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Top Irish Catholic cleric calls for church to end celibacy for priests
CNN Belief ^ | 09/13/2011 | Peter Taggart

Posted on 10/03/2011 11:58:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Belfast, Northern Ireland (CNN) – A respected former Catholic bishop in Ireland is calling for an end to clerical celibacy in the wake of the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the church worldwide, and says he finds it "heartbreaking" that some prospective priests turn away from the calling because of the celibacy rule.

In his recently published book, "A Troubled See, Memoirs of a Derry Bishop," Dr. Edward Daly said that allowing clergymen to marry would ease many of the church's problems.

There needs to be a place in the modern Catholic church for a married priesthood, said Daly, a prominent figure in the Catholic church in Ireland and the most senior Irish cleric to question the Vatican's celibacy rule.

Daly, 77, reiterated his views in local radio interviews in Northern Ireland Tuesday.

"There will always be a place in the church for a celibate priesthood, but there should also be a place for a married priesthood in the church. I think priests should have the freedom to marry if they wish," the former bishop said.

"It may create a whole new set of problems but I think it's something that should be considered.

The retired bishop said he was worried about the decreasing number of priests and the number of older priests. The issue "needs to be addressed and addressed urgently," Daly said, adding that he finds it "heartbreaking" that priests were forced to resign or prospective priests were unable to join the priesthood because of the celibacy rule.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told CNN Tuesday: "The position on celibacy is clear."

Daly said he accepted he might be out of step with current Vatican thinking, but he was "not engaged in a popularity contest."

(Excerpt) Read more at religion.blogs.cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Worship
KEYWORDS: apostate; celibacy; cleric; diplomacy; ireland; irish; priest; romancatholicism; vatican
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1 posted on 10/03/2011 11:58:14 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Top Irish Catholic apostate cleric calls for church to end celibacy for priests. He's free to leave the Catholic Church and start his own church with married priests. No one's stopping him.
2 posted on 10/03/2011 12:06:52 PM PDT by laweeks
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To: SeekAndFind
Top Irish Catholic apostate cleric calls for church to end celibacy for priests. He's free to leave the Catholic Church and start his own church with married priests. No one's stopping him.
3 posted on 10/03/2011 12:07:27 PM PDT by laweeks
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To: laweeks

Happy will be the day when we no longer have to endure his disastrous generation. I wonder how much prayer and fasting were involved before he was moved to make his declaration. Not much, I would bet.


4 posted on 10/03/2011 12:24:22 PM PDT by me1og
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To: laweeks

This does not make sense to me. Many on the left say “being gay is not a choice” because sexual behavior is genetic. But then why blame any part of the sex abuse scandal on priests not being allowed to marry? I don’t understand it.

Thanks in advance for any responses.


5 posted on 10/03/2011 12:27:29 PM PDT by cvq3842
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To: SeekAndFind
" Daly said he accepted he might be out of step with current Vatican thinking, but he was "not engaged in a popularity contest."

Who the hell does he think he's kidding?

6 posted on 10/03/2011 12:33:22 PM PDT by papertyger (Make no mistake: Sheepdogs are for keeping sheep in, not keeping wolves out.)
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To: cvq3842

The missing R -—

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, ‘We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.’ He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn’t been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot . . . So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing.

‘We missed the R !
We missed the R !
We missed the R !’
His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, ‘What’s wrong, father?’ With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, ‘The word was... ‘CELEBRATE’!!!


7 posted on 10/03/2011 1:15:04 PM PDT by GGpaX4DumpedTea (I am a tea party descendant - steeped in the Constitutional legacy handed down by the Founders)
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To: GGpaX4DumpedTea

This is too funny!!

Love it!


8 posted on 10/03/2011 1:19:57 PM PDT by mporter345
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To: SeekAndFind

The gentleman in question is apparently both a modernist and an apostate. The fact that he has an opinion is just that. Same as any of us. The trouble starts with the fact that he has decided his opinion should carry greater weight than two thousand years of history, by virtue of it being his opinion. One hopes that he recants, although time may be short, given his age. I’ll pray for him.


9 posted on 10/03/2011 1:22:09 PM PDT by sayuncledave (A cruce salus)
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To: sayuncledave

Is the history of mandatory priestly celibacy really two thousand years old? Or is it more recent than that?


10 posted on 10/03/2011 1:26:22 PM PDT by SeekAndFind (u)
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To: cvq3842
This does not make sense to me. Many on the left say “being gay is not a choice” because sexual behavior is genetic. But then why blame any part of the sex abuse scandal on priests not being allowed to marry? I don’t understand it.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

_____________________________________________

Simply this, by the Church having celibacy, this generally attracts men who are and were never interested in the opposite sex to begin with. Celibacy also detracts men who are attracted to the opposite sex.

By allowing married men to be priests, you would minimize the homosexual pedophiles. This is not to say the are not hetero pedophiles, but look at the majority of sexual abuse from the Church. It is overwhelmingly the sexual abuse of boys.

11 posted on 10/03/2011 1:29:21 PM PDT by mporter345
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To: SeekAndFind
Is the history of mandatory priestly celibacy really two thousand years old? Or is it more recent than that?

______________________________________________

Great question...

Catholics constantly state their church was the only one founded by Jesus and that Peter was the first Pope. Ok let's say this is true. Jesus selected married men to be his disciples. In fact, many of the early followers of Jesus were married.

I believe St.Paul first argued that men of the cloth live a single life. But clearly it was not from Jesus. Also, I believe St. Augustine argued the same point as St. Paul.

If Catholics were truly being sincere in their rational of celibacy, they would admit it was not a requirement from Jesus himself. It came a couple of hundred years later when the Church became a politcal force and the leader for the majority of western civilization.

Too bad we can't get a time machine and bring Jesus Christ to give his opinion on the matter... Me thinks he would say something that would stun Church leaders.

12 posted on 10/03/2011 1:40:26 PM PDT by mporter345
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To: mporter345

I do know that Peter (the first pope ) was married.

Matthew 8:14 mentions Jesus healing his mother in law.

St. Patrick’s father Calpornius, was a deacon, his grandfather Potitus, a priest.

There is record of a number of 3rd-century married bishops in good standing, even in the Latin speaking West. They included: Passivus, bishop of Fermo; Cassius, bishop of Narni; Aetherius, bishop of Vienne; Aquilinus, bishop of Évreux; Faron, bishop of Meaux; Magnus, bishop of Avignon. Filibaud, bishop of Aire-sur-l’Adour, was the father of St. Philibert de Jumièges, and Sigilaicus, bishop of Tours, was the father of St. Cyran of Brenne.


13 posted on 10/03/2011 1:49:38 PM PDT by SeekAndFind (u)
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To: mporter345

Furthermore,

Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers (315–68), a Doctor of the Church, was a married bishop and had a daughter named Apra, who was baptized together with her father, when he and his wife became Christians.

Among Popes of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, the father of Pope Damasus I (366–84) was a bishop.

Pope Felix III (483–92), whose father was almost certainly a priest, was the great-great-grandfather of Pope Gregory I the Great (590–604).

Pope Hormisdas (514–23) was the father of Pope Silverius (536–37)


14 posted on 10/03/2011 1:52:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind (u)
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To: sayuncledave
The celibate priesthood is not a dogma of the faith, so to dissent from it is not "apostasy," so Abp. Daly is not an "apostate".

It's essentially a matter of the church's prudential judgement and wisdom, and what Abp. Daly is saying is that he has concluded that his prudential judgement and wisdom in this matter is superior to that of the Church. So, no there's no apostasy involved, but maybe not as much humility as there should be, either.

15 posted on 10/03/2011 1:54:26 PM PDT by Campion ("Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies when they become fashions." -- GKC)
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To: SeekAndFind
Furthermore,

Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers (315–68), a Doctor of the Church, was a married bishop and had a daughter named Apra, who was baptized together with her father, when he and his wife became Christians.

Among Popes of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, the father of Pope Damasus I (366–84) was a bishop.

Pope Felix III (483–92), whose father was almost certainly a priest, was the great-great-grandfather of Pope Gregory I the Great (590–604).

Pope Hormisdas (514–23) was the father of Pope Silverius (536–37)

__________________________________________________

Wow, I had no idea that they allowed marriage this recently... Good work!

So why did they and when did they start instituting celibacy? According to Wikipedia...

The earliest textual evidence of the forbidding of marriage to clerics and the duty of those already married to abstain from sexual contact with their wives is in the fourth-century decrees of the Council of Elvira and the later Council of Carthage. According to some writers, this presumed a previous norm, which was being flouted in practice.[7]

Council of Elvira (c. 305)
(Canon 33): It is decided that marriage be altogether prohibited to bishops, priests, and deacons, or to all clerics placed in the ministry, and that they keep away from their wives and not beget children; whoever does this, shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical office.

Council of Carthage (390)
(Canon 3): It is fitting that the holy bishops and priests of God as well as the Levites, i.e. those who are in the service of the divine sacraments, observe perfect continence, so that they may obtain in all simplicity what they are asking from God; what the Apostles taught and what antiquity itself observed, let us also endeavour to keep… It pleases us all that bishop, priest and deacon, guardians of purity, abstain from conjugal intercourse with their wives, so that those who serve at the altar may keep a perfect chastity

16 posted on 10/03/2011 2:17:08 PM PDT by mporter345
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To: SeekAndFind

Be careful. A man can be a widower at the time of his ordination, already have a son (or ten), and not be any sort of disproof of clerical celibacy. Hormisdas, for example, is known to have been a widower at the time he became Pope. (He was a deacon, not a priest, before his accession, and deacons were allowed to be married then as now.)


17 posted on 10/03/2011 2:59:22 PM PDT by Campion ("Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies when they become fashions." -- GKC)
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To: SeekAndFind

Pope Felix was also a widower at the time of his accession to the Papacy.


18 posted on 10/03/2011 3:01:57 PM PDT by Campion ("Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies when they become fashions." -- GKC)
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To: Campion

OK, let’s grant that Hormisdas was a widower at the time he became Pope, but someone like Pope Adrian II (AKA Hardian II) married a woman named Stephania, by whom he had a daughter, and both were still living at his election, following which they lived with him in the Lateran Palace.

History tells us that they were carried off and assassinated by Anastasius’s brother, Eleutherius, in 868.

Adrian died in 872 after exactly five years as pope.

Regarding Bishop Hillary of Poitiers for instance, So great was the respect in which he was held by the citizens of Poitiers that about 353, although still a married man, he was unanimously elected bishop.


19 posted on 10/03/2011 3:06:52 PM PDT by SeekAndFind (u)
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To: mporter345
If Catholics were truly being sincere in their rational of celibacy, they would admit it was not a requirement from Jesus himself.

We don't claim otherwise. There are married priests in the Eastern Catholic church, and a few married priests in the West (converts from Protestantism). If it were "a requirement from Jesus himself," no exceptions could be allowed.

20 posted on 10/03/2011 3:17:32 PM PDT by Campion ("Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies when they become fashions." -- GKC)
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