Posted on 05/25/2005 10:35:49 PM PDT by sinkspur
THE leader of Scotland's Catholics has risked reigniting a row over married priests by predicting the Vatican will eventually relent and allow the practice.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, said the success of married deacons in the church means the change is likely.
The church leader has upset traditional Catholics in the past with his views on celibacy, homosexuality and the priesthood.
His latest comments were made in an interview with the Catholic Times, which will be published on Sunday,
Asked if he believed married priests will become a reality, he said: "Having seen something of the apostolate of married deacons, I can foresee the day when there will be married priests."
The Cardinal has angered conservative Catholics in the past with his acceptance of gay priests, as long as they remained celibate.
However, since being elevated to the College of Cardinals he has espoused views more in line with Vatican teachings. Cardinal O'Brien's latest comments drew criticism from the right-wing Catholic Truth movement.
A spokesman for the group said: "He is trying to say that he is not necessarily personally in favour of this but we can debate it. It's a sleekit way of trying to have his cake and eat it."
However, a poll of 80 Catholic priests in Scotland conducted only last month suggested 40 per cent believed they should be allowed to marry, but the issue remains thorny to many conservative Catholics.
Cardinal O'Brien gained a reputation as a liberal after he said in 2002, before he became a cardinal, that he saw no end to theological argument against celibacy within the priesthood.
A day later he issued a joint statement with Mario Conti, the archbishop of Glasgow, in which the pair said: "While no-one would suggest clerical celibacy is an unchangeable discipline, we believe it has an enormous value."
The following year he risked angering conservatives again when he broached the subject of married priests.
He said in a thanksgiving mass that the church should have "at every level" a discussion about clerical celibacy.
He said the argument for married priests was supported by the case of married Anglican priests who have converted to Catholicism and been allowed to continue their ministries.
However, at the ecclesiastical senate in Rome in October 2003, he made a statement at the end of the Nicene Creed in which he affirmed support of the church's teachings on celibacy, contraception and homosexuality.
It was claimed at the time, but denied, that the added words were said under pressure from the Vatican.
Since then the Cardinal has been careful not to speak out on any of the issues that caused so much controversy.
A spokesman for the Church said today that the Cardinal's comments were not incompatible with his profession of faith in 2003.
He said: "It is a neutral comment on the issue, it is neither a ringing endorsement of the concept, neither is it an outright denunciation."
First, it has nothing to do with any priesthood which was my first complaint. Keeping that very much in mind, there are Christian men who are not married and who are not involved with women at all. These men have unique callings in service of the Lord but it is less than an Elder. They are not qualified to be an elder per the definition. One of the first Christians I met when I moved back to CR is exactly one of these men. He was the first to say that he was not qualified to be an elder because he didn't have a family.
Careful, BlackElk is the bouncer around here.
What I DON'T understand is where some Roman Catholics, believe that married priests, lead to homosexuality and abortion being accepted, as if these are all somehow linked theologically in the Church's teaching.
Weren't at least some of the Pope's married?
Wasn't celibacy actually introduced as a way of dealing with inheritance of Church property and wealth?
It's not like marriage is unclean or some unholy or defiled state of existence... is it?
Sorry I confused my non-biblical terms. I ment there is no liturgical service.
And still another punt. You were last to be picked in sports were you not? I doubt the geeks in the debate club wanted you either.
Well done!
CANON III.(SOURCE)THE great Synod has stringently forbidden any bishop, presbyter, deacon, or any one of the clergy whatever, to have a subintroducta dwelling with him, except only a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such persons only as are beyond all suspicion.
CANON IV.(same source as above).The cohabitation of women with bishops, presbyters, and deacons prohibited on account of their celibacy.
We decree that bishops shall not live with women; nor shall a presbyter who is a widower; neither shall they escort them; nor be familiar with them, nor gaze upon them persistently. And the same decree is made with regard to every celibate priest, and the same concerning such deacons as have no wives. And this is to be the case whether the woman be beautiful or ugly, whether a young girl or beyond the age of puberty, whether great in birth, or an orphan taken out of charity under pretext of bringing her up. For the devil with such arms slays religious, bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and incites them to the fires of desire. But if she be an old woman, and of advanced age, or a sister, or mother, or aunt, or grandmother, it is permitted to live with these because such persons are free from all suspicion of scandal.
PROPOSED ACTION ON CLERICAL CELIBACY.(same source as in 309)[The Acts are not extant.]
NOTES.
Often the mind of a deliberative assembly is as clearly shown by the propositions it rejects as by those it adopts, and it would seem that this doctrine is of application in the case of the asserted attempt at this Council to pass a decree forbidding the priesthood to live in the use of marriage. This attempt is said to have failed. The particulars are as follows:
HEFELE.
(Hist. Councils, Vol. I., pp. 435 et seqq.)
Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius affirm that the Synod of Nicaea, as well as that of Elvira(can. 33), desired to pass a law respecting celibacy. This law was to forbid all bishops, priests and deacons(Sozomen adds subdeacons), who were married at the time of their ordination, to continue to live with their wives. But, say these historians, the law was opposed openly and decidedly by Paphnutius, bishop of a city of the Upper Thebais in Egypt, a man of a high reputation, who had lost an eye during the persecution under Maximian. He was also, celebrated for his miracles, and was held in so great respect by the Emperor, that the latter often kissed the empty socket of the lost eye. Paphnutius declared with a loud voice, "that too heavy a yoke ought not to be laid upon the clergy; that marriage and married intercourse are of themselves honourable and undefiled; that the Church ought not to be injured by an extreme severity, for all could not live in absolute continency: in this way(by not prohibiting married intercourse) the virtue of the wife would be much more certainly preserved(viz the wife of a clergyman, because she might find injury elsewhere, if her husband withdrew from her married intercourse). The intercourse of a man with his lawful wife may also be a chaste intercourse. It would therefore be sufficient, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, if those who had taken holy orders without being married were prohibited from marrying afterwards; but those clergymen who had been married only once as laymen, were not to be separated from their wives(Gelasius adds, or being only a reader or cantor)." This discourse of Paphnutius made so much the more impression, because he had never lived in matrimony himself, and had had no conjugal intercourse. Paphnutius, indeed, had been brought up in a monastery, and his great purity of manners had rendered him especially celebrated. Therefore the Council took the serious words of the Egyptian bishop into consideration, stopped all discussion upon the law, and left to each cleric the responsibility of deciding the point as he would.
If this account be true, we must conclude that a law was proposed to the Council of Nicaea the same as one which had been carried twenty years previously at Elvira, in Spain; this coincidence would lead us to believe that it was the Spaniard Hosius who proposed the law respecting celibacy at Nicaea. The discourse ascribed to Paphnutius, and the consequent decision of the Synod, agree very well with the text of the Apostolic Constitutions, and with the whole practice of the Greek Church in respect to celibacy. The Greek Church as well as the Latin accepted the principle, that whoever had taken holy orders before marriage, ought not to be married afterwards. In the Latin Church, bishops, priests, deacons. and even subdeacons, were considered to be subject to this law, because the latter were at a very early period reckoned among the higher servants of the Church, which was not the case in the Greek Church. The Greek Church went so far as to allow deacons to marry after their ordination, if previously to it they had expressly obtained from their bishop permission to do so. The Council of Ancyra affirms this(c. 10). We see that the Greek Church wishes to leave the bishop free to decide the matter; but in reference to priests, it also prohibited them from marrying after their ordination. Therefore, whilst the Latin Church exacted of those presenting themselves for ordination, even as subdeacons, that they should not continue to live with their wives if they were married, the Greek Church gave no such prohibition; but if the wife of an ordained clergyman died, the Greek Church allowed no second marriage. The Apostolic Constitutions decided this point in the same way. To leave their wives from a pretext of piety was also forbidden to Greek priests; and the Synod of Gangra(c. 4) took up the defence of married priests against the Eustathians. Eustathius, however, was not alone among the Greeks in opposing the marriage of all clerics, and in desiring to introduce into the Greek Church the Latin discipline on this point. St. Epiphanius also inclined towards this side. The Greek Church did not, however, adopt this rigour in reference to priests, deacons, and subdeacons, but by degrees it came to be required of bishops and of the higher order of clergy in general, that they should live in celibacy. Yet this was not until after the compilation of the Apostolic Canons(c. 5) and of the Constitutions; for in those documents mention is made of bishops living in wedlock, and Church history shows that there were married bishops. for instance Synesius, in the fifth century. But it is fair to remark, even as to Synesius, that he made it an express condition of his acceptation, on his election to the episcopate, that he might continue to live the married life. Thomassin believes that Synesius did not seriously require this condition, and only spoke thus for the sake of escaping the episcopal office; which would seem to imply that in his time Greek bishops had already begun to live in celibacy. At the Trullan Synod(c. 13.) the Greek Church finally settled the question of the marriage of priests. Baro-nius, Valesius, and other historians, have considered the account of the part taken by Paphnutius to be apocryphal. Baronius says, that as the Council of Nicaea in its third canon gave a law upon celibacy it is quite impossible to admit that it would alter such a law on account of Paphnutius. But Baronius is mistaken in seeing a law upon celibacy in that third canon; he thought it to be so, because, when mentioning the women who might live in the clergyman's house- -his mother, sister, etc.--the canon does not say a word about the wife. It had no occasion to mention her, it was referring to the suneisaktoi whilst these suneisaktoi and married women have nothing in common. Natalis Alexander gives this anecdote about Paphnutius in full: he desired to refute Ballarmin, who considered it to be untrue and an invention of Socrates to please the Novatians. Natalis Alexander often maintains erroneous opinions, and on the present question he deserves no confidence. If, as St. Epiphanius relates, the Novatians maintained that the clergy might be married exactly like the laity, it cannot be said that Socrates shared that opinion, since he says, or rather makes Paphnutius say, that, according to ancient tradition, those not married at the time of ordination should not be so subsequently. Moreover, if it may be said that Socrates had a partial sympathy with the Novatians, he certainly cannot be considered as belonging to them, still less can he be accused of falsifying history in their favour. He may sometimes have propounded erroneous opinions, but there is a great difference between that and the invention of a whole story. Valesius especially makes use of the argument ex silentio against Socrates.(a) Rufinus, he says, gives many particulars about Paphnutius in his History of the Church; he mentions his martyrdom, his miracles, and the Emperor's reverence for him, but not a single word of the business about celibacy.(b) The name of Paphnutius is wanting in the list of Egyptian bishops present at the Synod. These two arguments of Valesius are weak; the second has the authority of Rufinus himself against it, who expressly says that Bishop Paphnutius was present at the Council of Nicaea. If Valesius means by lists only the signatures at the end of the acts of the Council, this proves nothing; for these lists are very imperfect, and it is well known that many bishops whose names are not among these signatures were present at Nicaea. This argument ex silentio is evidently insufficient to prove that the anecdote about Paphnutius must be rejected as false, seeing that it is in perfect harmony with the practice of the ancient Church, and especially of the Greek Church, on the subject of clerical marriages. On the other hand, Thomassin pretends that there was no such practice, and endeavours to prove by quotations from St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, Eusebius, and St. John Chrysostom, that even in the East priests who were married at the time of their ordination were prohibited from continuing to live with their wives. The texts quoted by Thomassin prove only that the Greeks gave especial honour to priests living in perfect continency, but they do not prove that this continence was a duty incumbent upon all priests; and so much the less, as the fifth and twenty-fifth Apostolic canons, the fourth canon of Gangra, and the thirteenth of the Trullan Synod, demonstrate clearly enough what was the universal custom of the Greek Church on this point. Lupus and Phillips explained the words of Paphnutius in another sense. According to them, the Egyptian bishop was not speaking in a general way; he simply desired that the contemplated law should not include the subdeacons. But this explanation does not agree with the extracts quoted from Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius, who believe Paphnutius intended deacons and priests as well.
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0503fea4.asp
Works for me. Apologetics magazines are good!
Frank
The bible never uses the word priest in a NT church context, it uses pastor and elder and bishop. There is no alter and there is no sacrifice ever discussed in a NT church context either. By the way I don't demean the word priest, it is a great word and a great concept in it's proper place.
All Christians are priests, though I don't see the word sacerdotal anywhere in my bible. As priests each one of us does all the same things a priest does but in a more spiritual sense. And there is absolutely no need to have another group of priests who have some special privalege or purpose or authority at all. The bible calls for elders as overseers and that is all we need. To add another layer is still to demote what each one of us is. To call the mass a sacrifice is to invent a justification for a priesthood that should not be.
But just a little bit more so than all the rest of the Christians. Lets discuss all the "service" that the RC priest can do that non-priests can't do. Look at the book of 1Corithians 14 and see some what a proper service should look like. No priests, no liturgical service, no "mass", no sacrifice, no alter. Everyone participating, everyone ministering as moved by the Spirit.
LOL, do you really think that?
One of many problems. The answers simply don't satisfy. But why is it that if the bible uses a certain term the RC's always have a better and different term?
Also, since the Bible certainly was not written in English, neither priest nor presbyter nor bishop nor elder as English words were used but a Hebrew or Greek word in all likelihood or perhaps Aramaic.
Finally, for now, the Bible is silent on the question of what the weather was like in Jerusalem on the twentieth anniversary of the crucifixion. Hard though it may be for you to believe, it is very probable, nonetheless, that there WAS weather, describable in human words on that anniversary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.