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Dating a seminarian and marrying an Orthodox priest: the rule, the life and the questions to ask

The Orthodox rule that a man must marry before ordination, what life as a presbytera involves, and what to ask a seminarian or priest before you commit.

By Orthodate Editorial20 minute read

The Orthodox Church has a married parish priesthood, and it has a rule about the order of events that is stricter than most people expect: a man who intends to be ordained must marry first. Once he is ordained a deacon or priest he may not marry, and if his wife dies he may not remarry and continue in ministry. Nearly everything that is distinctive about dating a seminarian follows from that single sequence. It sets the timetable, it narrows the question of who may marry a future priest, and it explains why a conversation that would be premature with any other boyfriend is urgent with this one. This guide sets out the rule from primary sources, describes the life that follows in plain terms, and gives you the questions that are worth asking before an engagement rather than after an ordination.

At a glance

Key takeaways

  • A man may marry and then be ordained, but he may not be ordained and then marry, so the engagement is effectively set by the ordination timetable and has to be discussed early.
  • The older canons bar the ordination of a man whose wife is a widow or a divorcee, so a woman in either position should ask the diocese about her specific situation before the relationship deepens.
  • The title of presbytera, matushka or khouria is courtesy and affection, not an ordination, and nobody in the Church defines the duties of a priest’s wife, so the expectations you will meet are the parish’s rather than the Church’s.

1. The rule that shapes everything: you marry first

The Orthodox Church in America states the rule in a few plain sentences in its teaching on holy orders. A married man may be ordained to the priesthood. His marriage, however, must be the first for both him and his wife, and he may not remarry and continue in his ministry if his wife should die. If a single man is ordained, he may not marry and retain his service. The same rules apply to deacons. Bishops, by contrast, have been drawn since the sixth century from single men or widowers, and are usually monastics of at least the first degree.

None of that is peculiar to one jurisdiction. It is the ancient discipline, and its source is the Council in Trullo of 692, whose sixth canon says that it is in no way lawful for a subdeacon, deacon or presbyter to contract marriage after his ordination, and equally that anyone entering the clergy who wishes to be joined to a wife in lawful marriage before he is ordained subdeacon, deacon or presbyter should be allowed to do it. The only exception the canon recognises is for readers and cantors, who are minor orders and may marry.

Two features of the rule are worth noticing because they correct the usual assumption. First, the Church does not regard married clergy as a concession. The same council, in its thirteenth canon, insists that the lawful marriages of men in holy orders be firm, forbids anyone to separate them from their wives, and says that a priest or deacon who dismisses his wife on a pretence of piety is to be excluded from communion. Marriage is honourable, and the canon says the clergy’s is no exception. Second, the rule about bishops is a rule about the episcopate and not about priests. The Council’s twelfth canon deals with bishops who continued to live with their wives after consecration, and its forty-eighth provides that the wife of a man raised to the episcopate separates from him by mutual consent and enters a monastery. That is why the Church has bishops who are monks and priests who are fathers, and why the two are not interchangeable.

The rule has a practical consequence that is easy to state and difficult to absorb. If you are dating a man who is preparing for ordination, the time at which he can marry is not open-ended. It closes on a date he does not fully control, and the date is set by the Church rather than by the relationship.

2. Why the timeline matters more than any other question

In an ordinary relationship the order of events is yours to arrange: you decide when you are exclusive, when you speak about marriage and when you become engaged. With a seminarian, one of those dates is borrowed from the diocese. If he is going to be ordained at the end of his studies, then he has to be married before that, and that single fact compresses a process that most couples spread over two or three years into something shorter.

It cuts in both directions. A man who is single and discerning ordination knows that marrying and being ordained cannot be done in the wrong order, so a serious seminarian who meets someone he could marry has to ask himself, honestly, whether he can come to a decision in time. If he cannot, the choices are to delay his ordination, to be ordained and remain unmarried, which in practice means a celibate priesthood and in most jurisdictions a monastic path, or to step back from the relationship. A woman who assumes that he has unlimited time, because the relationship feels as though it does, can be badly surprised.

For that reason the first useful question to ask a seminarian you are dating is not about the wedding at all. It is: where are you in the process, and who knows? A man who is a year from ordination and has not told his bishop, his dean or his spiritual father that he is in a serious relationship is a man whose timetable has a hole in it. Many dioceses expect to be told, and in a good number the bishop will want to meet the woman a candidate intends to marry. That varies from diocese to diocese, and it is not a sign of suspicion when it happens. A bishop who is going to place a family in a parish has a pastoral interest in both of the people in it.

Do not read any of this as pressure. It is not a reason to rush into an engagement, and a priest who married hurriedly to satisfy a deadline would be starting his ministry with a marriage that had not been given time. The point is the reverse: the clock is a fact, so the sound response is to find out what it is early, while there is still room to be patient inside it.

3. Who may marry a man who will be ordained

This is the section that most readers will want to skip and some most need. The older canons attach conditions not only to the man being ordained but to the woman he marries. The Council in Trullo, restating a tradition older than itself, says in its third canon that a man who has been joined in two marriages after baptism cannot be a bishop, presbyter or deacon, and in the same passage that a man who has taken a widow, a divorced person, a harlot, a servant or an actress as his wife cannot be ordained to those ranks. The Orthodox Church in America’s modern statement of the rule says the same thing in one clause: his marriage must be the first for both him and his wife.

For a woman who is single and has never been married, nothing in this restricts anything. For a woman who is divorced or widowed, it matters, because under the strict reading the man she marries cannot afterwards be ordained as a deacon or priest. That is a hard thing to learn after an engagement, and it is much easier on everyone to learn it at the beginning.

What happens in a particular case is a matter for the bishop. Jurisdictions and individual bishops have applied this canon with varying degrees of strictness, and some have been willing to exercise what the tradition calls economy, a pastoral departure from strict observance, where they judged that the circumstances warranted it. Others hold the line firmly, on the view that the priest’s marriage is meant to be an icon of Christ and the Church in the strongest and simplest form. You will not find a rule that tells you which way a given bishop will decide, and an article should not guess. If you are a widow or a divorced woman, or if the man you are dating has been married before, the right step is a conversation with a priest who can raise it with the diocese, and it should happen before either of you is emotionally committed to an outcome.

A related point concerns his history rather than yours. A man who has already been ordained and whose wife has died is in the position the Orthodox Church in America describes: he may not remarry and continue in his ministry. A widowed priest who wishes to marry again must make a choice between his ministry and a second marriage, and the Church does not treat that as a trivial one. If you meet someone whose situation is that, the questions are for him and his bishop, and they deserve patience rather than assumptions.

4. What the title of presbytera actually means

A priest’s wife is called by a title that depends on the family’s language and parish. Presbytera is the Greek form, widely used in English-speaking parishes. Matushka, meaning something like little mother, is the Russian one. Khouria is used in Antiochian parishes and comes from the Arabic word for a priest. Popadija is Serbian and preoteasă is Romanian. The titles are a courtesy of the same kind as calling a priest Father, and they are used by people who know and respect the family.

The title is not an office. A presbytera is not ordained and has no liturgical function by virtue of being married to a priest. That is worth stating plainly because it surprises many newcomers and sometimes the wives themselves. The Church does not describe what she is for, and nothing in the canons assigns her a role in the parish. The things she may end up doing, which are usually a mixture of leading the church school, directing the choir, organising the coffee hour and looking after visitors, are all arrangements that arise because someone has to do them and the priest’s household is conveniently at hand.

The consequence is both a freedom and a risk. A woman who marries a priest has a great deal more freedom than the stereotype suggests, because her duties are not defined. She also has less protection than the stereotype suggests, because the people who expect things of her are not bound by any rule. The role you step into is the one the parish has already written, and the only effective way to rewrite it is to be clear, kind and consistent about what you will and will not do.

5. What the life looks like from the inside

The Orthodox Church in America describes priests as men assigned by the bishop who belong to the specific congregations they serve. For a family, that sentence has a good deal of weight in it. A priest does not choose a parish in the way that someone might choose an employer. He is sent, and the family goes with him. In a country as large as the United States, a first assignment can be several states from either set of parents, and later moves are possible. Anyone who is considering this life should ask early where the bishop is likely to place the man she is dating, and what she would do in that place.

Money is the second thing to look at squarely, and the answer depends heavily on the parish. Many American parishes are small, and a number of them cannot support a full-time priest, so it is common in several jurisdictions for a priest to hold another job as well. In some cases the family lives in a parish-owned house, which is a practical help and also a loss of privacy. In others the clergy salary is modest and the household relies on the wife’s employment. These are practical questions, not worldly ones, and a priest’s wife who has heard the real numbers before she married has a very different first year from one who is discovering them. The questions in the guide on money before marriage apply with particular force here.

The liturgical calendar then governs the household in a way it governs few others. Holy Week, Pascha, Christmas and the major feasts are the priest’s heaviest weeks of the year and the family’s too, and the ordinary expectation that the family spends a holiday together has to be negotiated against services that cannot be moved. Hospital visits, funerals and urgent calls arrive without warning. A man who has been ordained for a few years will often say that the hardest adjustment for the family was not the workload but the unpredictability.

Visibility is the third element. In a small parish, the priest’s household is watched and discussed. Children, in particular, are often held to a standard that no other child in the parish is asked to meet. Women who thrive in this life tend to be those who decided in advance what the family’s private life would be, and who are untroubled by occasional disapproval. Women who struggle tend to be the ones who assumed that being gracious would be enough, and found out that a household is part of a community whether it intends to be or not.

6. What he will not be able to tell you

A priest hears confessions, and what he hears in confession he does not repeat to anyone, including his wife. That is one of the oldest and firmest obligations of the priesthood, and it shapes married life in a way that people rarely consider before they are in it. There will be parishioners whose struggles he knows and cannot discuss, decisions he makes that look inexplicable from the outside, and problems in the parish where he has information that explains everything and cannot give it.

For a spouse the effect can be lonely. In most marriages two people share everything that weighs on them. In this one, there is a part of his working life that is closed to her by its nature, and she has to be able to trust him without being told. That requires a kind of confidence that is not ordinary, and it is much easier to give if it has been talked about before the wedding. The useful conversation is not whether he will keep confidences, because he will, but how he will carry the weight, with whom he will talk it through, and how the two of you will make sure that the burden does not sour the marriage.

Pastoral confidences also run in the other direction. A priest’s wife sometimes becomes the person to whom parishioners tell things informally, and the line between a conversation and a confession is not always obvious. She is not a priest and has no sacramental obligation to keep confidences, but a parish will trust her only if she behaves as though she does. It is better to have thought about this than to find out the hard way.

7. What nobody is entitled to expect of you

Because the role is undefined, it is worth stating what it is not. You are not obliged to give up your profession, to run any part of the parish, to attend every service, or to be an exemplar of every virtue in public. You are an Orthodox Christian with the same obligations as any other, and a wife and mother in the ordinary sense, whose husband happens to be the pastor. Where a parish says otherwise, the parish is describing a custom and not a rule.

This matters most for women who have careers and callings of their own. Some presbyteras are physicians, teachers, musicians, iconographers, academics and managers, and a good many of them say that their work is what has kept them well in a life with many demands. The parishes that serve best are the ones in which the priest’s wife is a member of the congregation first and a leader only if she wishes. A man who understands that, and who is willing to say so to the parish council on her behalf, is giving you something that no promise made on a date can match.

The mirror image is also true. If you love the parish life, and many presbyteras do, you may find the role is the most fulfilling thing you have done. The aim of this section is to make the choice yours, and not an expectation you inherited.

8. If you are dating a seminarian right now

Seminary is a short, concentrated stretch of a man’s life, and the relationship has to fit inside it. Some students arrive already married and others expect to marry before they are ordained, which means that a seminary community is used to the questions in this guide. The seminaries themselves differ in how they treat relationships, in whether they provide housing for married students, and in what they expect of a candidate’s family, and the only reliable way to learn the specifics is to ask the seminary and the man’s own diocese rather than relying on what other couples say.

There are a few things that are almost always worth doing. Meet his spiritual father, if he has one, and let him meet you. Go to services with his community rather than only to your own parish, because you will be living in it for the rest of your life. Talk about where he is likely to be sent, whether that is negotiable, and what you would do for work in such a place. Ask whether he is certain of the vocation, and if he is not, ask what would settle it. A seminarian who is unsure whether he is called to ordination is not a worse partner than one who is sure. He is a man for whom the timeline has more room in it, which may suit you both.

The thing to avoid is treating the engagement as a means to ordination. A man who proposes in order to meet the requirement that he be married before ordination, rather than because he wants to marry you, is doing both of you a harm, and a bishop who suspected it would be right to hesitate. The marriage has to be the reason for the engagement, and ordination has to follow from it, rather than the other way round.

9. Dating a priest’s son or daughter

A separate and more common situation is dating the child of a priest, who is neither ordained nor necessarily intending to be. The difficulty here is nearly always social. If the priest is also your priest, you are dating someone whose father or mother hears your confession, knows a good deal about you already and has a position of authority in the parish where you both worship. That is manageable but it is not trivial.

The most practical advice is to move your confession to another priest while the relationship lasts, so that no one is in a position of divided loyalty, and to be open about the relationship with the priest in question rather than letting him hear it from the parish. If it ends, the awkwardness is the same as in any small community, and the guide on breakups within a single parish applies in full. Children of clergy are also, very often, tired of being asked about their parents, so it is a kindness to ask about them instead.

10. When someone online says he is a priest

The rule in the first section has one consequence that is useful for safety. A priest cannot marry after ordination, and a priest whose wife has died cannot remarry and keep his ministry, so a man who presents himself on a dating profile as a serving Orthodox priest looking for a wife is claiming something the Church’s discipline does not allow. There are rare, real situations in which a man has been laicised, or in which an unmarried clergyman has made his own arrangements with his bishop, but they are rare, they are not the usual story, and a stranger who offers one as a first message deserves to be asked for proof rather than believed.

The same applies to claims to be a seminarian, a monk or a deacon. All of them can be checked. Dioceses and jurisdictions publish clergy lists, parishes have addresses and phone numbers, and a real priest is not offended if you ring the parish office to confirm that he serves there. Anyone who resists that, who asks you to keep the conversation private, who moves quickly to affection and then to money, or who cannot be reached except by messaging, is following the pattern described in the guides on romance scams and fake profiles, and the right response is to stop.

Six conversations to have before an engagement

These are the questions that settle most of the uncertainty. They are meant to be asked over weeks, and none of them is a test he can fail.

  1. Step 1

    Where is he in the process, and who knows?

    Ask plainly how far he is from ordination, whether he has discussed the relationship with his bishop or his spiritual father, and what the bishop expects of a candidate who intends to marry. If the answer is that nobody knows yet, suggest that he tell them. It is the single most useful step either of you can take.

  2. Step 2

    Put your own history on the table

    If you have been married, divorced or widowed, say so early and ask a priest to raise your situation with the diocese in confidence. If he has been married before, the same applies. Waiting until the engagement to learn that the canon applies to you is the one outcome that cannot be recovered from gracefully.

  3. Step 3

    Talk about the first posting concretely

    Ask where he is likely to be sent, how likely it is that he can influence that, and what you would do in a town you have not chosen. Ask what his diocese does for newly ordained families, whether there is housing, and how close you would be to family. A vague answer is a cue to find out, not to assume.

  4. Step 4

    Look at the money in numbers

    Ask what a first-year priest in the diocese is typically paid, whether the parish provides housing or a stipend towards it, whether he would need a second job, and what the health insurance arrangements are. Then decide together what the household would need from your income, and whether you are content with that.

  5. Step 5

    Agree how you will live with confidence

    Ask how he will carry what he cannot tell you, who he would talk to, and what you will do on a day when the burden is visible and unspoken. Ask, too, what you would need in return, whether it is time, privacy or a friend outside the parish with whom you can speak freely.

  6. Step 6

    Spend time with a clergy family you trust

    Ask a priest and his wife whom you respect if you may talk with her about the life as she sees it, including the parts she would change. A few honest conversations with someone who has lived it will tell you more than anything written, and they will also tell you whether you would want what they have.

Common questions

Can Orthodox priests marry?

Yes, but only before ordination. A married man may be ordained to the diaconate or the priesthood, provided that the marriage is the first for both him and his wife. A man who is ordained while single may not marry and keep his ministry. Bishops are drawn from single men or widowers and are usually monastics.

Can a priest marry again if his wife dies?

Not and continue in his ministry. The Orthodox Church in America states that a priest may not remarry if his wife dies and still serve, and the older canons are in agreement. A widowed priest who wishes to marry again has to choose between the two, and the Church does not treat the choice lightly.

Can a divorced or widowed woman marry a man who will be ordained?

The older canons say that a man who has married a widow or a divorced person cannot be ordained, and the modern statement of the rule says the marriage must be the first for both partners. Whether an exception can be made is a decision for the diocesan bishop, and it should be asked before the relationship is serious.

What is a presbytera?

Presbytera is the Greek title for a priest’s wife. The Russian equivalent is matushka, the Antiochian is khouria, the Serbian is popadija and the Romanian is preoteasă. It is a title of respect and affection and not an ordination, and it carries no liturgical function or defined duties.

Does a priest’s wife have official duties in the parish?

No. The Church assigns her none. Whatever she does in the parish, whether directing the choir, leading the church school or organising coffee hour, arises from local custom and her own choice. She is free to decline, and the parishes that treat her as an ordinary member of the congregation first generally keep their priests’ families better.

Does a celibate man who wants to be a priest have to become a monk?

In most jurisdictions an unmarried man who is ordained and who wishes to remain unmarried is expected to be a monastic or to live as a celibate, and the bishops are in every case chosen from monastics or widowers. Practice varies, and a man in that position should speak to his own bishop rather than rely on a general answer.

Should I be concerned if a dating profile says the man is an Orthodox priest?

You should ask for proof. A serving priest cannot marry after ordination and a widowed priest cannot remarry and keep his ministry, so a man claiming to be a priest and looking for a wife is claiming something the Church’s discipline does not normally allow. Check with the parish and his diocese, and treat reluctance as a warning.

Sources and further reading

Pastoral practice can vary by diocese and jurisdiction. For questions about your circumstances, speak with the priest responsible for your pastoral care.