Posted on 05/27/2002 10:57:55 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:54:07 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
When the U.S. bishops meet next month for their annual gathering, their primary focus will be on expediting the process for punishing abusers, and hopefully dealing with bishops and cardinals who provided safe haven for predator priests. But the real challenge for the Catholic Church in the long run is directing its attention to fighting those using the scandal as a Trojan horse to surreptitiously undermine traditional Catholic teaching on sexuality.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
On the other hand, would ending celibacy end this abuse of children and minors? Celibacy does not specify age, only ALL sex, regardless. Would a man who is married, and a priest, have an aversion to molesting a child in his "care" if he already had an attraction to the innocent, and voiceless?
Mrs Kus
I guess if I was for example Irish and wanted to a wife and wanted to be a priest in the Catholic church I would head on out to one of those Uniate Churches and get all that I want via a very big Papal loophole.
Mrs Kus
So can priests in the Anglican branch of the Catholic Church.
However, if a priest wants to become a bishop in the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church he must be leading a celibate life. I don't know about the Anglican bishops.
Anglo-Catholics aren't in union with Rome. Perhaps you are thinking of the handful of Anglican Use Parishes in the United States. They are considered part of the Latin Rite, however have a distinctive, and very beautiful Liturgy which draws heavily from the Book of Common Prayer.
There are married RC Priests who have entered via the Pastoral Provision, promulgated in 1981. Most of them are former Episcopalians and Lutherans (denominations considered one step from Catholicism). Most of those Priests are not serving in Anglican Use Parishes since there are only 6 or 7 AU Parishes in the United States-most of them in Texas.
What kind of inappopriate, intrusive, voyeuristic attention to other people's personal lives gave rise to the celibacy requirement in the first place?
Pedophiles are diseased human beings that must be removed from society.
Marriage will not stop a pedophile from molesting children.
The idea that marriage is a cure for priests who molest children is an example of how problems are addressed today.
A_s-backwards
What kind of inappopriate, intrusive, voyeuristic attention to other people's personal lives causes people who have no intention of becoming a Catholic, or a priest, or a celibate, to demand that the free choice of celibacy in the Catholic Church be ended?
I disagree with the argument that priests don't have room in their lives for families. Some of the priests have spent plenty of time and energy molesting kids, instead of on their pastorly duties. The sex-obsessed priests with homosexual compulsions spent untold hours plotting their predatory strategies.
The straight priests,on the other hand, may be living lives of desperate lonliness. Parishioners may want their priests to be celibate, but how long can the church survive if mothers refuse to send their sons to what they see as gay-dominated seminaries?
This problem will not be solved for decades because so many people think that celibacy is necessary. The question is, "How many are actualy celibate?"
I want to know where Cozzens gets his numbers? If he is basing it on what he witnesssed while he was running a seminary and tolerated it, then he is part of the problem.
While married men may be ordained in the Eastern Rite, once ordained, single priests may not then get married. Should the spouse of the priest die, then the priest must adopt the discipline of celibacy. Same for those Protestant clergy who convert to Catholicism and get ordained as priests. Also, in the Eastern Rite, bishops are selected exclusively from celibate priests.
This is nonsense. If priests have room in their lives to go to race tracks, and Las Vegas, and prolonged sabbaticals, then they have time for families.
A priest recently relayed to me an interesting story: A Methodist minister who taught at his seminary told him that when he was deathly ill at a hospital, he called a Catholic priest, not a fellow Methodist. The minister gave two reasons; 1) he could call a Catholic priest in the middle of the night guaranteed to reach him, and 2) a Catholic priest is able to give fully of himself to others and would not have a family to tend to.
I also don't believe this goofy story for a minute.
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