Posted on 12/14/2009 11:06:25 AM PST by the_conscience
THere was a noticable dearth of facts around the conclusions of the article.
Was this before or after Pope St. Siricius reiterated the law of celibacy to his clerics in the 4th century AD? I'm a little confused about the timeline you are trying to portray. I think the 4th century AD is before the 12th century AD, but your very absolute statement that it was first universally imposed in the 12th century means that the 4th century must have come after the 12th century. Right?
Luther, at least as presented in this article, seems a man possessed by his own passions, and looking to discount them by projecting them to all humankind.
I have no doubt that every human has one or more vices, but I don’t believe every human has every vice.
But Paul wasn’t really a clergy, he was an itinerant prophet. That type of life would have been very hard with a wife, and a wife would certainly have distracted him greatly from his particular mission.
Are you going to give an argument or just make an assertion
The article states: “That said, it must also be said that there seems to be something gravely amiss with the American Catholic Church’s insistence on maintaining mandatory clerical celibacy — despite the mounting evidence of homosexual and heterosexual abuses among its clergy, and despite the rapid dwindling of eligible novates within its seminaries.”
Exactly HOW does having married priests prevent abuses of children (mainly homosexual)?? Are we to assume married priests are too busy servicing their wives to find time and energy for little boys? This is ridiculous on the face of it.
The article also states Priestly celebacy is connected to “the rapid dwindling of eligible novates within its seminaries.” Religious orders and attendance are on decline among all Christian denominations. In fact, this decline is fastest among the “Mainline” Protestant denominations, which do not require celibacy. Why bash the Catholic requirement for celibacy, when we are swimming in a vast ocean of a decadent and sinful society?
This whole article takes the attitude of - the fat kids in gym can’t pass the Phys Ed test by doing 10 push-ups, so its best to remove the requirement for push-ups altogether to have compliance.
Celibacy and the struggle with all urges and desires (sex being the foremost) is indeed a great hindrance to spiritual advancement and absolute devotion to Christ, but lack of fidelity to vows is not God nor the Church’s problem - it is the Priest’s problem and his challenge.
Apparently the wisdom of the ages and the final answer are contained within the one item you posted today at FR.
For centuries, even through today, the most well-educated men with the best intellects have been Catholic churchmen. In fact, the university itself is a conception and product of the Catholic Church.
To think your protestant author finally came up with all the answers in 1997.
A heirarchy of being? Like this?
God >> Angels >> Man >> Animals >> Plants >> Inanimate Objects.
So instead, you believe all things created and uncreated are equal, with no heirarchy?
My grandfather was the only maritally chaste minister his Southern Baptist Church had during the 20 years from 1980 to 2000. All the rest of them had to be run out of town for participating in horizontal counseling of the forlorn ladies of the parish on the Pastor's office couch. From reading the newspapers down south of these sorts of goings on, and also noting the enormous number of divorces, remarriages and affairs reported among southern evangelicals, his parish was not atypical at all.
No, I merely used an inartful shorthand. As I said in my explanation, I do NOT believe that unhappiness within a specific marriage would lead a man who otherwise freely and happily chooses the married life to suddenly decide to practice homosexual pedophilic acts.
In other words, I am arguing that by choosing men who by their nature desire heterosexual sexual relationships, and also express that desire in a controlled manner by freely confining that desire in a marriage relationship, you can minimize the chance that your leaders are in fact homosexual, or desirous of extramarital relationships with children.
And yes, I am saying that “being married” isn’t enough to protect the leadership — the general biblical admonition suggests the quality of marriage and family life of those considered need to be judged.
But for my argument, I took it no further than to suggest that explicitly excluding from leadership those men who seek out marriage relationships would cut out men who were less likely to want homosexual pedophilic relationships, because men who are most likely to want heterosexual married relationships would be most likely to reject the vow of celibacy.
So it must be really terrible that the enitre episcopal heirarchy and all of the monastics of the Eastern Church are life long celibates.
How To Argue For Priestly Celibacy
By Jason Evert
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2001/0104sbs.asp
When any passage such as this is brought up, step number one is to read it in context. In 1 Timothy 4, Paul is speaking about those who have veered away from the Christian understanding of the goodness of marriage, opting for a false asceticism that denounces it. This heresy would later raise its head against the Church in the form of the Cathari, who condemned marriage and procreation as great evils. The fortunate element of the heresy is that it soon disappeared-it wasn’t very hereditary!
Such an unbalanced idea of marriage is the opposite of the celibacy chosen by Catholic priests. Those who “renounce marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12 NAB) do so not because marriage is bad, but precisely because its goodness makes its renunciation a valuable and generous gift to offer to God. After all, the goodness of a gift determines the value of the sacrifice. This is why the Israelites offered God their first-fruits, not their leftovers.
The decision to remain celibate is freely chosen by seminarians, and it is not the Church that is forbidding them to marry. They may choose married or celibate life according to where the Lord is calling them. Making such a pledge of celibacy is not foreign to the New Testament. In fact, one chapter after Paul denounces those who forbid marriage, he mentions Christian widows who make a pledge of celibacy-and how they will incur condemnation if their sensuality estranges them from Christ by enticing them to marry. By reading Paul’s words on marriage and celibacy in context, it becomes clear that forbidding marriage is one thing and freely making a vow of virginity is another.
Unfortunately, celibacy is often defined by what it gives up instead of what it embraces. Contrary to popular belief, celibacy does not mean that priests and nuns are unmarried. Mother Teresa said that someone once asked her if she was married. She replied in the affirmative-and added that her Spouse can be very demanding at times! What Christians often overlook is that earthly marriages are not eternal (Luke 20:35). They are a foreshadowing and a sign of that eternal wedding that will take place in heaven between the Church and Christ. Those who have consecrated their virginity to God are simply skipping the earthly sign and participating in the eternal marriage now. This is a beautiful witness to the world that there is more to life than the passing joys we know on earth.
2- Where is clerical celibacy in the Bible?
Biblical evidence for the discipline of celibacy can be found in both the Old and the New Testaments. In the Old, Jeremiah was forbidden by God to take a wife in order to enable him to fulfill his ministry better. “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place’” (Jer. 16:1-2).
Also in the Old Testament, God asked even married couples to practice celibacy on certain occasions. For example, Moses asked the Israelites to abstain from marital intimacy while he ascended Mount Sinai (Ex. 20:15), and Jewish tradition attests that he remained celibate for life following the command of Exodus 9:15 and Deuteronomy 5:28. The Lord also asked that the priests refrain from sexual relations with their wives during their time of service in the temple. In yet another example, the priests ordered King David and his people to abstain from marital relations on the occasion of eating the holy bread (1 Sam. 21:4).
In all these instances, there is a theme of abstaining from marital relations due to the presence of something very holy. It is not that the marital act is sinful, but that when one is in such proximity to God, it is right to offer him an undivided mind, heart, and body. If it was fitting under the Old Covenant to serve the temple, to approach God, and receive the holy bread with a consecrated body, it is no surprise that permanent celibacy is fitting for a Roman Catholic priest, since his priestly service is continual.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states, “Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it” (19:12 NAB). This is an invitation from Christ to live as he did, and there can be nothing unacceptable in that.
Paul recognized the wisdom in this, and encouraged celibacy in order to free a man to be anxious about the things of the Lord and to serve him undividedly (1 Cor 7:8,32-35). In his words, “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. . . . I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. . . . he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:8, 32-35, 38).
3- If Peter had a wife, why can’t married men become Catholic priests?
While this appears to be a simple question, there are a few misconceptions that need to be addressed. Many Protestants-and even Catholics for that matter-do not know that there are many rites within the Catholic Church that allow married men to become priests. Though the Latin (Western) Rite practices the discipline of priestly celibacy, most of the Eastern Rites allow married men to be ordained.
Even within the Latin Rite, the Church has made exceptions for a number of converted married ministers to become ordained. This is known as the “pastoral provision,” and it demonstrates that clerical celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine. The doctrines of the Church are teachings that can never be reversed. On the other hand, disciplines refer to those practices (such as eating meat on Fridays) that may change over time as the Church sees fit.
4- Didn’t Paul say that a bishop had to be “the husband of one wife?” (1 Tim. 3:2, 4-5).
The point of Paul’s teaching is not that a man must be married in order to be a bishop, but that a bishop may not be married more than once. If this passage meant that a bishop had to be married, Paul would have been in violation of his own rule (1 Cor. 7:7-8, 9:5). A rule forbidding a man to have more than one wife does not order him to have at least one. A man who never marries does not violate the rule. Also, Paul, being a bishop who ordained other men to be bishops (cf. 1 Tim. 1:6), would have been a hypocrite if he enjoined such a rule (”to be a bishop you must be married”) and then, by his own admission (1 Cor. 7:8-9) ignored his own rule.
5- You always hear about priests being charged with pedophilia. If priests were allowed to get married, wouldn’t this alleviate the problem?
If a priest-or any person for that matter-has a disordered sexual desire, marriage is not the cure. Experiencing the redemptive power of Christ in one’s fallen sexuality is the cure. Getting married will only involve the transferal of a man’s unhealthy lust to his wife or children. Conversely, if a man abuses his wife, the solution to the problem is not the renunciation of his call to marriage. The solution lies precisely in his call to marriage-to love his bride as Christ loved the Church.
The fact that marriage is not the solution to pedophilia can be demonstrated by looking at the statistics. Per capita, Catholic priests do not have a higher incidence of pedophilia than do married clergymen. The reason why you don’t hear as much about the other cases is because of the anti-Catholic bias that permeates the media.
6- The Church has been having a vocations crisis, and if they would just allow the clergy to marry, the problem would take care of itself.
The Vatican recently released a statement that said that the vocations crisis is ending. In a statement released on March 30, 2000, Catholic World News service reported from the Vatican: “The worldwide crisis of clerical vocations has ended, according to the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy.” Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos reported that there are now 109,828 seminarians preparing for the priesthood around the world, which is an enormous increase from the 60,142 in 1975. The news release continued, “There were 404,626 priests serving the Catholic Church in 1999. Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos noted that some priests have returned to their ministry after having abandoned the priesthood. And the number of defections from priestly life is falling; the cardinal pointed out that in 1975 there were 3,314 men who left the priesthood; in 1997 there were 1,006.”
The celibacy of the priesthood should not be seen as a burden that impedes vocations, but as a living witness to the world that serving Christ is worth sacrificing even the greatest joys of human life-a wife and family. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Yeah, that's an impossible rule for God to have. Just like that terrible Romanist interpolation in the Book of Revelations, Chapter 14, verse 4. (/sarcasm)
These are they who were not defiled with women: for they are virgins.
Is a man a beast if he enjoys having sex with his wife? Is it a sin if he finds satisfaction in doing so? If he finds he can work in close proximity to women without experiencing significant sexual tension because his needs are being taken care of at home does this make him a "beast who can't control" himself?
If so then I guess I am guilty, guilty, guilty.
Celibacy originated in Apostlic times and is part of practical instructions in the way the Lord Jesus willed His Church to be organized that he left with the Apostles. Feudalism has nothing to do with it.
Your response misses the point (perhaps intentionally).
If you are not the master of your sexual and other urges, and are unable to abstain from them as virtue and prudence may require, then you are acting like a beast.
Saying this is not the same as saying that having sex makes you a beast. Not sure why you equated the two.
Jesus, whom we are called to imitate in all things, abstained from all sex. Imitating his total celibacy is certainly laudable. Insisting that a priest be willing to imitate that same total celibacy is not a bad thing.
Ahhh ... I see. A different law requiring the clergy not to have sex. As opposed to that medieval law requiring the clergy not to have sex. The difference is quite clear to me now. So in the time of Pope St. Siricius, the clergy were required not to have sex. Then in the Middle Ages, the Church CHANGED the law, and required from then on, that the clergy could not have sex, and that was when all the problems started. Because before, during the first millenium AD, when the clergy were merely required not to have sex, everything went smoothly. But later, once the clergy were now required not to have sex, big problems!
Got it. How could I have gotten so confused?
Campion reduced down to its absurdity the silly premise of the original post to demonstrate its weakness.
Perhaps you agree with his critique of the original post’s silly premise, as do I.
Also, Paul, being a bishop who ordained other men to be bishops (cf. 1 Tim. 1:6), would have been a hypocrite if he enjoined such a rule (”to be a bishop you must be married”) and then, by his own admission (1 Cor. 7:8-9) ignored his own rule.1 Tim. 1:6 certainly is a bad reference, it has nothing to do with ordaining other men to be bishops ("From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling").
Paul calls himself an Apostle of Jesus Christ, not a Bishop of the Church.
And whether or not you accept the interpretation that "Husband of one wife" really meant "Husband of no more than one wife", it is clear that Paul was saying leaders could be married. He certainly knew how to say "Celibate".
But why would Paul have prohibited a widower who remarried from being a leader in the Church? I can understand rejecting those who have been divorced (although it seems odd that the same Church which claims this passage means "no divorcee can be a Priest") also started with the practice of enforcing a "practical divorce" for men in order to be priests, if they had been married previously.
Oh come on silly. Jesus married Mary Magdalene at the wedding feast at Cana, moved to France with her, and sired the Merovingian Dynasty and the Knights Templar. They spent their summers in Glastonbury with their uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, checking up on the 10 lost tribes of Israel on the British Isles and Scandanavia and Germany, and practicing goddess worship through ritual sex in the middle of the druidic Henges.
Don't tell me you didn't you read the Da Vinci Code so you could finally get your history straight and missed all of this?
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