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To: SnakeDoctor
Given the case of Peter, that seems like a rather arbitrary rule ... and one likely not acknowledged by Christ Himself when selecting apostles.

The only thing we know for certain about St. Peter is that he had a mother in law. We do not know if his wife was still alive. We also do not know if any other of the disciples were married.

41 posted on 03/14/2010 4:04:26 PM PDT by NYer ("Where Peter is, there is the Church." - St. Ambrose of Milan)
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To: NYer

We know Peter was married (due to the existence of a mother-in-law), and have no reason to believe his marriage was discontinued for any reason. The only indications regarding Peter are that he was married. Postulating that his wife was deceased is nothing more than a guess, and smacks of making up facts to support a pre-concieved outcome.

Nothing was mentioned about the marial status of the other disciples — but I’ve seen no justification for assuming all of them were unmarried/ celibate. If they were, in fact, uniformly celibate, I would think that would’ve been mentioned.

So, for the two disciples whose marital status was mentioned ... we’ve got one married, and one celibate. I fail to see how this is an argument for mandated clerical celibacy. It seems to indicate to me that the marital status of disciples wasn’t even important enough to mention.

SnakeDoc


43 posted on 03/14/2010 4:12:44 PM PDT by SnakeDoctor ("Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions." -- Robin Hood (Russell Crowe))
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To: NYer; SnakeDoctor
The only thing we know for certain about St. Peter is that he had a mother in law. We do not know if his wife was still alive. We also do not know if any other of the disciples were married.

Not actually true. We know for certain that he had a living wife while serving as an apostle, and we know for certain that most of not all of the other apostles except for Paul also had wives and traveled with them in their apostolic duties. See post 102.

104 posted on 03/17/2010 1:00:43 PM PDT by john in springfield
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