Posted on 01/14/2006 10:40:38 PM PST by Coleus
Each month, when I face an auditorium full of engaged couples preparing for a Catholic marriage, there is a Q-and-A session. It is the interesting, unrehearsed part of the evening. The couples write their queries on a piece of paper, and the anonymity guarantees at least a few hardball questions about the Church and its practices. “What about Galileo?” is among my favorites, along with inquisitive notes about Torquemada. But the majority of these “zingers” turn out to be protests about the Church’s rule of clerical celibacy. “You’ve told us how wonderful marriage is, that it’s a great good for the human person, that the body has a nuptial meaning, and so forth. Well, then: Why can’t priests marry?”
It is a question that comes up among even devout Catholics at coffee hour after Mass and at cocktail parties. A married clergy is seen as the obvious solution to a number of problems that confront the Church, ranging from the shortage of priests to the recent sex scandals. Moreover, both the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic churches allow married clergy. So do Protestants; and, in fact, the rejection of clerical celibacy was a much larger issue for the leaders of the Reformation than the fuss over indulgences. Luther, Zwingli, Carlstadt, Bucer, and many other rebellious priests soon took wives (often former nuns), while Thomas Cranmer already had one hidden in Germany. During the Council of Trent, powerful rulers like the Emperor Ferdinand put enormous pressure on the Church to abolish the law of celibacy, but the popes resolutely declined, and have done so ever since.
The agitation for a married priesthood has sharpened in recent decades. There is a drumbeat in the media, often from ex-priests who write copiously for the op-ed pages. Probably a majority of American Catholics also favor the change. So, it’s not surprising that my engaged couples think that Rome should “get with the times” and allow priests to marry. Isn’t the rule of celibacy simply another example of a retrograde Church sitting on somebody’s rights?
I surprise my audience by first telling them that clerical celibacy is not a Church doctrine. It is a discipline, and so can be changed. The pope could wake up tomorrow and allow priests to marry. Moreover, in the early centuries there were married priests, starting with some of the apostles. We know that Peter was married, because we’re told that Jesus cured his mother-in-law. The immediate successors to the apostles were also allowed to marry. Paul writes to Timothy that a bishop should be “married but once.” Clearly, by not permitting married clergy, the Church since the early Middle Ages has departed from the more commodious practice of the early hierarchy.
But—a further surprise for my audience—there are, in fact, married priests in the Latin Church today. There aren’t many, because a priest may have a wife only in one circumstance: A Lutheran or Episcopalian minister who is already married and wishes to convert to Catholicism is allowed the option of becoming a Catholic priest, on condition that his wife gives full consent. You don’t usually see these married priests, because they’re generally not given parish assignments; they teach in seminaries or work in the chancery.
But this one exception to the general rule is the occasion of a story that I tell my audience. It is about a friend of mine who is now a prominent Catholic moral theologian. Years ago, he was an Episcopalian priest who decided to convert to Catholicism. He was married with children and was given the option of becoming a Catholic priest. He agonized over the decision. He was already an ordained minister (although the Church does not recognize the validity of Episcopalian orders) and was deeply attracted to the Catholic priesthood. But at the same time, he recognized that there must be serious reasons why the Church insists on a discipline that is such a sign of contradiction to the modern world.
The debate went on, until finally there came the moment of clarification. He was up all night with one of his children who was seriously ill. Feeling drained and haggard, he went to Mass the next morning, and the priest celebrating Mass came out looking equally drawn. During the brief homily, the priest mentioned in passing that he had been up all night with a parishioner’s child who was dying of meningitis. A light bulb went off over my friend’s head: You can’t do both. If you fully understand the vocations to marriage and to the priesthood—the total availability and self-emptying that each demands—you would not choose to do both. And so he became a lay theologian and, apart from raising a large family, has served the Church in ways that he probably could not have as a member of the clergy.
As my bleary-eyed friend discovered at that early morning Mass, the sacraments of Holy Orders and matrimony are too consuming to allow for both. A married priest can’t help giving his first thoughts to his wife and children. To the extent he does so, he may be forgoing his priestly role as “father,” and people who call a married priest “father” would rightly get the idea that they are second in line as spiritual children. Paul understood this perfectly well when he wrote to the Corinthians, “For he who is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of this world, how he may please his wife; and he is divided” (1 Cor 7:32-34).
There are many reasons, both practical and theological, why the Church insists on clerical celibacy. It is a wise practice that was gradually codified in light of centuries of accumulated knowledge and experience. Early on, it became obvious to many bishops that a married priesthood doesn’t work and that the Church needs men who are willing to embrace a higher spiritual state. Starting with the Spanish Council of Elvira in 305, regional churches began to ask of the clergy what many priests had already spontaneously chosen. The early Church Fathers—Tertullian, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Hilary—wrote in favor of clerical celibacy, and at the end of the Dark Ages, great reforming popes like Leo IX and Gregory VII insisted that henceforth the priesthood would be celibate. This decision greatly strengthened the Church and still does so today.
Admittedly, there’s no hint in the New Testament of celibacy being mandatory either among the apostles or those they ordained. But we have ample warrant in the words of Christ and the writings of Paul that celibacy is a higher calling than marriage. Christ Himself was celibate, and the Incarnation took place, so to speak, in the context of Mary and Joseph’s abstention from sexual relations. Pope Benedict XVI has written eloquently about how Mary’s virginity is really a condition of spiritual fruitfulness. At one point, the disciples ask Christ if it is “expedient not to marry?” He replies that “not all can accept this teaching; but those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born so...and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let him accept it who can” (Mt 19:10-12).
As Christopher West points out, Christ’s use of the word “eunuch” must have profoundly shocked his Jewish listeners. Under the Old Covenant, priests were enjoined to marry and have children who would become priests. Childlessness was seen as a curse, and the idea of a descendant of Abraham opting to be a “eunuch” was unthinkable. But the celibate lives of Mary and Joseph, who brought the Old Covenant to perfection, speak of a new dimension of self-giving. West writes that their celibacy, in effect, brings about “the most fruitful union in the cosmos—the union of the human and divine natures in the person of Christ. All those who live an authentic celibate vocation participate in some way in this new super-abounding spiritual fruitfulness.”
There has always been a deep human intuition that celibacy brings great spiritual gifts, a heightened sensitivity to divine things. Even under the Old Covenant, a married priest had to observe continence while he served in the Temple—in other words, when he was acting as priest. Moses asked that the Jews abstain from conjugal sex while he ascended Mount Sinai, and the prophet Jeremiah was forbidden by God to take a wife in order that he might fulfill his ministry. And although the apostles and their successors had freedom of choice in this matter—at least until the fourth century—a large number of the clergy during this period did choose celibacy. There is a tradition that after their calling by Christ, those apostles who were married lived as though they were not. St. Jerome speaks of a general custom in the late fourth century when he declares that clerics, “even though they may have wives, cease to be husbands.” This is not so exotic as it sounds; in the 20th century the great French theologian Jacques Maritain and his wife Raissa, a Jewish convert, had a marriage blanc for the sake of their spiritual apostleship.
The exaltation of celibacy does not in any way denigrate marriage. Nobody can outdo Pope John Paul II in praising conjugal love. And yet, as he points out in his famous talks on the theology of the body, marriage “is only a tentative solution to the problem of a union of persons through love.” The final solution lies only in heaven, where, as Christ explained to the Sadducees, there is no marriage. Those who live celibately are, in effect, “skipping” the sacrament in anticipation of the ultimate reality, the “Marriage of the Lamb.” They are an “eschatological sign” for the rest of us; their total gift of self, which includes their sexuality, to God anticipates the eternal union for which we were all created. The celibate vocation, West writes, “is ‘superior’ only in its more direct orientation toward man’s superior heavenly destiny.”
A married clergy would certainly dilute the Catholic priesthood as an eschatological sign. But it would also involve practical problems. One of the great strengths of an unmarried clergy is their availability. During World War I, there were many converts to Catholicism among British soldiers fighting in the trenches. This was because the Catholic priests were right up there in the danger zone, hearing confessions and giving spiritual counsel, while many Anglican ministers held back, understandably thinking about their wives and children at home. Recently, a priest I know expressed delight at being assigned to an impoverished area of New York. “I want to work among the poor,” he told me. Would this be his attitude if he were married with small children? His wife’s probable reaction would be, “I’m not going to raise the kids in that neighborhood.”
Clerical marriages, moreover, are not easy. I am told that the wives of the handful of Catholic clergy who have the dispensation from celibacy are the first to support the Church’s general position. Preachers’ wives and preachers’ kids do not have an easy time. Just read the novels of Trollope or Samuel Butler’s much underrated The Way of All Flesh, whose narrator complains about being the son of a clergyman:
I have often thought that the Church of Rome does wisely in not allowing her priests to marry. Certainly it is a matter of common observation in England that the sons of clergymen are frequently unsatisfactory. The explanation is very simple.... The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. He is paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people. It is his raison d’etre. If his parishioners feel that he does this, they approve of him, for they look upon him as their own contribution towards what they deem a holy life.... But his home is his castle as much as that of any other Englishman, and with him, as with others, unnatural tension in public is followed by exhaustion when tension is no longer necessary. His children are the most defenseless things he can reach, and it is on them that nine cases out of ten that he will relieve his mind.
Obviously, not all married clergymen are like this, but clerical marriages have their special difficulties, and, unlike 130 years ago, when Butler wrote his novel, there is now the possibility of divorce. This is already a serious problem in the Anglican Church. It is inevitable that after a decade or so of a married Catholic priesthood, there would be a fair number of divorced priests, some clamoring for remarriage. And as for those priests who still chose not to marry: Might there not be a corresponding diminishment of their public image, so that they would tend to be regarded more as pious bachelors than a special sign among us? Their freedom to get romantically involved with female parishioners gives such questions even more point.
Another practical consideration is the financial cost of allowing priests to marry. The average salary of a diocesan priest is $20,000, and living arrangements in a parish rectory allow for many economies. Married priests would most likely want to live outside the rectory, would need much higher salaries to support a family, and there would be an exponential increase in insurance costs. Where would the money come from? As it is, many parishes can barely pay their bills. Will Catholics in the pews be willing to significantly increase their weekly contributions? The answer is that some will, but many will not, and too many parishes would find themselves in an even deeper financial hole.
The most insistent argument for a married clergy is that it would cure the shortage of priests. The reasons for the decline in the number of clergy are too numerous to go into here. Almost every Catholic shares some of the blame. On the institutional side, there’s the past situation in many seminaries and the refusal of some diocesan vocation directors to present the priesthood in its full spiritual dimension, which includes the challenge of celibacy. If you look around today, it is striking which dioceses (for example, Denver) have plentiful vocations. They raise the bar very high and, taking a page from John Paul II, present celibacy as a great spiritual gift. In contrast, some dioceses, until recently, held out to seminarians the possibility of a reversal of the rule of celibacy; they certainly did not present celibacy in a positive light. Those dioceses with near-empty seminaries might want to look at those that are doing it right. They will find—among other things—a vibrant orthodoxy and a theologically rich understanding of the call to celibacy.
As for the Catholic laity: Along with the widespread use of the Pill, there has been a corresponding diminution of generosity in family size, which means fewer vocations. (One could make the case, by the way, that natural family planning allows a couple to participate in the spiritual benefits of celibacy; the periodic abstinence is part of the “gift” of themselves to one another and to God.) But the point is that there will be many more vocations if both the clergy and the laity fully live their Christian vocations, which include prayer, sacrifice, and generosity. Although it may be tempting in the short term, the solution is not to define the priesthood down in order to attract men who will only take a lightened version of Holy Orders.
The other argument against celibacy is that the Church’s requirement of continence is a primary cause of the sex scandals. Plying their Freud, “experts” like Richard Sipe argue that a lack of sexual outlets drives priests into pedophilia. But the recent scandals have little to do with pedophilia, a clinical disorder whose incidence among Catholic priests is no greater than among the general population. Rather, the majority of episodes involves homosexual acts with teenagers or young men, and it may be wondered how marriage would solve this particular problem. It is clear that not a few homosexual men have entered the priesthood partly as a “cover” for their condition. Arguably, it would only make matters worse if they had to take on a wife as additional camouflage. In any event, it wouldn’t stop some of them from going after teenage boys, as has been amply demonstrated in other clerical milieu.
It should also be pointed out that Freud was wrong about the nature and effects of “sexual repression”—in other words, abstinence. He considered it the taproot of all neuroses, and the sexual revolution has been driven by his idea that such “repression” is a very bad thing. But we all know celibate priests—and laity, for that matter—who are adjusted and well-balanced. We also meet promiscuous individuals who are not. Freud nonetheless taught that the libido is a pressure that builds relentlessly to the point where it demands release, as in a steam engine; and if you don’t find a sexual outlet, you become neurotic, or even worse.
But, in fact, our sex drives don’t work that way. There is no build-up of pressure in the central nervous system, and the libido doesn’t plot revenge if for whatever reason one is continent for a period of time. It largely depends on what “messages” one allows to get through to it, which is why the Church has always taught the necessity of guarding one’s eyes and imagination. This is not Puritanism, but self-possession; and all Christians, not just Catholic priests, are called to this heroic struggle. The more likely neurotics are those who separate sex from married love and, in the process, compulsively turn people into objects, into a means to an end. The sexual revolution, which amounted to a willful misreading of human nature, has failed on its own terms, but there are still those who want the Church to buy into it.
In a world that has absolutized sex, a celibate priesthood is a necessary sign of higher things. It’s tough, but then so is Christianity. Those who wish to abolish celibacy generally favor other dilutions of Catholic doctrine and discipline. They are pursuing an essentially bourgeois project. They think that Christianity is fine so long as it makes no demands and, as a corollary, that the Church should turn itself into yet another liberal Protestant denomination. But these leftover modernists are no longer in the ascendancy, if they ever were, and it is not surprising that the recent synod of bishops in Rome overwhelmingly endorsed the Church’s ancient discipline of celibacy.
George Sim Johnston is a member of the crisis executive board and the author of Did Darwin Get it Right? (Our Sunday Visitor, 1998).
I've been to these places in more than one location, sockmonkey. I've had bad experiences each time. There's a habit I've found with these AU parishes -- they like to portray themselves as traditional Catholic.
It's a good bait to use, isn't it?
That whole traditional thing sort of falls apart when you meet the the priest's wife and kids.
I don't see it. The Mass (and lose the garnishment of quote marks, o.k.? It's officially approved) is a better translation of the Latin (of the pre-Reformation English church) than the current English Mass is of its Latin. It is reverent, perhaps a little archaic in its language, but I like that (the Latin of the Tridentine Mass you will also find to be a bit archaic, if you read Latin that well.) The average educated 17th c. Englishman, certainly the translators of the Mass, wrote the purest and most beautiful version of the language ever seen.
I don't get what you say about kids - nor about the priests. I do not know any former Anglican priests who have become Catholic priests, but the old-order Anglican priests (and that is the pool from which the A.U. Rite priests are drawn) tend to be old-fashioned, very reverent, perhaps a little fussy by modern standards, but "entitlement" is the last word I would use to describe any of those I have met. And as a long-time ultramontane High Church Episcopalian, I met a lot of them. I like them a whole lot better than the sport-shirted lounge lizard "hey hey what's happenin' baby?" types that infest the "modern" Episcopal churches.
Sometimes you bring it with you, and it colors everything you see, hear and do.
Bad experience...suppose that could be something with me...I have this weird expectation that a church billing itself as Catholic will actually be Catholic.
I will not accept that perversion known as Anglican Use.
Strangely the east has never had this rule and never run into problems.
Oh, please. The indulgence racket was a shameful scandal, and the reformers were right to protest it. As for marriage, I don't know about the others, but Luther got married after he was kicked out of the Catholic church.
while Thomas Cranmer already had one hidden in Germany
Don't confuse the Anglican Schism with the Protestant Reformation. Although the Anglicans eventually adopted many Protestant ideas, the Anglican church, unlike Protestantism, was indeed born of sexual sin...and poetically, it is now dying of sexual sin. It's worth pointing out that many priests have been secretly married throughout church history, and felt no need to protest. Simply wanting to marry, isn't usually enough. Even the married Rent-a-Priests mostly would come right back to Catholicism if allowed.
he was up all night with one of his children who was seriously ill. Feeling drained and haggard, he went to Mass the next morning, and the priest celebrating Mass ...had been up all night with a parishioner’s child who was dying of meningitis. A light bulb went off over my friend’s head: You can’t do both.
In all but the smallest Protestant churches I've attended, there have been plenty of pastors, elders, assistant pastors, etc -- there's always somebody on call. If one has a family emergency of his own, another one can fill in. Opening the Catholic priesthood to married men would greatly increas the number of priests, achieving the same result.
Those who live celibately are... an “eschatological sign” for the rest of us
It loses its value as a sign, when the general public is no longer confident that the "celibate" priest, is actually celibate. Scandal taints the reputation of the honest ones, unfortunately.
for those priests who still chose not to marry: Might there not be a corresponding diminishment of their public image, so that they would tend to be regarded more as pious bachelors than a special sign among us? Their freedom to get romantically involved with female parishioners gives such questions even more point.
The Eastern Catholics and Orthodox require marriage before ordination. Problem solved.
Another practical consideration is the financial cost of allowing priests to marry
An excellent point. If you want married priests you gotta pay for them somehow. Consider tithing. Or ask the Orthodox how they do it.
Also, the ministry could be greatly expanded at very low cost by elevating married deacons (who are generally employed and supporting families on their own) to the priesthood. Such men could lighten the burdens of the celibate parish priests (eg, by being on call an occasional night, performing weddings, that sort of thing).
It is clear that not a few homosexual men have entered the priesthood partly as a “cover” for their condition. Arguably, it would only make matters worse if they had to take on a wife as additional camouflage.
If married priests were considered normal, and straight men who intended to marry were numerous in seminaries, the homosexuals would not be able to use it as a refuge in the first place! It's well documented that homosexuals have bullied a lot of normal men out of seminary. One married Catholic deacon who posts at FR, pointed out that the homosexual priests fear nothing more than the possibility of a married priesthood being introduced.
In any event, it wouldn’t stop some of them from going after teenage boys, as has been amply demonstrated in other clerical milieu.
One Protestant church I attended, had 5 pastors. 4 were married; the single one was caught messing with a boy. So yes, it happens in other clerical milieu.
if you don’t find a sexual outlet, you become neurotic, or even worse.
If you don't have the gift of celibacy, that's true. I was unwillingly single, and a virgin (barely) til 38, and I can tell you that being single way too long was very damaging.
the libido doesn’t plot revenge if for whatever reason one is continent for a period of time.
Well, mine does.... LOL!
Protestant theologian H. Richard Niebuhr describing the creed of liberal Protestantism in an earlier American generation:
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
LOL! That's quite a presumption.
In any event, without doubt - and in no way affecting the force of this article and the correctness of the virtue of perfect continence (chastity) as practiced in the Church, you both need to read St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Corinthians. Chapter 9 would be the place to start for what I'm thinking. Pay close attention to verse 5.
For what it's worth, I'm an Evangelical who - in spite of the venom of the FR Torquemadists -- has seriously considered swimming the Tiber. (Though I must say that the Bosphorous has its attractions as well.) I find that there are issues I can't resolve, at least not yet, but my quest has made me much less antiCatholic than I used to be. In fact one of my prayers now is that Christendom will be reunited in my lifetime. So please understand my earlier post, not as an attack on Rome per se, but simply as an attack on the faulty logic of this article.
It's a discipline, not a doctrine. The writer also points out it does not contradict Scripture with the reference to Mt 19:12.
As a Protestant catholic* Christian reading this article and thread, I find it significant that no one mentions the advice, actually the commands, of the most effective celibate leader in the Church of all time: The Apostle Paul.
Not once is it recorded that Jesus Himself required celibacy for Church leaders... and we know from the holy scriptures a few of the Apostles were indeed married (yes including Peter...proof in the writing of Saint Paul some 20 years after the resurrection: "Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?" (I Cor. 9:4)
Is celibacy more practical for some duties...surely, and for those who are called, a great blessing. But to make it a total requirement....above and beyond what the Holy Spirit speaking through St. Paul instructed? Not a good thing to think oneself wiser than God's Holy word, be it individuals or a Church with its tradition.
"Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,..." (I Tim. 3:2)
"An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient." (Titus 1:6)
Clearly Saint Paul was assuming (most) Church leaders would be married--as were (most) respectable men in the ancient Jewish/Christian communities. Saint Paul did indeed encourage a celibate lifestyle, like his own, but never made it an absolute requirement for Church leadership. How then can the Church (continue) today to do so?
*(meaning being part of the Church of Jesus Christ catholic, that is universal.)
The author of the article lauds the heroic virtues of priestly celibacy. Virtues, as such, cannot be required, as they are a goal. The virtues of apostolic celibacy are many and varried and should be praised. They are quite different from the virtues of marriage, however.
The reasons the Roman Catholic Church requires celibacy are quite practical and "real world." I mentioned some of the challenges that would be faced if a married clergy were allowed in a previous post. There are many more.
Some folks confuse the practical reasons for the requirement of apostolic celibacy with the virtues. Their arguements sound silly, in my opinion. You are quite correct to point this out.
BTW, the water is fine.
Scripture definitively teaches that only Peter was, at one time, married.
"Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?" (I Cor. 9:4)
Your verse reference is incorrect, should be verse 5 not 4, and you've quoted a corrupted text. Paul, being a celibate, would not have intended "wife" while referring to himself. The Greek "adelphaen gunaika" correctly translates in this context to sister woman, not sister wife.
"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?" 1 Corinthians 9:5
"It behoveth therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, given to hospitality, a teacher," 1 Timothy 3:2.
No requirement that a bishop must be married. If Timothy were to select a married man he could have been married only once.
"If any be without crime, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot, or unruly. " Titus 1:6
"Then Peter answering, said to him: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? And Jesus said to them: Amen, I say to you, that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting. And many that are first, shall be last: and the last shall be first." Matthew 19:27-30
"And Peter began to say unto him: Behold, we have left all things, and have followed thee. Jesus answering, said: Amen I say to you, there is no man who hath left house or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, Who shall not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time; houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions: and in the world to come life everlasting." Mark 10:28-30
"Then Peter said: Behold, we have left all things, and have followed thee. Who said to them: Amen, I say to you, there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, Who shall not receive much more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." Luke 18:28-30
"But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided." 1 Corinthians 7:32-33
Clearly St. Paul is praising the discipline of celibacy.
21 of the 22 Churches sui juris which comprise the Catholic Church, as a norm, ordain married men. The Latin Rite has chosen to follow the teachings and examples of Christ and St. Paul in the total sacrifice of one's self to serve the Lord. The question you should be asking is why so few "ministers", particularly those who wear the moniker "bible believing", heed the example set by Christ, the Apostles and St. Paul.
I'm honestly not suprised to hear that the Eastern Rite Bishops would be the strongest in their commentary.
They have the custom of married Clergy so have a much deeper understanding of how it dovetails into the Clerical life.
So few of us North Americans seem to have full idea of Theology of the Priesthood I would suspect there would be loads of confusion if the discipline were removed.
I've also noticed that most Catholics don't realize that the norm of daily Liturgy isn't a universal norm among Christians.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.