Posted on 05/25/2005 10:35:49 PM PDT by sinkspur
As to Roman Catholicism, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. It isn't as though any opinion you might have in your various errors could possibly be relevant or of interest to any adequately catechized Catholic. As you say, it is a public forum and, if I regard your opinions (with plenty of justification) as ignorant attacks upon Catholicism, you will hear the unstinting truth from me and from other Catholics. No one but no one authorized the impertinent you to preach at Catholics and expect to be heard as though you had some argument to offer. You don't.
With the absolute lack of manners you display, it seems probable that you raised yourself as a feral child and have not recovered from the experience.
Your dignity, if it is ever to emerge, requires privacy. Go to your room.
Since I absolutely do not care a feather or a fig as to your demonstrably worthless opinion, I do not require privacy but simply remind you that Catholic business is none of your business.
As you are entitled to put your ignorance on display, the targets of your infernal preachiness are entitled to tell you to pound sand.
Pound sand!
How would Dershowitz know?????
Also, keep reading #247 as often as need be so that EVEN YOU may understand it.
Alan Dershowitz is now a genetics authority?
That shyster needs to MYOB.
I just love it when Alan Dershowitz sees fit to offer his opinion on anything related to Catholicsm. /sarc
What kind of a self-important boor thinks he has the right to tell others on a public forum to "MYOB"?
If you want private communication, try email. If you don't want to see what others are saying, ignore them. It works for some 99% of us.
Look, as I recall, I posted to biblewonk, "You're posting pearls, brother."
You jumped in, apparently hoping that I wanted to engage in a conversation with you. I didn't then and I still don't.
Now, if you're so desperate as to feel the need to read that as some sort of personal victory, go right ahead. I'm happy to help you feel good about yourself.
Happy Tuesday Seamole. I'm trying to get refocused on where we were. I had a great weekend and didn't turn my computer on once.
OK, this is good because I feel lost and like we had been surfing from topic to topic. Yes I still maintain that the Catholic Priesthood is invalid and that there is no scriptural discussion or definition of such a priesthood.
I was a card carrying athiest for the first 21 years of my life so you may be making a bit of an assumption here. It has been argued all along here and on other threads that Catholic Priests are Priests in every sense of the word. You can not now try and redefine the term "Catholic Priest" back down to a mere elder. An elder is simply an offical oversear of a local assembly but he is not a priest in anyway. He does not make sacrifices and he is not an interceeder(sp) for the flock anymore than anyone else is.
I'm accusing you of that because many many Catholics have flat out stated that they have a priesthood and an alter and a sacrifice. I once accused either Soothing Dave or Campion or some other famous Freeper RC of being the closed thing there was to a Jew that there is without actually being one and he said "Why Biblewonk that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me". I'm afraid that if you are going to simply argue that the RC Priest is simply an elder you have lost touch with your own camp.
Well, I think you're waxing Law and Order TV courtroomish a little here. ;-)
I must be blind because I am not seeing a lot of RC practices coming from the bible and I've read it over and over and over.
If you are interested, here is perhaps the best explanation that I have heard of the discipline for celibacy, from an interview with Fr. Malachi Martin that Gerard P (another freeper) has transcribed:
Excerpt from the taped interview of Fr. Malachi Martin by Bernard Janzen :The Eternal War: the Priesthood in Crisis: (transcription by Gerard P)
"...the idea is to do away with the priesthood. The thing that really militates against the popular taste today about priesthood is celibacy. They regard nowadays, in the society in which we live, the expression of sexuality whether within marriage...outside of marriage whether by yourself or with somebody of the same sex, or with an animal is regarded as quite normal.... If you don't "frighten the horses" so to speak. Provided you don't violate any "rule of decent living". The idea that men, young men of twenty say,..take a vow of celibacy. That they will never get married. And that they can('t) keep that without getting twisted and psychologically moronic and finally ending up in pedophilia or sadism or in some twisted psychology. That is the normal attitude to priests today. So the idea of Roman Catholic celibacy is something that is utterly alien to the mind.
Why? Because the idea of priesthood is. And this is where the great lack in teaching in seminaries and in the Catholic populace lies.
You see...a priest..Christ was once asked, (they pointed out a eunuch to him... a eunuch was somebody who accidentally or for some reason or another couldn't have sex. His genitals were destroyed or something.) And somebody said to him, "Lord what do you think of the eunuch? And he said,"There are three kinds of eunuchs. There's the man who's born like that from nature." ( Deficient in other words, he hasn't got the where-with-all). "There's the one who men made a eunuch." (Because they used to castrate people to make them eunuchs because eunuchs are very useful in palaces. 'cause they wouldn't touch the women and they were very good guards. And eunuchs always developed a very great cruelty. I suppose in reaction to their mutilation. And also if you did that, the voice remained high-pitched and beautiful through teenage years. And then he said, "There is a third kind of eunuch who does it to himself for the sake of the kingdom of God. He said, very mysteriously, "whoever understands, let him understand,'qui potest capere capiat"... meaning there is a very deep mystery.
The mystery is this: I can look on my celibacy if I am a priest, as a chastity belt. And the Church has locked it and thrown away the key. In that case then, I'm just somebody deprived of what I should have a right to by a greater force that's thrown away the key.
That's not celibacy at all. That is enforced continence.
I can look on celibacy then as something acceptable to the Church but a pain in the neck or a pain somewhere else. I still am very far from it.
The celibate is somebody who says to himself or herself (a nun), "My greatest power of love is in reproduction and in living with another human being. And in having children and in exchanging our love and warmth and friendship and confidence. And giving each other the intimacy of our very being, soul and body, which a true marriage does.
But, I will give that up because..when I become a priest, Christ puts a seal on my soul. The seal of his priesthood. And that seal cordons me off for a higher destiny. And the destiny is to have a very, very particular union with God, with Christ.
And that union is the union of somebody who is going to hold God's body in his hands at Mass. And is going to be a special emissary bringing blessing and shriving people from their sins and healing their souls. That's what true celibacy is. It's a segregation of your soul from all the lovely things in life that human love can bring and marriage can bring.
By the way, Look. It also has its ills and its difficulties but in general, it's regarded as a great benefit to be married. Or to live with somebody as we do nowadays. [sarcasm from Fr. Martin]
But to cut that off deliberately and to do it lovingly and to make it a positive contribution, and to devote all the energies that nature has given us for human love... to devote them to Christ. And to concentrate all that on..the Sacrifice of Christ and the preaching of his Gospel and the transmission of his message of love and salvation to souls and healing them and shriving them and helping them supporting them guiding them and welcoming them to the truth. That is the highest vocation a man can have.
Similarly with a nun who takes a vow of chastity. The same thing, She says to herself, "I'm going to imitate Our Lady, who is a virgin. who is the Mother of God. I'm going to have spiritual children and most of Our Lady's children are spiritual. (She had only one child of her own who was called Jesus.) But, I'm going to have those children by my prayers and by my identity with the great mother: The Mother of God.
And I'm going to do all that by renouncing this: Not because it's ill or bad. It's not bad, It's good. God made it. It's good, he said, 'Increase and multiply, love each other, be one flesh. It's a sacrament in the New Covenant. But I'm going to renounce that because I'm going to have a greater identification with Our Lady because God is calling me to that. And all the love and sympathy and empathy and the perceptiveness of love, I'm going to transfer that to Our Lady and Our Lord. And I'm going to make that my special sacrifice.
And in the beginning it is a sacrifice. And then, with the passage of time and fidelity, suddenly...this flower blooms in their souls. And they achieve this marvelous tranquility and this marvelous warmth that people always saw in the traditional priest. This amazing power to get inside you. This light, this feeling that they were there for you. They weren't riven in their sympathies. And they were there for you because Christ was their man, Christ was their King, Christ was their High Priest. That idea of priesthood....you won't find that anywhere today in Catholic manuals or preached in sermons or anything like that. Celibacy is regarded as...like Fish on Friday , a law we want to change and do away with." - Fr. Martin
BlackElk is like the bouncer at the front. If you can make it past him you're good to go.
I guess you missed my extremely obvious irony in that statement. Maybe that's why you and others think I keep changing the subject. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CHRISTIAN PRIEST!. Therefore finding a verse about his celebacy is going to be pretty hard isn't it?
It's not a question of "privacy," it's a question of propriety. You are the mosquitoes at the picnic, nothing more. Crashing Catholic discussions about Catholicism is not going to win you any converts, only greater animosity. You're convincing no one--unless one counts convincing yourself how superior and noble you are for trying to "save" us. All of us need to be saved...even you. But your own personal interpretation of Scripture--at once hyperlegalistic and cartoonish--is not what will get the job done.
I don't believe there is any serious discussion about getting rid of the RC priesthood within the RCC.
That shows how little you know about the Church, and the enemies with Her.
with Her = within Her
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.