Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: saradippity
Sinkspur,everytime I find one of your posts I end up thinking about points I really hadn't thought about before.The end result is that I become more convinced that relaxing the celibacy rules would be to court even more disasters.

Really? When your access to the sacraments is limited due to the lack of priests, or your parish is closed to pay off the victims of pederasts, you'll re-think your objection to married priests.

We've got married priests today, and they're doing an outstanding job.

The clerical culture has to be broken, and married priests are the only way to do it. Otherwise, you'lll continue to have these guys covering for each other.

126 posted on 04/03/2002 6:17:23 PM PST by sinkspur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 113 | View Replies ]


To: sinkspur
sinkspur,

Even though I have only one brain cell, as you so cleverly pointed out a while back, I must disagree with you about the necessity of having married priests.

There is one terribly important point which has not been discussed and which I believe is critical to understanding the celibate priesthood. It is the spiritual/mystical life of prayer and relationship with God which must be active and healthy in order for a priest to live his vocation, whether married or single. This gives him the strength to resist temptations, whatever they happen to be. (It is this which gives all of us the strength to resist temptations and to live our vocations faithfully, priests or not.)

It is not the lack of sex which is the problem, it is the absence of a deep relationship with God which causes vows to be broken. How many marriages have been destroyed because the husband-wife relationship was not nurtured, became distant and cold, and then someone 'better' came along? It is the same for the priest-God relationship.

How many of us who have been married for any length of time have not been attracted to someone else? The fact that we are married does not stop temptations from happening. The strength of our marriage relationship, and our relationship with God, are the sources of strength for fighting such an attraction.

pax

128 posted on 04/03/2002 6:51:33 PM PST by pax_et_bonum
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 126 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson