Priests Do Not Have Experience to Prepare People for Marriage, Says Vatican Cardinal

The Irish Times ^ | 7/3/18 | Patsy McGarry

[marshmallow]

Pope Francis, ‘unnoticed, has gradually been putting women into positions of power’

Priests have no credibility when it comes to training people for marriage, according to the most senior Irish cleric in the Vatican.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, from Drimnagh in Dublin and prefect (head) of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life said “priests are not the best people to train others for marriage.

“They have no credibility; they have never lived the experience; they may know moral theology, dogmatic theology in theory, but to go from there to putting it into practice every day....they don’t have the experience.”

Clericalism is dead, the Cardinal behind the World Meeting of Families in Dublin next month also said, “not because we’ve done anything to kill it, but out of sheer numbers.” In Dallas, where he was Bishop from 2007 to 2016, “we have a million and a half Catholics and 75 priests, with a 45 to 50 per cent rate of (Mass) attendance.Those 75 priests are not going to be interested in organising marriage meetings,” he said.

“We have to worry about the 99 per cent, about the baptised, and not worry about the other things we have been obsessed with.” (Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese, with a population of 1.15 million Catholics, has 413 diocesan and religious priests).

[MrEdd]

One of those two was directly tutored out in the desert for years by God.
The other of those two is God.

Which modern priests does this also apply to?

[Truthoverpower]

Yes
She’s always right
That’s the extent of the training

[Mrs. Don-o]

Not to tar them all with the same brush, but many of the Irish Bishops have approx. the moral credibility of Harvey Weinstein.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

He may have been widowed. It is implicit the disciples left their former lives to follow him and then bring the Good News the nations.

But even married couples singled out for mention in the Bible hardly ever remain stationary. And I bring that up to say they weren’t living out the American bourgeois middle class realities that people now commonly associate as inseparable from marriage. It’s a lot deeper than that, and perhaps that’s why secular therapists or Christian counselors overly shaped by fickle cultural realities are out of touch with timeless and eternal concepts that need to be at the center of marriage.

[Mrs. Don-o]

There's no outright on-the-nose proof whether Paul ever had a wife, but many think that Paul was in fact a widower at the time of his writing.

• Paul puts himself in the category of being “unmarried” in 1 Cor. 7:8 - “I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I.”

• The word “unmarried” = agamos (Gr.), is only only used 4 times in the NT, and all four uses are in 1 Cor. 7 (v.8, 11, 32, 34).

• Paul uses the term agamos in one case, for a woman who has been separated from her husband: once-married. In another, it refers to a virgin: never-married.So although Paul identifies himself as agamos, he still could have at one time been married.

  (The later word in Greek that specified “widower”, cheros, does not appear in biblical or Koine Greek.)

• Elsewhere, Paul says that he was a Pharisee, a “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5), and “extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions” (Galatians 1:14; cf. Acts 22:3). Marriage was the norm for Pharisees, so Paul could hardly have set himself forth as an example of a leading, zealous Pharisee had he never been married.

So it's probable that Paul was once married, but it was after becoming a widower that Christ called him and gave him gift of celibacy for the sake of the kingdom.

[metmom]

What I’ve noticed is the same problems, just expressed differently.

I know a man who grew up watching his step dad beat his mom and he is absolutely death on men touching women, but is very abusive verbally.

[wastedyears]

If you say so.

[metmom]

Peter was also single.

Wrong......

Matthew 8:14 And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever.

1 Corinthians 9:5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?

[metmom]

I have heard that elsewhere, but celibate priests still have had the experience of living and growing up in families, and has plenty of time in their formative years to see, some at very close and first-hand experience, how NOT to play the game, and the presence of any number of traps and pitfalls that people can get themselves into.

Virtually ALL of us fall into that category and there's a world of difference between watching a marriage and living it.

[metmom]

Anyone who goes to someone like that is a fool.

[ameribbean expat]

https://onepeterfive.com/report-married-bolivian-bishop-will-be-made-cardinal-by-pope-francis/

[ebb tide]

American Bishop Asks Cardinal Farrell an Embarrassing Question

Bishop Thomas Tobin (the good Tobin) of Providence, USA, objected on Twitter (July 7) to Cardinal Kevin Farrell's claim that priests have “no credibility” when it comes to training people for marriage "because they have never lived the experience". Farrell is the prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

Tobin presents the obvious objection against Farrell: “It seems fair to ask, then, if a celibate cleric has sufficient ‘credibility’ to lead a dicastery devoted to laity, family and life.”

Since Farrell took over his position albeit his self-professed cluelessness about the family, it is obvious that he wanted the job only for career reasons.

[Secret Agent Man]

And God bless him, Paul was right when he said its better to be unmarried.

[goodnesswins]

"you watch your parents for 18 years or more. That is how you re prepared for marriage."

Ahem...between my two parents there were 8 spouses by the time I was about 25 years old....Luckily, I learned to watch other couples. It helped a little.

[Amendment10]

"Peter was also single."

With all due respect Condoleezzdprotege, Matthew 8:14-15 shows that Jesus went to Peter’s house and healed Peter’s sick mother-in-law.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

He may have been widowed. Either way, the disciples left their former lives behind to spread the Gospel and a few already had itinerant jobs to begin with: as many were fishermen. Paul worked as a tentmaker, etc...

These were not your average “Leave it to Beaver” situations and neither were most marriages mentioned in the Bible. I would hope American Christians realize that our cultural concept of marriage may have more to do with the secular American Dream than with Scripture.

And therefore, it is more important that a Christian counselor (either married or single) of couples be deeply intimate with God and acquainted with Scripture / theology, moreso than with how to handle a 401K account or whatever materialistic demands that have little to do with timeless truths about the nature of covenant and the nature of God and His spiritual intentions for marriage.

Also: I do not understand why people find singleness so offensive. I ran into similar responses when discussing contraception. As if its anathema to suggest that being pro-Life means being fully free and OPEN to life as well. Why is there is so great a preoccupation with sex so that celibacy is viewed as almost a disease or illness?

[CondoleezzaProtege]

John the Baptist hung out in the wilderness all day growing his hair out and eating locusts and honey. I’d still trust his judgment and counsel over ANY topic.

[MrEdd]

And therefore, it is more important that a Christian counselor (either married or single) of couples be deeply intimate with God and acquainted with Scripture / theology, moreso than with how to handle a 401K account or whatever materialistic demands that have little to do with timeless truths about the nature of covenant and the nature of God and His spiritual intentions for marriage.

Well, that excerpt from your post does explain why you are achieving zero converts to your way of thinking. Your innate assumption is that this is a one or the other proposition. The people across the table from you don't see it that way at all.

In the interests of a reasoned debate, why don't you explain how you arrived at that little premise, and subject that premise itself to reasoned debate? You are attempting to present a principle as a given which other people don't see as a given.

[BipolarBob]

Thank you for that post.

[metmom]

Why did you change the subject?

What does John the Baptist have to do with Peter’s mother-in-law?