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To: DCPatriot

"The cause...in a word....CELIBACY!"

I think my response to your post is: Yes and no.

I believe that the demands of a totally celibate priesthood is a contributing factor, though not a direct cause.
I think that the uni-sexual, totally celibate peer-environment can contribute to conditions that fail in the challenges of celibacy; challenges and failures that are not just of the "homosexual" variety.

I think the Catholic Church must search for some prime conditions that contribute to the "sexual failures" in the priesthood in general, and when it does it will learn some lessons that apply to all such failures and not just the "homosexual" variety.

I find it interesting that, in a completely opposite fashion from the historically-late celibacy restriction in Catholicism, many Jewish conventions require that one who wihses to become a Rabbi and who studies to become a Rabbi must first be married before they are allowed to practice as a Rabbi. Single persons cannot be Rabbis in traditional Jewish conventions.

My alzheimers-riddled memory also seems to recall some reference (somewhere, unconfirmed) that many or most of Yeshua's 12 diciples as well as the apostles known to Paul were married, not celibate.

It is also my recollection that the prime-cause behind the rule that required celibacy was that prior to that rule many priests and bishops were passing-on their positions (and control of the related property) to their male heirs, at the expense of real merit of those most qualified.

In my musings I wonder if, possibly, the celibacy rule was one of those proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" decisions, in which the attempt to correct an organizational corruption helped create an environment that contributed to a moral corruption.


302 posted on 11/16/2006 7:27:32 PM PST by Wuli
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To: Wuli
I heard today on talk radio that the decision to require celibacy was purely economics.

'They' didn't want responsibility for wife and children, to feed and house them.

Can't recall if that was the host or a caller. That's my short-term memory at 60.

307 posted on 11/16/2006 10:42:51 PM PST by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon)
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