Sexual Abuse of Children by Protestant Ministers
Sex Abuse by Teachers Said Worse Than Catholic Church
Factor in childhood sex abuse by camp counselors, Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams ... and the list grows much larger.
As for your initial comment It’s difficult for me to understand how Christ would expect all his vicars to be celibate for life
Jesus never married. Paul was not married. And, for all we know, the only apostle who ever married was Peter and that was before he met our Lord. Paul even goes on to make a case for preferring celibacy to marriage: "Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. . . those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. . . . The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband" (7:27-34). Paul’s conclusion: He who marries "does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better" (7:38).
Then priests of the Eastern Rite and former Episcopal priests who converted to Catholicism don't have Christ's approval for being married...and yet they're fully recognized by Rome and they acknowledge the Pope's primacy here on earth.
>> Paul was not married. And, for all we know, the only apostle who ever married was Peter and that was before he met our Lord. Paul even goes on to make a case for preferring celibacy to marriage: “Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. . . those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. . .
On the other hand, for all we know, the only apostle that was not married was Paul. If celibacy were that important, I would think that more of a point would be made to show the celibacy of all of Christ’s disciples (or all but Peter). Other than Perer’s mother-in-law and Paul’s “gift of celibacy”, it never comes up.
A lack of information does not an argument make. Job was married. Peter was married. Noah was married. Moses was married. God created marriage because, in His estimation, “it is not good for man to be alone”. I personally think marriage is good and necessary, even for clergy.
SnakeDoc
Seems like this discussion comes up several times a month on this forum. All the comments pro and con get tossed out and we start all over again like nothing was ever resolved. Could this be a sign it never really will and that celibacy for men of God is not the ideal anymore?
If according to your logic of Paul's statement, which he, by the way, said he was speaking of his own feelings at that time in which the believers found themselves under great persecution, then the Christian faith would have died out nearly two thousand years ago. If Paul was saying this was a commandment from God - which would have contradicted his earlier edicts to be fruitful and multiply - then the believers would have be obedient and stopped getting married, both men and women. Can you understand why the concept of celibacy is not expedient anymore?
Is this yet another example of the Catholic Church being unwilling to overrule itself no matter how incorrect it's dogma so as not to appear fallible?
Any Priest could go remove his collar go out into society, meet someone and have an evening or an affair and no one would be the wiser. The fact they chose CHILDREN makes them pedophiles.
This is actually not true. "The other apostles" (those except for Paul), according to the Bible itself, had wives. And according to the explicit statement of the Bible, Peter was accompanied in his travels as an apostle BY HIS BELIEVING WIFE: "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?" - 1 Corinthians 9:5