Posted on 06/04/2012 6:53:44 AM PDT by marshmallow
You realise those aren’t really very good comparisons, don’t you?
A doctor has experience/knowledge in treating diseases. What kind of experience/knowledge has a celibate had with marriage or sexual difficulties?
you are confusing knowledge and experience.
As one of my counselers told a druggie who taunted her with the same thing: well, I counsel drug addicts and adulterers and gays and wife beaters and schizophenics and delusional people and the depressed.
If I had all those problems, I won’t be able to counsel anyone.
She is not writing about her experience, but about theology, how sexual expression and our sexual identity relates to God.
If she was experienced, she wouldn’t be pretending that there were no problems with premarital sex (40 percent of kids without fathers married to their mom), or the gay mirage (lesbians may be monogamous, but the promiscuity of gay men, especially those who are into the “gay lifestyle” is not just morally dangerous but sad and medically risky).
A doctor has experience/knowledge in treating diseases.
So you are arguing that only a doctor with cancer should treat cancer? Otherwise, they have exactly zero "experience" with that disease. However, they do have knowledge through study and that is very much applicable. And, regarding moral truths, clerics are in the same exact position. After all, for all you know your doctor who has just advised you to get more exercise and eat less fat is immediately going home to veg on the couch and eat gallons of ice cream.
Additionally, while they likely have little to no experience of sexual relationships (this varies as I know priests who are widowers), they do have experience of chastity which is very much relevant to people of all vocations. They also know what it is to sacrifice for love in a relationship, which is what they do everyday. For somebody seeking advice on living a moral Christian life within their marriage there is likely no more relevant or helpful place to turn than one who has both a knowledge base resulting from study, as does a doctor in terms of medicine, as well as a working knowledge of conforming their physical desires to the will of Christ and living chaste lives as clerics do.
Looks like Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter.
If I felt I needed to do so, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask my priest for such guidance because I’m confident he would advise me based upon the Teachings of the Church not the teachings of man.
No I’m not. If I were, I would have said ...treating cancer, not diseases.
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