On a January weeknight, Halyna Charron was finishing preparations of a dinner of spinach pie, pork and tabouli salad.
Her husband, the Rev. Jason Charron, and all but the youngest of their six daughters, who range from 2 to 13 years old, pitched in at various times, slicing vegetables and setting the table in their Carnegie home. In between, one daughter played piano in the living room, another a brief video game in the TV room.
When they gathered at the table, they stood for a dinner blessing and faced a display of icons as the parents led the children in chanting prayers in English and Ukrainian.
During the meal, the parents asked the daughters what they learned in school, and the girls talked of homework and upcoming tests.
After dinner, Father Charron buttoned up his black cassock and headed out to do a house blessing in Upper St. Clair for a family of parishioners — a January tradition for Ukrainian Catholics. He and two daughters, brought along for the ride, gathered with the host family in their dining room for a prayer. The whole group then processed up and down stairs as Father Charron chanted blessings and sprinkled each room with holy water.
It was another day in the life of balancing work, marriage and family. “I can’t be a good pastor if I’m a lousy dad or lousy husband,” said Father Charron, 38.
That’s not the typical challenge for a Catholic priest.
But throughout North America, the ranks of married priests have slowly been growing in Eastern Catholic parishes such as Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Carnegie, where Father Charron became pastor last year.
Eastern Catholics are now preparing for more married priests. A historic decree last year by Pope Francis lifted a generations-old ban on married priests serving Eastern Catholic rites in the Americas and Australia.
Eastern Catholics, estimated around 600,000 in the United States, are barely 1 percent of the nation’s Catholic population. But they are some of its most diverse members, with distinct heritages in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and beyond. They are loyal to papal authority and Catholic dogma while practicing ancient liturgies and traditions similar to those of Orthodox and other Eastern churches.
Those traditions have included married priests — at least in the Old World.
When Ruthenian Catholics, an Eastern European Slavic group, began emigrating in the 19th century for jobs in the mills and mines of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, American Roman Catholic bishops protested that their own parishioners were scandalized by the presence of married Ruthenian priests.
In 1890, the Vatican forbade married Ruthenian priests in the United States, the first in a widening ban that, by 1930, covered all Eastern Catholics outside their traditional territories. An estimated 200,000 Ruthenians broke with Rome and returned to their Orthodox roots.
But in recent years, the Vatican has been tacitly allowing some married Eastern Catholic priests to work in North America on a case-by-case basis, either through ordination or immigration. Francis’ decree lifts the ban wholesale.
“It’s one of those things that from the time you’re a little kid, you were reminded that it’s something that shouldn't have been done,” said Archbishop William Skurla of the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh, which traces its roots to the Ruthenian immigration. “It’s kind of a happy time.”
Reclaiming Eastern identity an ‘affirmation’ of Catholicism
At SS. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh, one of its five students is married.
“It’s very clear to me in my work in vocations that God is calling married men to serve as priests,” said the Very Rev. Robert M. Pipta, rector of the seminary. “With the incredible maturity they have in being married, and fathers very often ... they have potential to be excellent priests.”
Eastern Catholics see the papal decree as the latest in a half-century of steps by Rome to reaffirm their status, dating back to the Second Vatican Council’s 1964 declaration that their rites are “of equal dignity” with the Roman rite.
Said Father Charron: “We Eastern Catholics in North America are at a crossroads because we live in a Western context, but we fiercely hold to our roots. Reclaiming one’s identity is not an affront to Catholicism, it’s an affirmation of it.”
But that identity faces a challenge in the American melting pot for churches historically linked to ethnicity.
Among the Slavic-based rites — Ukrainian and Byzantine, which represent virtually all the dozens of Eastern Catholic parishes in the Tri-State area — membership is down.
The two rites’ combined membership is down 41 percent in local eparchies (dioceses) and 61 percent nationally in the past 20 years. Current statistics show 47,257 Ukrainian Catholics and 81,832 Byzantines nationwide.
New generations are growing up with no memory of their ancestral homelands, or even of their forebears’ immigrant neighborhoods. In much of the country, even those wanting to maintain a Catholic faith are far more likely to find a Roman Catholic parish close by than an Eastern one.
Such trends overshadow recent Vatican affirmations of Eastern rites and the married priesthood.
“To be painfully blunt, without the Holy Spirit, it’s too little, too late,” Father Charron said. “But I’m convinced the Holy Spirit is alive and well. For those who want to have a vibrant parish and who love evangelizing, this couldn’t be a better time to rediscover our roots.”
Father Charron has gone door to door in Carnegie to introduce himself to neighbors. He was well-received. He found the parish is best known for its pyrohi sales; he hopes it becomes better known for spiritual offerings, but “it puts us on the map.”
He said Eastern Catholics’ challenges aren’t unique in an era in which 20 percent of Americans claim no religious affiliation.
“For too long, we’ve been a passive church — ‘You know where we are, you come to us,’ ” he said. “That’s a recipe for death. Priests have to be proactive and search for the sheep.”
Among the new adherents to Eastern Catholicism is Father Charron himself. He grew up a Roman Catholic in Canada. He entered seminary, expecting to become a celibate priest in the Roman rite.
Then he attended an Eastern Catholic liturgy, experiencing its full sensory impact of icons, incense, chants and rituals. At first, he saw it as an “ornate, antiquarian hobby,” but eventually he was intrigued enough to do a month-long internship in Ukraine — then return for a longer stay.
He got to know the Ukrainian Catholic Church, emerging from decades of Soviet persecution.
And he got to know Halyna, who was earning a master’s degree in theology at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.
Between the two encounters, “my life was turned upside down,” he said.
“Meeting my wife and falling in love with her — and seeing that there’s no way that the life of married men who went to Siberia along with their wives and children for the principle of being united with the pope is any less Catholic than the way we live our faith here — that was the tipping point,” he said.
He and Halyna married, and he returned to North America with her for seminary.
Father Charron was ordained in 2008 in Ohio and had assignments in North Carolina and rural Ontario before coming to Carnegie last year.
Halyna Charron said she had some preparation for her current role, having gotten to know priests and their wives in Ukraine.
Mrs. Charron said living in a rectory means less privacy, with visitors coming and going and the church office in the front.
“But I’ve been blessed,” she said. “You have this unique opportunity of being part of different people’s lives. People get married, people have baptisms, people are grieving their loved ones, and you are part of that.”
Often, she said, women parishioners will approach her with questions before her husband. “The wife is always a bridge,” she said.
Their daughters are, to varying degrees, learning Ukrainian language, culture and traditions such as the bandura, a stringed instrument.
The girls said they like having a priest for a father. It’s easier to explain in Pittsburgh, where Eastern Catholic traditions are more common than Ontario.
“In Canada, it was like, ‘Wow, your dad’s a priest?’ ” said Katya, 10. “They were shocked.”
“Here it’s not as big a deal,” added Maria, 12.
The school-age girls attend Our Lady of Grace, a Roman Catholic parish school in Scott. Their parents prepare them well for religion class, they say. Sometimes, Maria said with a smile, her religion questions get the answer, “Ask your father.”
‘All positive’ from the pews
A married priest is new for Holy Trinity parishioners.
“For us it’s been all positive,” said Mark Medwig of Upper St. Clair, whose house Father Charron blessed on the recent evening. Mark and Mayda Medwig, as young parents themselves, like having a priest who shares their challenges.
“I believe it’s very hard to understand what married life and parenthood is unless God gives you the grace to understand it,” said Mayda Medwig.
Having married priests does pose challenges. Small parishes may struggle to pay a salary and benefits to support a family. Married priests often take a second job such as a chaplaincy, or the spouse may work. Frugality is a must. “If someone wants to be a parish priest, he and his wife have to realize they have to sacrifice,” said Father Charron.
Eastern Catholic leaders say they don’t expect their resumption of married clergy to influence debate in the Roman rite, where celibate priests are the norm.
“The Roman Catholic Church seems to go to the theological level,” citing the example of Jesus as celibate, said Father Pipta of the Byzantine Catholic Seminary, located in Perry North. “They’re always going to see a much closer connection between celibacy and the priesthood.”
But, he added, a church with multiple rites “can have distinct theologies. When you get to the essence of it, we believe the same things.”
Added Bishop David Zubik of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh: “I still see a tremendous value for the discipline of celibacy,” he said. It’s enabled him “to give my entire life to the church.”
Among those studying at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh is Joseph Wargacki, 59, of Olympia, Wash. Like Father Charron, he grew up Roman Catholic, and he and his wife weren’t very involved as young adults.
Then they attended a Byzantine liturgy.
“We kind of fell in love with it from the first minute we stumbled upon it and we never left,” he said. “Once we discovered the Eastern rite and spirituality and the beauty of the liturgy, we became more interested in our Catholic faith and more active members.”
Mr. Wargacki was ordained a deacon in 2003. Recently, with his wife’s support and their children grown, he ended his 26-year nursing career and entered seminary.
“The church is in need of priests. If I can help by moving forward and being elevated to the rank of priesthood, that is what I would like to do,” he said.