[Sca-cooks] Okay, so this is vaguely food-related...

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> In other words, if you go sober *after* you're a priest that's one
> thing? But if you're a sober, recovering alcoholic who wants to enter
> Holy Orders (by which I take to mean, becoming a priest), you're out of
> luck?
> --maire, confused......

Well, keep in mind, that most men who enter the priesthood are pretty young
when they do so- early 20s- and most recovering alcoholics don't recognize
their difficulty until they're older- early 30s. Obviously, there are
exceptions in both directions, but you'd find that this is a general rule.

Further, not all recovering alcoholics will totally avoid alcohol. I
discussed the matter with a couple of friends in that position, and they
said, that for their parts, they didn't look at the alcohol in communion as
a "drink" and had no problem retaining their sobriety, despite their weekly
sips, but that they knew other recovering alcoholic priests that felt
differently, and simply didn't imbibe under any circumstances. They also
said that, once a man was a priest, the church looked at alcoholism as being
similar to any other disability acquired throughout a lifetime.

One older priest told me that certain disabilities would prevent one from
_becoming_ a priest- for example, the inability to use the right arm to make
the sign of the cross, but the fact that an ordained priest had lost his
arm, in, say, a car wreck, did not make him any less a priest, just simply
unable to do certain required acts.

The basic belief is that once one is consecrated a priest, one is a priest
for life, but that circumstances might make him unable to perform his
office- including defrocking. One never ceases to be a priest, but one may
cease to be an _active_ priest. Does this make any sense?



Saint Phlip,
CoDoLDS

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....