Incorrect.
Suggest you read the following to improve your deficient knowledge of the topic.
Posted on 05/24/2009 3:26:18 AM PDT by MartinaMisc
Hardly. While any sexual sin is sin, it is much less prevelant than in society in general. Why would homosexual men intentionally enter the priesthood in droves when they can just stay in society and actually have sex?
This arguement has always seemed so silly to me. While any priests sexually molesting children is wrong and should be punished severely, let me remind folks of this fact. molesting priests, less than 1 percent. molestors in the general population, 8 percent. Most molesters are married men, and much of the abuse done is to their own children.
Statistics just don’t point toward men entering the priesthood to have sex with other men. They ususally go to San Fransico for that.
Chap. 4, Ver. 3 "Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats. He speaks of the Gnostics, the Marcionites, the Encratites, the Manicheans, and other ancient heretics, who absolutely condemned marriage and the use of all kind of meat; because they pretended that all flesh was from an evil principle. Whereas the Church of God, so far from condemning marriage, holds it a holy sacrament and forbids it to none but such as by vow have chosen the better part: and prohibits not the use of any meats whatsoever in proper times and seasons, though she does not judge all kind of diet proper for days of fasting and penance." St. Jerome, commentary on 1 Timothy 4:3, circa 400 AD. (emphasis added)
I always find it humorous how you linguistic literalists always resort to cherry picking Scripture; heavily abridged and edited versions of the original by the way, but are at a loss to explain other passages which contradict your assertions.
Best you heed to counsel of St. Peter:
"As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:16
From the other article (in Spanish): Muchos especulan que la misteriosa mujer es una ex Miss Colombia, lo cual el Padre Alberto rechaza. Otras mujeres anónimas también alegan haber estado con el Padre Alberto.
Translation:
Many speculate that the mysterious woman is an ex-Miss Columbia, which Father Alberto denies. Other anonymous women women also allege that they have been with Father Alberto.
Incorrect.
Suggest you read the following to improve your deficient knowledge of the topic.
Thank you for your reasoned response.
Incorrect.
Good points.
Frankly, if a man is a fornicator, he’s not suited for any ministry position, in any church worthy of the name. The issue of his being a priest is peripheral to the issue of his simply being a creep.
This led to a number of problems, including simony. Parishes became family businesses and were all too often run as such.
But the big problem was that this sort of proprietary parish system in effect gave the secular authorities far too much power over the Church. Until the time of Hildebrand kings appointed bishops and this gave them power of the Church. The Church - and I mean here especially the very powerful monasteries, for example at Cluny - wanted independence from secular powers.
Hildebrand saw that the only way to do that was to, in effect, make every parish priest a monk. Hildrebrand famously said something like "we can't free the Church from the kings until we first free the priests from their wives."
And it worked really well. The Church became a power in its own right and essentially ruled Europe for several centuries. Until the Reformation, which was in effect a sort of reverse power grab by the kings, like especially Henry VIII.
The main point is that priestly celibacy was supposed to be the exception rather than the rule. To this day this is the situation with our Orthodox brothers. Orthodox parish priests are required to be married before ordination. And it isn't just the Orthodox. Within the Roman Catholic Church we have our Eastern Rite branch, which follows the venerable Orthodox rule. Just to be clear, the Catholic Church ordains many, many married men as priests today, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. We need to make the Eastern Rite rule the norm within the Western Rite.
I believe that the celibacy rule should be dropped for the Western rite. Forcing men to be celibate only encourages homosexuals and other social misfits to seek Holy Orders. It doesn't fit the times. Unlike in the Middle Ages, instead of attracting the smart and ambitious to the priesthood we now attract the socially inept and sexually confused. And we pay for it big time. I have a friend who was molested by a priest as a boy. I have a nephew who experienced the same. I know one priest who's spending the rest of his life in prison for a couple of decades as a serial molester.
I find it terribly frustrating that the Church can't seem to make this obviously necessary change despite the terrible scandals of recent years.
I think there are many people, Protestant and Catholic, who go into the religious life because they think that zealous devotion to God will help them control desires they recognize as sinful. Unfortunately, this seldom works, particularly as people in positions of authority in any church are subject to many temptations. One sees this in Protestants and Catholics alike. And Satan does like to tempt and ruin those among us who could, if pure, make major contributions to fulfilling God’s will on earth.
Sorry, just read that in my New Testament.
So which pope imposed it then — considering that popes used to be married as well.
What is the meaning of lex continentiae?
Read up on Freud and what he said about repressed urges.
The first answer to that is that Christ didn't found a bible, He founded a Church. The bible wasn't put together until a Catholic Church council did so around 300 years after Christ founded the Church.
The second answer is that though Holy Scripture doesn't directly demand a priest remain unmarried, in numerous places it states, unambiguously, that being single is the preferable status.
Most importantly though, in Catholic doctrine, the priest is not simply some Joe-guy who knows alot about the bible or took courses on scripture in college to give lectures on Sunday. The priest in "in persona Christi." IOW, he acts in the actual person of Christ. Christ wasn't married.
There’s a reason why the discernment time in a seminary is as long as it is and why seminarians have many opportunities to exercise their free will and voluntarily leave prior to ordination.
There’s no requirement in the New Testament that a Bishop must be married.
Once again what is your explanation for the deviancy of those protestants I linked to since you can't use the crutch that celibacy was the cause of their crimes?
I’d be curious what percentage of the celibate .vs. not celibate clergy commit these crimes. Also I think it’s harder to become a priest than it is to become a Baptist minister, for instance. A Baptist friend of mine jokingly tells me they let lots of men become ministers, they just can’t find a job later. The Catholic vetting process might hold down the percentage of Catholic priest criminals below where it would be if those unfortunates were not weeded out to the extent they are.
Thanks for that - most I have read before but good to refresh. I would also add that even though some of the Apostles were married it is Christ who is our Exemplar. Furthermore Jesus himself gave to the Church the power to make decisions in regards to the Church - whatever you loose, whatever you bind etc. So there does not need to be a precedent in regards to the Church’s decision to have unmarried clergy.
Mel
Oh and BTW I know that is a circular arguement but I am not prepared to care! LOL
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