Saturday, January 13, 2018

Oh! Well now you have told me something.

There is a a bit of dialog in an old 1920s murder mystery book whose title I can't remember where one character mentions seeing the dead man's housekeeper. The person's he's speaking to wryly answers the woman was not the dead man's housekeeper but his mistress. The first character is startled and says, "Oh! Well now you have told me something." I thought of that when I read Ann Barnhardt's essay on the traditional understanding and teaching on continence for married priests, subdeacons and deacons.  I had no idea. I thought that the married priest and his wife were free increase and multiply. If married Father shows up in your parish with a child that was conceived before his ordination that is one thing but if he and Mrs. Priest produce children once he becomes a priest, unless you are a Byzantine rite Catholic, you probably want to move to another parish..