Clerical Celibacy (Catholic Church) - Eastern Catholic Churches

Eastern Catholic Churches

In general, the Eastern Catholic Churches allow ordination of married men as priests. Within the lands of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest Eastern Rite Catholic Church, priests' children often became priests and married within their social group, establishing a tightly-knit hereditary caste. In North America, for fear that married priests would create scandal among Latin Rite Catholics, Eastern Catholic bishops usually ordained only unmarried men; but since the Second Vatican Council called for restoration of Eastern Catholic traditions, some of them have returned to the elsewhere traditional Eastern practice of ordaining married men to the presbyterate. A condition for becoming an Eastern Catholic bishop is to be unmarried or a widower.

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