtained a ‘special faculty from the Apostolic See’.”

“The fact of reserving this special concession to the Apostolic See makes it clear that biritualism for clerics represents an indult justifiable when there are real and manifest pastoral needs, not to satisfy devotions or personal interests with regard to a particular liturgical tradition,” the dicastery said.

At the same time, the dicastery also cautioned against “attempts, especially in some Western countries that suffer from a shortage of clergy, to ascribe sacred ministers for the exclusive service of Latin Rite communities” — meaning Eastern rite priests are effectively asked to serve in Latin diocesan parishes, without any particular assignment or service to their own Church sui iuris.

“This practice, which distorts the identification of the priest with the rite of his Church, is strongly to be discouraged,” the dicastery said. Any pastoral assistance provided by Eastern priests to Latin dioceses or communities “must not lead them to neglect the priority of ministerial service that they are everywhere called to address in the first place to the faithful of their own Church.”

As such, the dicastery said that when applying for a priest to receive ritual faculties for another Church, either Latin for Eastern, Eastern for Latin, or between Eastern Churches, there must be letters from both bishops or eparchs certifying the community of the priest’s proper rite for which he is expected to care and “certifying that this ministry takes priority.”

The “sole exception” to this requirement recognized by the dicastery is when a diocese or eparchy of an Eastern Church has a relative abundance of clergy compared to Western dioceses, and is in a position to release some of its priests to assist elsewhere in the world.

By way of illustration, the Syro-Malabar Church’s Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly has approximately 690 Catholics per priest in its territory, as compared to the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which has an estimated one priest for every 4,189 Catholics.

In such cases, an agreement for exclusive or predominantly Latin ministry could be permitted for a maximum duration of five years.

In addition to reiterating the requirements and procedures for authorizing priests to exercise biritual faculties, the dicastery’s Nov. 22 letter also included a reminder on the regulation of lay Catholics seeking to transfer between Catholic Churches, as well as the proper ritual ascription of non-Catholics entering full communion with the Church.

The Vatican has been concerned for decades about the experience of Eastern Catholics living in Western countries in which they have limited or no access to their own ritual Church. As a result, they can find themselves habitually attending Latin parishes, to the point that it becomes their ordinary mode of worship.

The preservation of the unique patrimony — liturgical, theological, and historical — of each of the Eastern Churches was a particular concern of Vatican Council II.

“This is clearly evident in the assertions of the Second Vatican Council,” the dicastery said, “which stressed the importance of faithful custody and careful observance of their own rite by all the faithful,” and implemented a series of canonical reforms aimed to prevent “the danger of extinction of the Eastern Catholic Churches.”

“Given the current and every increasing risk that the many Eastern Catholic faithful in the diaspora will be ‘Latinized,’ the current practice of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches … is therefore not to grant transfers to the Latin Church for the Eastern Catholic faithful, except in the case of marriage or for particular and serious reasons individually and restrictively assessed by the dicastery itself,” the letter said.

The purpose of such careful procedures, the dicastery stressed, was not legal formalism or the preservation of ritual distinctions for their own sake. “As a further support for this, the law provides that the habit of receiving the sacraments in the liturgical celebration of a Church sui iuris does not imply membership in that Church,” it said.

Rather, “a rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage of a Church, which precedes and exceeds the choice of those who are part of it.”