Expert: Charlie B - 11/4/2007

Question
QUESTION: Can a Roman Catholic couple receive the sacrament of marriage from a Celtic Catholic priest? Would it be recognised by the Roman Church?

ANSWER: Mike,
Thanks for your question.  Really, I don't know if a Celtic Catholic Priest is any different from any other type of Catholic priest.  Are they?
If not, you're good to go.  I don't know of any distinction Rome makes to different Catholic priests whatsoever.
God bless,
Charlie
www.breedingtrust.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Dear Charlie,
Thanks for your answer. I think that the Celtic church is different.
The reason that I ma asking is that the Celtic church claims to have Apostolic Succession as an early form of Christianity.  I have attached an article from a Celtic church website for your review.  If you would read this and then let me know what you think I would appreciate it.

Thanks, Mike
Catholic but not Roman

the Celtic Church was Catholic.  But it was not Roman Catholic.  Come again?  What does that mean?

Most non-Catholics view the Catholic Church as this great monolithic institution, and are completely unaware that different Rites exist within the Catholic Church.  For instance, in the east, there are Byzantine Rite Catholics.  Members of the Byzantine Church have a different liturgy and different disciplinary rules than do Roman Catholics, but they are still very much Catholic -- in union with the Pope in Rome and all that.  One could technically call them "Roman Catholics" in the sense that they do have this unity with Rome, but in common parlance one would not use that phrase -- because of the differences in their rites and liturgies.  But the faith -- their doctrines -- are the same.  There are other Rites in the eastern parts of the Church.  Besides Byzantine, there is the Coptic Rite, Chaldean Rite, Maronite Rite, etc.  These are all very much different from the Roman Catholic Church as people in the West know it, but are Catholic nonetheless.

One of the reasons we remain so ignorant of other Rites is that in the western part of the Church, the Latin Rite, also called the Roman Rite, long ago became dominant, to the point of eliminating other Rites.  Catholics in the West are all Roman Rite Catholics, and so people in the West tend to equate all Catholics with Roman Catholics.  But this simply is not the case now, nor was it the case historically in the West.

In the West, there also was once a plurality of Rites in the Church (though never as much as in the East), and one of the other Rites was the Celtic Rite.  We do not know very much about it, and there seems to have actually been at times a number of different Rites practiced in Great Britain, Ireland, Brittany, and other Celtic places that later historians would classify together under the term "Celtic Rite."  But what we do know, from their own documents and liturgies that survive, is that this Celtic Church was simply another Rite of the western Catholic Church and not in any way, shape, or form a separate and competing version of Christianity.

Yes, the Roman Rite later came to be dominant in places like Scotland and Ireland.  But it was a case of one way of practicing Catholicism taking precedence over another, not Catholicism itself displacing a non-denominational Christianity, or Eastern Orthodoxy, or New Age Christian-paganism, or any of the other modern theories as to what "Celtic Christianity" is.

You'll find a lot of misinformation on the internet if you Google "Celtic Church."  But perhaps the most reliable and informative source, when it comes to actual historical information, is from this article in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03493a.htm  

Answer
Mike,
I think you're still good to use the Celtic priest in your marriage.  I'll put it simply two ways:  God didn't divide the church, man did.  However, we have FAR MORE in COMMON than we do in some slight differences, so focus on God and Christ in your sacrament of marriage -- making the two of you ONE -- and things will be just fine.
charlie
www.breedingtrust.com