Posted on 04/10/2005 8:33:55 AM PDT by sionnsar
FOUR in 10 Catholic priests in Scotland believe that they should be allowed to marry — and 23% of them say the church should relax its ban on contraception and the ordination of homosexual clergy.
Following the death of Pope John Paul II last weekend, a Sunday Times survey has revealed widespread support for a more liberal line to be taken by his successor.
The church’s position on celibacy gained the highest level of support for change. Asked if the next pope should allow priests to marry, 41% said he should.
In 2002, before he became a cardinal, Keith O’Brien, the leader of the Catholic church in Scotland, shocked traditionalists when he said that he “would have no problems with celibacy withering away”.
Many priests see no theological reason why they should not marry and have children. “It is only a church law and church law can be changed,” said Father Brian Lamb of St Patrick’s chapel in Shotts, Lanarkshire.
Father Dominic Quinn, of St Kevin’s chapel in Bargeddie, near Glasgow, said: “In Britain we have had some married Anglican clergy who have become priests and the church law of celibacy has not been applied to them, so it is not seen as a divine institution. The way the church has used this has changed throughout history.”
A change in the position on contraception, an issue that has done much to damage the credibility of the church during the reign of John Paul, was supported by 23% of the priests.
John Paul believed all contraception was “intrinsically evil” and that the use of condoms to help to prevent the spread of HIV was “morally illicit”.
Among the other findings of the survey, 20% of priests said they would support the ordination of women priests and 26% favoured allowing openly gay men to be priests — but only if they remain celibate.
Father Joe Mills, from St Mary’s chapel in Duntocher, said: “There could be an argument for women priests and, as for homosexuals, they make the same vows as heterosexual priests, so why not ordain them?” Sister Christine Schenk, of the US-based Catholic lobby group FutureChurch, which is pushing to make celibacy optional and to have women ordained as deacons, said the church was facing a shortage of priests. The worldwide Catholic population rose by 52% to 1.1 billion between 1973 and 2002, but the number of priests remained static at 405,000, she said.
“Our concern, and the concern of priests, was not that celibacy was not a good way of life and many were very happy, it was overwhelmingly about us not being able to keep having mass and the sacraments available to Catholic people if we don’t attract more priests.”
Jan Barlow, chief executive of Brook Advisory Centres, the sexual health charity for young people, said: “A relaxation of the Catholic church’s position on contraception would help more people to make informed choices about their sexual health, prevent unplanned pregnancies and protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.”
Last month James Bell became the first married priest to be ordained in Scotland. A former Scottish Episcopal minister, he converted to Catholicism and subsequently became a priest. oToday the Church of Scotland publishes a report calling for a “pragmatic” response to tackle the growing Aids crisis around the world.
The report calls on all Christians to face up to the issue more directly. It says: “Unless reticence is rapidly replaced with pragmatic and forward-looking approaches, HIV will spread more extensively in many countries which, until now, have escaped with only minor epidemics.”
Additional reporting: Holly Marney, Rory Gallivan
The Orthodox (and Eastern-Rite Catholics) allow married men to become priests, but does NOT allow already-ordained priests to marry. That's an important distinction: If a man is married at ordination, fine, he can keep his wife; if he is single at ordination, he's single for life.
So these Irishmen would have had to get married FIRST, then get ordained Orthodox. They are not ordained Catholic priests who broke vows (I don't believe the Orthodox would take such as priests).
Other than Marcel and a couple of other excommunicated co-conspirator illicit bishops, the main perps of this particular schism are still alive (and may still repent). They are not cradle schismatics but willful ones.
Many Catholics have been very poorly catechized, if at all. Their lack of knowledge conveyed to non-Catholics is a constant source of unintentional misinformation to those not Catholic. It is useful to interfaith discussion that we know the actual tenets of each others' respective faiths. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen famously said that, if the Catholic Church were actually the church its critics believed it to be, he wouldn't remain Catholic either. Of course, he died Catholic many years later.
You are probably right. The same could be said for a lot of us Protestants. I should read all of the teachings of the Presbyterian Church first before I take on the Catholic Church. Next, I will have to read up on the Baptist faith because my mother and two of my daughters are now Baptists. So, I have a brother and a daughter who are Catholic as are their spouses and children, and two daughters and their spouses and children and a mother who are Baptists. And I am a Presbyterian. My late husband was Methodist. Are we Ecumenical or what?
The celibacy discipline in the Roman rite of the Roman Catholic Church (and none of the other Catholic rites) is simply a prudential decision of the Church. We do not claim as a Church to follow Luther's innovation of Sola Scriptura, nor Sola Fide, nor Sola Gratia. You may read Paul as advocating married bishops but you may read Paul as encouraging celibate priests. Because your faith apparently rests upon Sola Scriptura, you are looking for some command of Jesus Christ that priests marry or not marry. It has never been that simple in Catholicism. There are many aspects of Catholicism which you might characterize as "traditions of men" that are produced within the Teaching Magisterium of the Church and may or may not be based on Scripture. We neither deny nor regret that.
You are not going to convince any well-catechized Catholic of what we regard as an unneeded adherence to the reformationist formula of Sola Scriptura. We believe that Jesus Christ created the papacy upon Peter and that is a major difference between Catholics and Protestants of good faith. We probably are not going to convince you to accept the Teaching Magisterium. You and we probably agree on 95% of doctrine but ignore those agreements in favor of chewing our respective old slippers out of habit. The differences are important. We have not earned the right to squabble in public in the face of our common secularist and pagan enemies.
Let us unite where, with integrity, we may do so. Let us avoid public squabbling in areas of disagreement no matter how sincere lest we provide undue entertainment to our enemies and His. Let us, imperfect as we all are, do our best to stand with Jesus Christ ever ready to do battle as a united army of the Lord in His service and not our own. Whatever your plan or mine might be, those plans just cannot be as good as His.
As the years went by, Hilda had been an absolute pillar of the church she belonged to for 50 + years, running rummage sales, caring for others, etc. She read her bible so much that the words probably wore off the pages. She lived accordingly.
The Methodist Church in Connecticut is verrrrrrry liberal and eventually Hilda had no Methodist Church that she could attend. Between Hilda and her well-read KJV bible, the old Methodist faith remained alive in Connecticut so long as she remained alive (until 1990 or so). I have no way of knowing her outcome but, if she is not in heaven, heaven must be sparsely populated and I must be in real trouble.
BTW, there is still in print an encyclical of Pope St. Pius X who served from 1903 to 1914 and is the only pope of the last 300+ years to be canonized as a saint. The encyclical is Pascendi Domenici Gregis aka On the Theories of the Modernists. He wrote, among many other things roughly that "the Scriptures are cover-to-cover, word-for-word, the inerrant word of God. Who would say otherwise, let him be declared anathema." He also attacks Darwinist notions of evolution and declares the holders of such notions as anathema.
Again, God bless you and the very ecumenical yours.
For crying out loud, AA, is #58 ALL you have to offer in evidence? Surely you missed something...
Thanks for the compendium of smarts on the topic, BTW.
Perhaps a more current application of an aphorism will help you: "The absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence."
Applied most recently to the question of WMD's in Iraq, easily applied to your insistence (despite contrary evidence) on the year 1139.
Even IF 1139 WERE the first written, or Conciliar prohibition, that does NOT mean that the prohibition did not exist in the Tradition beforehand. Oral tradition counted, especially before Gutenberg...
But AA's pile of proofs are easily researchable by you; I've seen most of the reference materials before; and if you "look it up," you'll wind up sending a "never mind" note to AA.
Hollywood's Wrong? Less than 4 or 8? ONLY TWO????
Please note my tagline, which has been in use for about 18 months on FR. (Watch over your shoulder, young'un!)
AA's knowledge of the scholarship on the topic may sometimes lead to brief dismissals of those who wish to remain ignorant--or even of those who ARE ignorant and are willing to learn.
Frankly, I think you are in the former category--but I hope you are in the latter.
Read the sources and make your own informed decision.
Feeeeellll better?
I will no longer respond to you for I refuse to be an accessory by provocation.
He's a lawyer, ergo he has the right of calumny.
Only two. Don't listen to Hollywood. Those people are crazy. They take all the fun out of everything. And all of the meaning and all of the romance.
Praise God for the Second Amendment.
your tagline, too.... see the above post.
I rather like the 2A, myself.
Makes long-range sniper activity a lot easier to practice.
But don't you realize that by invoking Torquemada you are advocating (even if only in jest) the very sort of tyranny the 2A was designed to prevent?
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