Why Pope Francis now thinks married men can be priests but women still can’t

There is a severe shortage of Catholic priests in some parts of the world. In the Amazon, for example, there is one priest for every 10,000 Catholics.

Pope Francis was addressing that shortage in an interview published Thursday with Germany's Die Zeit. The Pope said that while he is not open to removing the celibacy rule for current priests who cannot take a spouse, theoretically ensuring they are wholly devoted to God, he was open to ordaining married men of proven faith, known as viri probati.

“We must consider if viri probati is a possibility. Then we must determine what tasks they can perform, for example, in remote communities,” Francis told Die Zeit.

It’s a completely different answer than one Francis gave on the subject of women becoming priests in November. When asked about the prospect, Francis left no room for the possibility.

“St. Pope John Paul II had the last clear word on this and it stands,” Francis said during a news conference aboard the papal plane on a flight from Sweden back to Rome. Those words by Pope John Paul II stated the church had “no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.”

The stark difference in the answers prompted questions.

For those who strictly follow the rules of the Catholic faith, it’s a straightforward answer that comes down to the difference between a doctrine of the church and a discipline. Women not being ordained as priests is considered a doctrine, which means it is an edict directly from God.

There are a few Bible passages that pertain to that issue, one being in Corinthians, in the New Testament of the Bible:

“As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” (NIV, 1 Corinthians 14:33-35)

The edict that priests be unmarried, on the other hand, is considered a discipline, which means the origins of the policy are from men, not God. In fact, in the earliest days of the Catholic Church, many of the priests were married men.

The earliest evidence of the requirement that priests be unmarried came in the fourth century, during the Council of Elvira, when a canon was issued that marriage was forbidden to priests, bishops and deacons.

This story was originally published March 10, 2017 at 8:17 AM with the headline "Why Pope Francis now thinks married men can be priests but women still can’t."