Former Pentecostal minister will be ordained to Priesthood in December
Deacon Drake McCalister, a former Pentecostal minister, has been given approval by the Vatican to be ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Steubenville. Steubenville Bishop Jeffrey M. Monforton received the letter of approval Nov. 6 and will ordain Deacon McCalister Dec. 19 at Holy Family Church in Steubenville. “Thanks be to God! And a strong sense, a sobering sense of the increased responsibility and accountability that comes with ordination to the priesthood,” said Deacon McCalister when he received the news from Rome. Deacon McCalister, a husband and father of five, will become the first married priest to be ordained in the Steubenville Diocese. Since St. Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical “Sacerdotalis caelibatus” (“Of priestly celibacy”), the Catholic Church has allowed on a case-by-case basis married men who enter the Catholic Church from other traditions to be ordained as priests. However, the pope affirmed clerical celibacy as a general law in the Catholic Church...