By Catholic Church rule called the Pauline privilege, the Catholic Church permits a married Episcopalian Priest to stay married if he joins the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church recognizes the priesthood of the Episcopalian church because their priests have valid holy orders that were bestowed upon them dating back to the time of Henry the VIII. Since the original Church of England Bishops possessed valid Catholic Holy Orders, the validity of Episcopalian priests was carried forward to present time. If this guy had married first become an Episcopalian Priest and then converted to Catholicism he would be able to maintain his marital status. Ridiculous is it not>
Sorry, no. Read Apostolicae Curae.
Sorry, that's wrong. The Pauline privilege refers to the church's ability to dissolve the marriage of two unbaptized persons when one joins the Church and the marriage breaks up.
Certainly a "married Episcopalian priest" stays married if he joins he Catholic church, but he is at that point a Catholic layman.
The Catholic Church recognizes the priesthood of the Episcopalian church because their priests have valid holy orders that were bestowed upon them dating back to the time of Henry the VIII.
Nope. The validity of Anglican orders was definitively rejected by Leo XIII in 1896, but was dubious before then.
If this guy had married first become an Episcopalian Priest and then converted to Catholicism he would be able to maintain his marital status.
Sure, but he wouldn't be a Catholic priest at that point.
Ridiculous is it not
Maybe you should get your story straight before deriding someone else's beliefs or practices. What you are talking about is called the "Pastoral Provision," and there is nothing automatic about it. In fact it requires a special appeal to Rome for a dispensation from celibacy, and the process takes *years*. After that, the man needs to make up any deficiency in his training, and then he has to be ordained to the diaconate and then to the priesthood.
(I know what I'm talking about; a friend of mine is going through the process right now.)
And once the man is ordained to the diaconate, if his wife should die, he is not permitted to remarry any more than any other Catholic cleric is permitted to remarry.
If Mr./Fr. Cutie should decide to become a Catholic again, he would remain technically a priest (because Catholic ordination is indelible) but would be prohibited from active ministry unless his marriage were to end *and* he were to successfully petition to be reinstated.
You wrote:
“By Catholic Church rule called the Pauline privilege, the Catholic Church permits a married Episcopalian Priest to stay married if he joins the Catholic Church.”
No. What is called the Pastoral Provision is not dependent upon the Pauline Privilege at all.
“The Catholic Church recognizes the priesthood of the Episcopalian church because their priests have valid holy orders that were bestowed upon them dating back to the time of Henry the VIII.”
That is completely false. The Catholic Church categorically denies the orders of Anglican ministers and stated exactly that in a papal encyclical over a hundred years ago: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13curae.htm
Anglican bishops lost their valid orders in the 16th century. Although some Old Catholic bishops may have restored them to some Anglican bishops in the early 20th century, the Catholic Church teakes no chances and assumes every single Anglican minister on earth (unless formerly Catholic or Eastern Orthodox) has no valid orders and ordains them when they became Catholic priests.
“Since the original Church of England Bishops possessed valid Catholic Holy Orders, the validity of Episcopalian priests was carried forward to present time.”
Completely false. You are making the mistake - a HUGE ONE at that - that a body of heretics and schismatics would take care to maintain valid orders when they themselves often did not even believe in such a concept. Once they changed the ordinal to reflect their heretical beliefs, the valid orders went out the window.
“If this guy had married first become an Episcopalian Priest and then converted to Catholicism he would be able to maintain his marital status. Ridiculous is it not.”
No, not at all. As a Catholic, after seven years of seminary and several years of discernment before that, he took a vow of celibacy. He was completely free to take that vow. There was no force or coercion involved at all and no bishop or priest would have held it against him if he decided to NOT take the vow and leave seminary and marry.
For Episcopalians the situation is completely different. They are raised in a schismatic and heretical sect founded upon theft and murder and adultery. They are denied the truth. They are denied several valid sacraments. Thus, the Church, in its mercy, decided that those Episcopalians who grew up without the faith, without the Church, should be given an opportunity to share in the select priesthood of Christ even though married men are not usually ordained. I think it is a wonderful and generous thing. I have a friend who is on the path to ordination in just such circumstances.