Anyone who says that the Church "demands" celibacy has already constructed a straw man.
-A8
That's an ad hom. :)
This will be my last post to this thread because I probably shouldn't have stopped here to begin with. The church says to it's seminarians, not it's converts who are already married, and if reports from Africa are true, not to some African priests either, if you want to be a priest you must take a vow of celibacy. Not chastity, as I understand it requires of its nuns, but celibacy. Now you can spin (ad hom!) that any way you'd like, but it won't pass the straight face test.
My Mother buried her 7-year old son and my brother when he was hit by his school bus and killed. The priests of the parish, who were nice enough and good enough men, could offer my Mother only the most perfunctory and rather useless thoughts and words.
As God would have it, a contrast was made ready: a Pentecostal Minister whose little girl had been a classmate of my brother's came to the wake. He and his five children, each just a head taller than the other, made a procession to my little brother's casket, and the minister's eyes filled with tears and he could hardly get any words out for my Mother, but he did more for her than the 3 priests in our parish combined. He understood what the priests could never understand: the gift that is the love of a woman and a man. The priests had nothing in the tank, because there was no possible way for them to fill their tanks.
Dear
"Anyone who says that the Church 'demands' celibacy has already constructed a straw man."
Any easy mistake when one assumes that individuals have a "right" to be a priest.
sitetest