Posted on 10/11/2003 5:56:40 AM PDT by RaceBannon
Vatican: U.S. Catholic Sex Scandal Was Overstated Reuters Friday, October 10, 2003; 4:16 PM VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The media has exaggerated a sex scandal that has shaken the U.S. Roman Catholic Church and unfairly tainted thousands of priests with overzealous coverage, Pope John Paul II's top aide said Friday. "The scandals in the United States received disproportionate attention from the media," Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano told Reuters in an interview. "There are thieves in every country, but it's hard to say that everyone is a thief."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The clerical sexual abuse crisis was the single worst scandal in the history of the Catholic Church in the US.
Roman cardinals should apologize, and apologize, and otherwise shut their mouths. They're doing the rest of us Catholics no favors.
Many queers like 'em young, they are, after all, perverts. True pedophilia, by definition, is the sexual abuse of pre-pubescent boys and girls. Pedophiles do not discriminate sexually, and they target all children, usually the very young ones. When virtually all of the victims are males, and virtually all of these males are sexually mature, (post pubescent), the problem is totally homosexual in nature..... homosexual rape of boys to be exact. As I said in my previous post, the media intentionally carped on the term 'pedophilia' to take the heat off their homosexual darlings.
The problem has been greatly exaggerated by the media because they failed miserably to focus on the much larger national problem of child sexual abuse. Bashing the Catholic Church sells much more newspapers and protects the liberal institution of public schools from a much more deserved focus.
My earlier post showed that there were far more child sex abusers in Texas public schools than there were priests in the entire country. Any fair reporting, any honest concern for children, would have mandated the reporting of ALL child sexual abuse, and it would have contrasted the relatively small percentage of priestly abuse as compared to secular professions. The shocking lack of focus on the bigger problem that exists in our public schools and other professions was more than a little revealing.
The Latin Vulgate and the Douay Rheims Bible, (the Vulgate's English translation), uses the words "woman", or "sister" where this new-age translation says "wife". The use of the word "wife" is a Protestant mis-translation which became popular when they decided to attack the priestly celebacy in the Catholic Church. A few new-age Catholic Bibles also have this (Protestant) corruption, but that was due to the influence of a large group of Catholic priests and theologians who favor married priests.
Here is a beautiful explanation of how this verse was corrupted by Protestants, and how it found its way into some new-age "Catholic" Bibles.
The classical Catholic translation of the Bible into English, commonly referred to as the Douay-Rheims version, gives us a text that excludes the interpretation that all the Apostles, Saint Paul inclusive, were married: “Have we not power to carry about a woman, a sister, as well as the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?”
An objection could be raised that the Douay-Rheims version does not translate the text directly from the Greek but from a Latin version known as the Vulgate. This Latin text reads mulierem sororem or “a woman sister.” A return to the original Greek should dispel any discrepancies in this regard.
The Real Meaning of Adelphên Gunaika
What are the Greek words which have been translated as “believing wife,” “a sister, a wife,” or “a woman, a sister”? The key words (transliterated into Latin characters) are: adelphên gunaika.
Gunaika (the accusative or objective form of gunê) can mean both “a woman” and “a wife.” This happens, incidentally, in Romance languages like French, Spanish, and Portuguese, in which femme, mujer, and mulher, respectively, can have both meanings.
To avoid any ambiguity as to the meaning, Saint Paul qualified the word gunaika with the word adelphên (the objective form of adelphê), which means “a sister,” thus making a composite expression translating literally into “a sister woman.”
To understand the meaning of the expression “sister woman,” some historical background is needed. Among the Jews, it was the custom for pious ladies to follow their spiritual masters to aid them in their domestic needs. The Gospels record the fact that pious women followed the Divine Master and served Him. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, one reads:
And there were there many women afar off, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto Him; among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee (27:55-56).2
Likewise, Saint Luke writes:
And it came to pass afterwards, that He traveled through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve with Him. And certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who is called Magdalene, out of whom seven devils were gone forth, and Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto Him of their substance (8:1-3).
The Greek word employed by both Saint Matthew and Saint Luke referring to these pious women who followed and served Our Lord is the same word used by Saint Paul: gunaikes.3 None of the exegetes thought of translating the expression as “wives.”
The Apostle of the Gentiles
Returning to Saint Paul, the context of the Epistle to the Corinthians does not warrant any conclusion that the Apostle was claiming some right to take a wife with him since a little earlier (7:7-8), he had made clear that he was not married and had no intention to marry. He preferred perfect chastity to the married state which he, nonetheless, held in high esteem. In that passage, addressing both the single and widowed, he writes:
'For I would that all men were even as myself: but every one hath his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that. But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I'.
In his Theology of Saint Paul, Fr. Fernand Prat, S.J., states:
If there is one thing certain, it is that the Apostle lived in celibacy, for the discordant voice of Clement of Alexandria only accentuates the harmony of Catholic tradition in this respect. That he considered virginity as more excellent than marriage it is impossible to doubt, and the efforts of some heterodox writers to escape this annoying testimony have ended in putting it in the clearest light.4
In a more recent study analyzing the Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers, Fr. Christian Cochini, S.J., also affirms that most of these attest to Saint Paul’s state of celibacy concluding, “The largest group rejects the idea of marriage for the apostle and affirms that Paul was single before believing in Christ and remained so.”5
He further extends this belief when writing about Saint John:
Jesus’ special love for the apostle John is frequently attested in the Gospels and other texts of the New Testament. Tradition was unanimous in crediting this preference on the part of the Lord to his beloved apostle’s state of perpetual virginity.6
Translating a Protestant Agenda
Protestant reformers began to question the validity of the Latin Vulgate about this text of Saint Paul because they opposed priestly celibacy. Theodore de Beze (1519-1605), a Calvinist leader, was one of the first to replace the translation of adelphên gunaika with “sister wife.” This translation was refuted by, among others, the scholarly Catholic Scripture commentator Cornelius á Lapide (1567-1637) from the standpoint of philosophy as well as from a scriptural and patristic context.7
One is therefore perplexed to see such mistranslations reappear – even in versions approved by Catholic sources. This can be seen in the translation of the passage of Saint Paul in the New American Bible, which is sponsored by the Bishop’s Committee of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In its 1970 edition, we read: “Do we not have the right to marry a believing woman like the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”
This translation is totally contrary to Catholic exegetic tradition and appears to have been tailored to favor campaigns for the abolition of priestly celibacy carried out by associations of married ex-priests.
The 1991 edition of the same Bible on the web site of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops avoids the verb “to marry,” but the sense of the Protestant mistranslation favoring an end to priestly celibacy remains: “Do we not have the right to take along a Christian wife, as do the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Kephas?”
As I wrote in the previous article, even if several Apostles had been previously married – and the only inkling found in the Scriptures relates to Saint Peter – it is certain that all of them, including the Prince of the Apostles, lived in perfect chastity after the divine calling.
Thus, in the Gospels, one reads that Saint Peter asked Our Lord:
What about us? We left all we had to follow you. The Divine Master answered: “I tell you solemnly, there is no one who has left house, wife, brothers, parents, or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not be given repayment many times over in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life (Luke 18:28-30; cf. Matt. 19:27-30, Mark 10:20-21).
A Firm Apostolic Tradition
Rather than repeat all the arguments of the previous article, I will conclude with the words with which Father Cochini closed his accurate study of more than 400 pages, solidly establishing the Apostolic tradition on this matter:
Let us conclude that the obligation demanded from married deacons, priests, and bishops to observe perfect continence with their wives is not, in the Church, the fruit of a belated development, but on the contrary, in the full meaning of the term, an unwritten tradition of apostolic origin that, so far as we know, found its first canonical expression in the 4th century.
“Ut quod apostoli docuerunt, et ipsa servavit antiquitas, nos quoque custodiamus” - “What the apostles taught, and what antiquity itself observed, let us endeavor also to keep.” The affirmation of the Fathers of [the Council of] Carthage [390] will remain an essential link with the origins.
May it help the Churches of the East and of the West, who are both referring to it, achieve a stronger awareness of their common inheritance.8
Luiz Sérgio Solimeo
Notes:
1. Tracing the Glorious Origins of Celibacy is available by clicking here.
2. All subsequent passages are qouted from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible. The emphasis throughout is our own. 3. Cf. www.awmach.org/library/parallel.htm
4. Westminster, Md.: The Newmann Bookshop, 1952, Vol. I, p. 107.
5. Christian Cochini, S.J., Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 77.
6. Ibid., p. 68.
7. Cornelius á Lapide, Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram (Paris: Vives, 1863), Vol. 18, pp. 328-329.
8. Cochini, p. 439. To locate information on a specific topic, enter keywords or phrase above.
Wrong. Totally exaggerated. Most cases are over 20 yrs old and past the statute of limitations. I don't see much if anything that's current.
The church considers homosexual activity devient behavior, has been fighting incursion into its ranks, as do the Boy Scouts of America, who are also targets of the homosexual lobby.
The Cardinal is right but I'll go one better, it's all basically Catholic bashing. No different in what's being attempted in the bashing of Mel Gibson for the 'Passion'.
Flat out LIE.
Yes, he did. And he said "sister", not "wife", according to the Greek texts, the ancient Latin texts, and all the Egnlish language pre-Protestant heretic texts.
"You have the nerve to claim corruption by Protestants. Hello! Right in the midst of the Catholic Church paying off victims, protecting the perverts, and you talk about corruption."
Actually the victims sued the Church for damages through their attornies, and there were out of Court settlements. This is hardly "paying off victims"; I think the law calls it 'monetary settlement for damages'.
More importantly, there is no doctrinal corruption of Christianity due to the personal sin of priests, sin was present even amongst the Apostles themselves. Peter denying Christ three times, Judas betraying Jesus, several Apostles arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest of them, Thomas refusing to believe Our Lord's resurrection even as he stood face-to-face, eye-to-eye with Jesus. Conversely, there is everything doctrinal about corrupting the Bible, the Word of God, which the Protestants did by eliminating seven canonical books, adding words to Scripture, (Luther openly admitted this), and 'translating' the Word in a corrupted way.
If we are to discuss the personal sin of individuals, we need to talk about televangelist Jimmy Bakker, who enjoyed bilking his elderly followers of their money, and who built a gold dog house for his mutt with their donations. We need to talk about Jimmy Swaggert and his sexual trists with hookers. We need to discuss the openly homosexual Bishops that the Protestant Churches are knowingly and joyfully electing to lead them, and the rancor and divisions this is causing their 'church'. We need to discuss Martin Luther's book about the Jews, of which he wrote they should be killed and have their possessions taken from them. Ah, but I digress.
"By the way you left out the "women" Paul spoke about and a number of them were not lay people or "nums" some were in what you call the "PRIEST" role."
Paul plainly taught that women cannot teach in the Church, and that they should submit to their husbands "even as the Church submits to Christ" Women never assumed the role of priest in the Hebrew tradition, (until recent times), and women have never assumed the role of priest in the Christian Church because Jesus was a man, and a woman cannot become a man.
Still, the Catholic Church has always held women in the highest regard, and even calls the Virgin Mary "God's highest creation", higher even than the angels and saints. The Catholic Church has canonized, glorified and venerated hundreds of women Saints, for example: Joan of Arc, St. Teresa of Liseaux, St. Anne the mother of Mary, St. Monica the mother of Augustine, Saint Agnes the Virgin Martyr--- and soon the beloved Mother Teresa will be a beatified, the first step to Sainthood.
"Now your LATIN is not the original"
I don't know what you mean by 'not original', but if you're saying that the King James, (and it's three hundred variations), is original, then you need to be told that it was writtin a thousand years after the Latin Vulgate, and that it was translated with the help of the Latin Vulgate.
There are no serious Protestant Biblical scholars or exegetes who would think of the Latin Vulgate as a version not worthy of study. In the early Protestant Bibles the Latin Vulgate is often mentioned in their introductions as one of their sources. The Latin Vulgate was translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek originals, which are no longer extant. This makes the Vulgate the oldest and purest version of the Bible on earth, as it is older than any of the remaing Greek or Hebrew versions. There is no other complete Bible on the planet that is older or closer to the Originals than the Vulgate.
Around the year 400 A.D. Saint Augustine wrote in his book "City of God", that the Jews of his time gave high praise to St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and they said they were very pleased at the accuracy of the Vulgate.
"Ever since the "garden party" of Genesis MAN has blamed the woman." Actually, Adam merely said that Eve gave him the fruit, "and I ate". He did not claim he was 'tricked'. When Eve was asked, she told God that she was 'beguiled' by the serpent, apparently angering God even further for her inability to accept responsibility for her actions, as Adam did.
"He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I ate." (Genesis 3: 11-13)
"Not you nor the pope nor your CHURCH is in control and if our Heavenly Father chooses to use a "woman" to fulfill a duty it will be done."
I guess this puts you in control of Christian doctrine. tee hee.
"Seems our Heavenly Father sent a strong message to flesh "MAN" I don't need you to fulfill MY plan when HE and with no help of any flesh man brought forth Christ."
God sent His angel, (messenger), to ask Mary's permission to bear His Son. The Father's plan required Mary's consent, for just as Eve said "yes" to the Devil, Mary had to say "yes" to the angel. The Angel would not depart from Mary until he had her reply. This amounts to Mary's role as co-redemptrix in God's plan for our salvation. She had a choice, and she chose to say "yes" to God. For this I am eternally grateful.
"In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible." And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her." Traditions of man will get man in big trouble especially if their traditions goes against what is actually written.
Time is too short,and you appear to be too smart to get into that nowhere argument.
If the Pope wants to renounce the Council of Nicea then he is no better a heretic than Luther.
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