THE CONSEQUENCES OF FORCED CELIBACY

The Story of Father Joseph Mihaly

Introduction

Until 2014, married Eastern Rite priests who were always allowed to marry before ordination, were prohibited by the Vatican to minister outside of their native Eastern European lands. As sex abuse rates in the U.S. reveal, this prohibition led to the ordination of homosexual candidates who went on to abuse teenage boys and vulnerable adults at rates similar to U.S. Roman Catholic clergy. The following story is about Father Joseph Mihaly who wrote, Should a Priest Be Married?

This recently updated unpublished article begun in 2008 should prove enlightening to readers who question how a priesthood made up of both married and celibate clergy may be better than having just “celibate” clergy. “Celibate” is in quotation marks because it has been shown that at any given moment in time, only half of all so-called “celibate” priests are leading celibate lives. In Africa and Asia where most priests are heterosexuals, half of them are sexually involved at this moment with women while, in the U.S. and Europe where the vast majority of bishops and priests are homosexuals, half of them are currently carrying on sexual relations with other gay men.

Father Joseph Mihaly

At a time when Roman Catholic Dioceses and Greek Catholic Eparchies are witnessing the closing and consolidation of parishes owing to a shortage of celibate clergy, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the U.S.A. is dedicating new churches pastored by young and dynamic priests. One of the first young priests of Carpatho-Russian descent to serve in this Diocese was Father Joseph Mihaly.  There are many valuable lessons that can be learned from the life of Father Mihaly and the founding of the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church.

Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholics

At the end of the nineteenth century, many Eastern Europeans immigrated to the United States in search of employment and a more prosperous life.  American coal miners and factory employees at that time were earning as much in one hour as many workers in Europe received for a fourteen-hour workday.  Among the immigrants in 1890 from the Carpathian Mountain (Karpatska’Rus’) East-Central European region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (current day eastern Slovakia) were John and Anna Mihaly. 

The Mihalys, like most of the “Rusyn” immigrants from their area, were Greek Catholics.  They traced their religious ancestry back to Saints Cyril and Methodius, the “Apostles to the Slavs,” who were commissioned by Photious, the patriarch of Constantinople, to undertake their missionary work in 862.[1] The use of Church Slavonic in worship set them apart from neighboring Christians whose services at the end of the first millennium were celebrated in Latin.

 When Christianity split in the eleventh century between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East, Karpatska’Rus’ fell within the Orthodox camp.  In 1646, however, sixty-three priests gathered at the town of Uzhorod and pledged their loyalty to the Pope in Rome instead of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople.  Six years later an additional four hundred priests entered the Union endorsed by Peter Parthens who became their first bishop.

Just as the schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in 1054 was not due primarily to theological differences, so too was the seventeenth century reunion motivated by political and social considerations more than theological or spiritual factors.  In keeping with the terms of what became known as the Union of Uzhorod, the Uniates[2] were guaranteed the right to retain their Eastern Rite liturgy in the Slavonic tongue and their traditional customs that included the Julian calendar and married clergy.  The Union also granted their priests equal social and political status with the Roman clergy along with the right to elect their own bishops.

In the twelfth century, less than a hundred years following the schism between Catholic and Orthodox Christians, the Roman Catholic Church prohibited priests from marrying in decrees formulated at the First and Second Lateran Councils (1123 and 1139).  Because mandatory celibacy was never a part of their Eastern tradition either before or after the schism, it was understandable that the Uniate priests would insist upon the right to marry as a precondition for ratifying the Union. 

Because bishops were always elected and not appointed in the East, it is quite understandable why the Uniates would also insist that they have the right to elect their own bishops as opposed to having them appointed by the pope.  The practice of electing bishops, like optional celibacy for diocesan clergy, was the norm throughout the first Christian millennium. Leo the Great (pope from 440 to 461) maintained that bishops should be elected by their own clergy and laity without any interference from Rome.  He is often quoted for having said, “He who is to preside over all must be elected by all.”[3] 

When the practice of electing bishops was discontinued in the West around the time of the schism in 1054 owing to the centralization of authority in the papacy, the election practice continued uninterrupted in the Karpatska’Rus’ region.  Six centuries later when Orthodox Christians in that area sought reunion with Rome without ever having had their bishops appointed, it was logical that they would insist upon being allowed to elect their own bishops. Little did these Uniates realize at the time how this practice, along with the tradition of a married clergy, would later be seen as a threat.

Greek Catholic Traditions: A Threat to Roman Catholic Leaders in the United States

When the Mihalys and other Greek Catholics arrived in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of Roman Catholic bishops were of Irish descent. Unfortunately, many of them were not very sensitive to the religious needs and cultural differences of immigrants from non-English speaking countries.  It was this insensitivity that in part contributed to Polish immigrants leaving the Roman Catholic Church in 1897 and establishing the Polish National Catholic Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

One of the best illustrations of the way Eastern Europeans were mistreated by some Irish members of the hierarchy involves the visit by Father Alexis Toth to Archbishop John Ireland of Minneapolis on December 19, 1890.  Prior to immigrating to the United States, Father Toth was a professor of Canon Law at the Presov Seminary in Karpatska’Rus.’ Following the advice of his Ordinary, Bishop John Valyj of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Presov, Father Toth presented himself to Archbishop Ireland who was the head of the Latin Rite diocese in which his Greek Catholic parish was located.  After Archbishop Ireland reviewed his letters of accreditation, he noticed Father Toth’s wedding ring and asked him in Latin if he had a wife.  Father Toth responded that he was a widower.  When the Archbishop heard this, he threw Father Toth’s documents on the table and shouted, “I have already sent a protest to Rome not to send such priests here.”  When Father Toth argued that he was a validly ordained Greek Catholic Priest, the Archbishop retorted that he did not consider Father Toth or his bishop to be Catholic.  Despite the protestations of Archbishop Ireland, Father Toth continued his ministry to the parishioners of Saint Mary’s Greek Catholic Church in Minneapolis.  His plan was to appeal the treatment he had received and demand respect for the rights of Greek Catholic immigrants in the United States.

Unfortunately, when Father Toth reported his encounter with Archbishop Ireland to Greek Catholic authorities in his native land, they were reluctant to forward his account to the Vatican.  They possibly feared exacerbating an already difficult situation, or they simply did not want to jeopardize their own status in the Roman Catholic Church by becoming involved in a controversy thousands of miles away.  As a result of their reluctance to defend Father Toth, it is not surprising that he looked elsewhere for support.  On March 25, 1891, Father Toth and the 365 members of his parish were received with open arms into the Russian Orthodox diocese of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

Even though many Greek Catholics disapproved of Father Toth’s return to Orthodoxy, they still felt oppressed by the Latin Rite.  In an effort to defend their rights in keeping with the conditions set forth at the Union of Uzhorod, many of them met in Hazelton, Pennsylvania in December of 1891 and formed a fraternal organization, the “Greek Catholic Union,” often referred to as the “GCU.”  It was at this gathering that they composed a letter to the Holy See in Rome, threatening a schism if the Vatican failed to grant them their own `bishop with authority separate from Roman Catholic prelates in the United States.

Fearful that other Greek Catholic priests and parishes might follow Father Toth’s lead and return to the Orthodox Church, Vatican officials appointed the Right Reverend Andrew Hodobay as an Apostolic Visitator to provide them with a status report on the Greek Catholic Church in the United States.  In 1906, four years after his appointment, Father Hodobay returned from his mission and recommended that a bishop be appointed for the Greek Catholics of the United States.  The following year, a Basilian monk, Soter Stephen Ortinsky, was ordained the first Greek Catholic bishop in the United States.      

Bishop Ortinsky and Ea Semper of 1907

When Bishop Ortinsky arrived in the United States in 1907, he brought with him a papal decree, Ea Semper, that he was expected to implement.  The Papal Decree, dated June 14, 1907, was instigated by Archbishop Ireland and other members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States. It sought both to prohibit the immigration of married Greek Catholic priests and to forbid their ordination in North America. It also decreed that the sacrament of Confirmation could not be conferred at Baptism despite the clear tradition of the Eastern Church.

For years Bishop Ortinsky’s standing within the Greek Catholic community was diminished by the fact that he was not granted full authority, but came under the jurisdiction of the local Roman Catholic Bishop.  It was not until 1913 that Rome granted him full jurisdiction to oversee his diocese that included over 152 churches, 154 priests, and 500,000 Greek Catholics from Galicia, Bukovina and Hungary.[4] Within the six year period following his appointment, however, much damage was done as a result of attempts to implement various provisions of Ea Semper.  It is estimated that over 100,000 Uniate faithful along with many clergy returned to the Orthodox Church prior to the death of Bishop Ortinsky in 1916.[5] Most agree that had he enforced the Vatican’s celibacy requirement, far more people and priests would likewise have left.

It was during the episcopacy of Bishop Ortinsky that Father Orestes Chornock left his Greek Catholic Church in Osturna, Hungary and immigrated to the United States.  On March 25, 1911 Father Chornock became the pastor of Saint John the Baptist Greek Catholic Church on Arctic Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Because Bishop Ortinsky did not enforce the celibacy provisions of Ea Semper owing to a shortage of celibate clergy, Father Chornock and other priests felt no reservations about encouraging young men from their parishes to become married priests.

One of the many families that welcomed Father Chornock and his wife (Yolanda) to their parish was the John Mihaly family.  Their eldest son, Joseph, was five years old when Father Chornock became their pastor.  When Joseph grew up and graduated from high school in 1925, he was not sure if he wanted to be a lawyer or a priest like his inspiring pastor. Given the fact that Father Chornock was very dedicated in carrying out his pastoral duties and strong in his spiritual life, it is not surprising that his example inspired a number of young men to consider becoming priests.

In so far as there was no Greek Catholic Seminary in the United States, Joseph Mihaly attended Saint Thomas Roman Catholic Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. Instead of continuing on with his theological studies, however, he applied for and was accepted into the New York University Law School. 

While studying law, Joseph lived in Greenwich Village and worked as a Western Union clerk and cashier.  Because of worsening economic conditions that would lead in time to the Great Depression of 1929, Joseph was fearful that a Law Degree would not help put food on the table.  Consequently, Joseph decided to leave law school and once again pursue his vocation to the priesthood. 

With the encouragement of his pastor, Father Chornock, and with the support of his family, Joseph boarded a ship that took him first to Rome where he studied for six months at the Pontifical Urbanian Athenaeum "De Propaganda Fide" prior to being admitted into the Greek Catholic Seminary in Presov, just seven miles from the village that his father had left at the end of the previous century.  It was during his years of theological studies and pastoral formation that he met and married a beautiful schoolteacher, Gizella Steinhaus.  Gizella’s father was Lutheran and her mother was Roman Catholic. 

Following the completion of his theological studies and his wedding, Joseph returned home to Connecticut where he looked forward to being ordained and undertaking his ministry.  When he arrived in New York with his wife on board the German S.S. Bremen in 1931, little did he realize how controversial his anticipated ordination would prove to be not only for himself, but also for thousands of Eastern Rite Catholics.

Joseph Mihaly returns to be denied ordination

It was in the midst of this controversy that Joseph Mihaly arrived in the port of New York in late 1931, not knowing if Bishop Takach would ever ordain him. His pastor and mentor, Father Chornock, had done everything he could to fight the papal decree.  His family and fellow parishioners at Saint John the Baptist Church had petitioned the Bishop on his behalf. One could only expect that Joseph would be very angry at the Roman Catholic Church for violating the Union of Uzhorod and at Bishop Takach for failing to defend the Union that put no restrictions on where married Eastern Rite priests could serve.

Joseph Mihaly and his wife returned to a country that was in the grip of the Great Depression.  If he was to be denied ordination for which he had been preparing for many years, how was he going to support his wife and children?  Psychologically, it is very difficult for a husband to be unemployed and not be able to feed his family.  It is not surprising that the two older children of Joseph Mihaly recall their father being “filled with emotions of frustration, anger and fear.” 

A petition was sent to the Vatican in 1932 signed by one hundred twenty-five American Greek Catholic priests protesting the celibacy decree and the reasons given to support it.  Most Greek Catholics could not understand how being married and having a wife and children could be “a source of perplexity or scandal,” particularly when they always enjoyed the ministry of married priests for more than a millennium.  If scandal can be defined as “sinful and grossly improper behavior that brings about disgrace and offends one’s moral sensibilities,” what was “sinful” about Greek Catholic priests being married? 

During the three intervening years between 1931 when Mihaly returned from Europe to be ordained and 1934 when the Vatican denied the appeal to retract the celibacy ruling, Joseph Mihaly worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most noted New Deal Program that employed more than 8.5 million people.  With the birth of his sons Orestes in 1932 and Serge in 1933, Joseph struggled to feed his family and to control the anger he felt toward the Roman Catholic Church in general and Bishop Takach in particular.

If Joseph Mihaly was angry about the celibacy ruling that he and most Greek Catholics viewed as a violation of the Union of Uzhorod, his pastor and mentor, Father Orestes Chornock, was angry for additional reasons.  Father Chornock recognized that his pastoral ministry contributed to Joseph Mihaly’s decision to become a priest.  He refused to turn his back on Joseph and his pregnant wife at the time and simply say, “I guess you’ll just have to find something else to do with your life.”  Even though Father Chornock was on the clerical “fast track” as the pastor of the largest church within the Greek Catholic diocese, he could not abandon Joseph Mihaly and accept the perpetrated injustice for the sake of his career.

Bishop Orestes Chornock and the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese 

A number of events took place in 1937 that led many Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholics to break relations with the Roman Catholic Church and return to Orthodoxy.  The death of Father Chornock’s wife in May of 1937 not only made him a widower, but also made him a candidate for the episcopacy.  On November 23, 1937 a “National Religious Congress” was held in Pittsburgh that was attended by 135 delegates representing 46 parishes.  In keeping with the terms of the Union of Uzhorod that allowed priests to choose their own bishop, the clergy delegates in attendance at this first Diocesan Council-Sobor placed ballots in a chalice that unanimously elected Father Chornock to be the bishop of the new diocese. 

In so far as the Orthodox Church in Karpatska’Rus’ before the Union of Uzhorod came under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Kiev who was subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the decision was made to petition Patriarch Benjamin I to accept the Carpatho-Russians into Orthodoxy and canonically establish a new diocese. With the recommendation of Archbishop Athenagoras, the Exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarch who resided in New York City, the Ecumenical Patriarch accepted the petition and received the Carpatho-Russian Church into Orthodoxy as a self-governing diocese with Father Orestes Chornock as its bishop-elect. 

Having transitioned in the course of just a few years to being selected to become a bishop, Father Chornock was now in a position to turn his attention to people like Joseph Mihaly who had just recently been ordained by Archbishop Athenagoras.   When Father Chornock sailed from New York and was consecrated in Constantinople by three Metropolitan members of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on September 18, 1938, he chose Father Joseph Mihaly to be one of two representatives present for the event. During a ceremony conducted at St. George's Cathedral in Constantinople, Father Mihaly was made a Protopresbyter, a position similar in the Roman Catholic Church to being made a Monsignor. 

After returning to the United States in October, Bishop Orestes (Chornock) was formally installed the following month on Thanksgiving Day in his Church of St. John the Baptist on Arctic Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  At the age of fifty-five years old, Bishop Orestes was now the first Orthodox Carpatho-Russian bishop in almost three hundred years. Orestes served as Diocesan Bishop for thirty-eight years and died on February 17, 1977 at the age of ninety-three.  Father Mihaly served at parishes in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Birmingham, New York before returning to Bridgeport, Connecticut where he served until his death in 1975.   

The American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese today has over 50,000 members served by some 125 priests in over 75 parishes.  It is estimated that well over 150,000 Carpatho-Russians have left the Roman Catholic Church in the United States within the past 100 years to become Orthodox as a result of efforts at Latinization that included mandatory celibacy for clergy. With a significant decline in the number of Roman Catholic clergy over the past forty years, coupled with the way many bishops have mishandled sexual abuse cases, it should not come as a surprise that a number of Roman Catholic clergy and laity are calling for the election of bishops and the option of priests to marry – the very traditions that Greek Catholics always and everywhere were supposed to have been guaranteed.[6]

Archbishop Judson Procyk, who headed the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh until his unexpected death in 2001, was deeply concerned about the growing priest shortage that he and most bishops faced.  His Carpatho-Russian Orthodox counterpart, Metropolitan Nicholas, some seventy miles away in Johnstown, had twice as many married priests serving an almost equal number of diocesan faithful. While Archbishop Procyk worked without success to restore the right of Eastern Rite Catholics in the United States to ordain married priests, his successor, Metropolitan Archbishop Basil Schott, proved more successful when he endorsed a request from Bishop John Kudrick, the Eparch of Parma, Ohio, to ordain a married deacon to the priesthood.  The Vatican granted the request and the married deacon was ordained in February of 2006.

Should A Priest Be Married?

In 1942, three years following his greatly delayed ordination, Father Joseph Mihaly wrote a booklet entitled, Should A Priest Be Married?  In response to Roman Catholic leaders that found married Greek Catholic priests to be “a source of perplexity or scandal,” Father Mihaly wrote: “All Christian philosophies consider that Priesthood and Matrimony, as Holy Sacraments, cannot be in conflict from the moral point of view.”   He argued that neither “celibacy nor marriage decide the individual morals of the priest, but his internal disposition.” 

Father Mihaly concluded that the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches would be better served if they allowed for the ordination of both married and celibate priests.   His thesis appears to be validated by the fact that the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese started by Bishop Orestes Chornock has almost twice as many married priests today than the Pittsburgh Archeparchy headed in the past by Bishop Takach that serves a comparable number of faithful.  While the Pittsburgh Archeparchy, like most Roman Catholic Churches in the United States, is faced with consolidating and closing parishes owing to a growing shortage of celibate priests, the Carpatho-Russian Diocese is dedicating new churches.

Another factor that supports Father Mihaly’s argument in support of married clergy is the astronomical amount of money for sexual abuse cases expended by both Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches in the United States that, until 2014, only ordained celibate clergy.[7] Insofar as over 80 percent of clerical sex abuse victims in the U.S. are males – mainly teenage boys – it should not come as a surprise that unmarried “celibate” Eastern Rite priests are as prone as Roman Catholic priests to prey upon young men and boys. Although it has been twelve years since the Vatican lifted its ban on the ordination of married men to the priesthood in Eastern Catholic churches outside their traditional territories, the number of unmarried – often homosexually oriented Eastern Rite priests – is still greater than married priests.

A current abuse case in New England involves a former seminarian who alleges he was propositioned by a homosexual Ukrainian Greek Catholic pastor who justified his sexual advances by asserting an Eparch is himself carrying on a homosexual relationship with a priest from another Eparchy. An Eparchy safe environment coordinator – a married Ukrainian Eastern Rite priest – along with the alleged victim’s therapist and spiritual director, all found the former seminarian’s claims to be credible. Even though there are cases in which married clergy have been abusive, the number of abuse cases involving married priests and ministers is considerably smaller than cases involving so-called “celibate” clergy.

Unfortunately, Father Mihaly died without knowing that his ministry, writings and strong moral convictions would in time inspire both his grandson, Luke, and Luke’s son, Nicholas, to become priests of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the U.S.A. The Very Rev. Protopresbyter Luke Mihaly is the pastor of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Danbury, Connecticut. His son, Nicholas, who was ordained on January 10, 2016, currently serves as the pastor of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Gene Thomas Gomulka is a sexual abuse victims’ advocate, investigative reporter and screenwriter. A former Navy (O6) Captain/Chaplain, seminary instructor and diocesan respect life director, Gomulka was ordained a priest for the Altoona-Johnstown diocese and later made a Prelate of Honor (Monsignor) by Pope St. John Paul II.

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[1]Some historians maintain that Christianity amongst the Rusyns did not originate with Cyril and Methodius who resided to the West in Moravia, but was brought by colonizers who crossed the mountains from the East.

[2]The term “Uniate” applies to Eastern Catholic churches that were previously Eastern Orthodox churches.  Because some members of Eastern Catholic Churches today find the term pejorative, it is no longer used in official Catholic documents.

[3]Richard McBrian, “Pope Leo the Great’s legacy poses challenge,” The Catholic Messenger (November 6, 2008) 8.

[4]Paul Robert Magocsi, Our People: Carpatho-Russians and Their Descendents in North America (Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1984) 34.

[5]Lawrence Barriger, Good Victory (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1985) 36.

[6]Recent research indicates that the current system of episcopal appointments is not only of modern origin, but also “theologically dubious, ecumenically suspect, and practically unworkable.”  See Adam A. J. DeVille, “Look to Tradition: The Case for Electing Bishops,” Commonweal (March 23, 2007).

[7]Laura Ieraci, “Vatican lifts ban on married priests for Eastern Catholics in diaspopra,” National Catholic Reporter, (November 17, 2014) https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/vatican-lifts-ban-married-priests-eastern-catholics-diaspora.