Top U.S. Clergy Pin Church Woes on Gay Priests

I just don't care for all that extra 'church tradition' stuff you throw in. But to each his own.

Ahh, but all that extra church stuff is a whole world of marvel and beauty. And the saints (whose lives and witness, have at times alone carried my faith, reason having failed) too are a wealth of riches.

But regarding your point about the demanding good priests from the Vatican, I'm afraid you are very confused about the ways of the Church and God. The priests must come from somewhere and the West is in decline. The Israelites at the time of Christ were crying to God for a deliverer, and he sent one, his only Son whom they rejected. Do you think times have changed so?

...it would be better if they did not marry.

This is true, and Biblical. But not only is there is no Biblical requirement for the the ordained not to marry, the Bible explicitly permits the ordained to marry. That having been said, I don't think celibacy has very much, if anything to do with the present scandal, and I'm glad that at least the culture has not sunk so low that the conduct is not considered scandalous.

Since we are discussing biblical requirements, there is also no biblical requirement that the Bible is the sole source of salvific requirements.

I confess to going beyond the scope of this thread, but here I must disagree. I cannot prove a universal negative regarding all sources, but the Scripture does present itself, and no other, as a Rule of Faith. The Scripture speaks of itself as possessing the power and ability to make a man wise unto salvation, and to sufficiently equip the man of God for every good work. If there were another standard other than Scripture for salvific requirements, it is not mentioned in the Scripture. The Scripture either has the ability and power to sufficiently equip the man of God for every good work or it does not have that power and ability. If it does, then the result will be sufficient. If the equipping is sufficient, then by definition no other equipment is required. If there are good works or some salvific knowledge required that are not in Scripture I would like to see a list of them, and I would like to know the authority of such a list, and I would like to know why the Scripture does not have the ability and power to make a man wise unto salvation, and to sufficiently equip the man of God for every good work.

Cordially,

If you could come up with one small congregation in each major American city I would be surprised.

I'd be amazed!

These terrible individuals, whether they be religious politicians or secular ones, are not the Church and cannot for a moment blemish her beauty.

This too will pass.

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But not only is there is no Biblical requirement for the the ordained not to marry, the Bible explicitly permits the ordained to marry.

Where do you find this? Surely, not in the New Law.

Even the Eastern Churches do not permit the ordained to marry. They do however allow the married to be ordained. ANd even in the west deacons may be married though are not permitted to marry after ordination. It is a matter of discipline, not of faith and morals. Nevertheless, the tradition has, in my opinion, the same truth as many of the moral precepts and precepts of faith that have the greatest authority.

Moreover, you do not address what I consider the irrefutable argument to the contrary: that priests are for us in their office the person of Christ himself, insofar as they reenact the Last Supper and have the power to forgive sins, having the authority of Christ himself. As such they have consecrated their lives to God and the Kingdom at hand, and like Christ, their example and the true Shepherd, they have completely committed their lives to that Kingdom, in which death has no hold and in which there shall be no marriage.

"...Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say, ] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere." - St. Irenaeus

You need to actually read some real history, instead of fundamentalist mythology.

(Sorry, Campion - I just can't resist:-)

In the first three centuries, St. Irenaeus is the only writer who connects the superiority of the Roman Church with doctrine; but he places this superiority, rightly understood, only in its antiquity, its double apostolical origin, and in the circumstance of the pure tradition being guarded and maintained there through the constant concourse of the faithful from all countries. Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, know nothing of special Papal prerogative, or of any higher or supreme right of deciding in matter of doctrine. In the writings of the Greek doctors, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, the two Gregories, and St. Epiphanius, there is not one word of any prerogatives of the Roman bishop. The most copious of the Greek Fathers, St. Chrysostom, is wholly silent on the subject, and so are the two Cyrils; equally silent are the Latins, Hilary, Pacian, Zeno, Lucifer, Sulpicius, and St. Ambrose.
St. Augustine has written more on the Church, its unity and authority, than all the other Fathers put together. Yet, from all his numerous works, filling ten folios, only one sentence, in one letter, can be quoted, where he says that the principality of the Apostolic Chair has always been in Rome—which could, of course, be said then with equal truth of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Any reader of his Pastoral Letter to the separated Donatists on the Unity of the Church, must find it inexplicable...that in these seventy–five chapters there is not a single word on the necessity of communion with Rome as the centre of unity. He urges all sorts of arguments to show that the Donatists are bound to return to the Church, but of the Papal Chair, as one of them, he says not a word.
We have a copious literature on the Christian sects and heresies of the first six centuries—Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Philastrius, St. Augustine, and, later, Leontius and Timotheus—have left us accounts of them to the number of eighty, but not a single one is reproached with rejecting the Pope’s authority in matters of faith.
All this is intelligible enough, if we look at the patristic interpretation of the words of Christ to St. Peter. Of all the Fathers who interpret these passages in the Gospels (Matt. xvi.18, John xxi.17), not a single one applies them to the Roman bishops as Peter’s successors. How many Fathers have busied themselves with these texts, yet not one of them whose commentaries we possess—Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, Theodoret, and those whose interpretations are collected in catenas—has dropped the faintest hint that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the commission and promise to Peter! Not one of them has explained the rock or foundation on which Christ would build His Church of the office given to Peter to be transmitted to his successors, but they understood by it either Christ Himself, or Peter’s confession of faith in Christ; often both together. Or else they thought Peter was the foundation equally with all the other Apostles, the twelve being together the foundation–stones of the Church (Apoc. xxi.14). The Fathers could the less recognize in the power of the keys, and the power of binding and loosing, any special prerogative or lordship of the Roman bishop, inasmuch as—what is obvious to any one at first sight—they did not regard a power first given to Peter, and afterwards conferred in precisely the same words on all the Apostles, as anything peculiar to him, or hereditary in the line of Roman bishops, and they held the symbol of the keys as meaning just the same as the figurative expression of binding and loosing (Janus (Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger), The Pope and the Council (Boston: Roberts, 1869), pp. 70-74).

The The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V 1909 calls Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger "...this great scholar", and acknowledges his accurate knowledge of papal history: "...Scarcely had the first detailed accounts of the council's proceedings appeared, when Döllinger published in the Ausburg "Allgemeine Zeitung" his famous "March articles", reprinted anonymously in August of that year under the title: "Janus, der Papst, und das Konzil". The accurate knowledge of papal history here manifested easily convinced most readers that only Döllinger could have written the work."

Cordially,