Posted on 05/30/2010 6:28:33 AM PDT by marshmallow
Celibacy is nonsense if you just see priests in terms of function. If he is just there to offer Mass or run a parish there is no reason on earth why he shouldn't marry, indeed if he is just a Church functionary it is most probably much better for him to marry and be surrounded by a large Catholic family.
If on the other hand a priest is a sign of absolute commitment to God, of communion, of prayer, of otherness, then celibacy is of supreme importance.
The ancient discipline of priestly celibacy, is not easy. Not having a sexual relationship is reasonably easy, most people in my congregation are in that situation, often for most of their lives, either because they are single, widowed, divorced or because of their sexual orientation. Those who choose celibacy voluntarily accept loneliness and a sense of being unfulfilled by anything here on earth. Doing that all one's life confronts one with a deep craving, a desire to both possess and to be possessed, so often that can be sublimated, golf, hypochondria, cats and dogs, or plain eccentricity but real celibacy is about living with an open wound, totally unsatisfied by anything here on earth. It should be prophetic, about the Creator not creatures.
Like a hair shirt celibacy is constant reminder and an expression of the bald fact that God alone can satisfy our deepest longings. Celibacy is about the Kingdom of God, about prayer, about the spiritual life, about communion with God but it only works with faith.
I think the debate about celibacy which Cardinal Schönborn among others recently called for is actually a debate about the very nature of the priesthood and therefore about the nature of the Church, by extension it could be seen as a debate about the nature of Grace itself. This debate has brewing for sometime, I think, ever since Pius XII gave permission for married German Lutheran converts to ordained to the priesthood.
Sandro Magister puts forward, sketchily, the historical context of celibacy, which if you are unfamiliar with the arguments is well worth reading.
Honestly, if you look at the history of priestly celebacy (not the Church version, but historical) you will see that this was created to generate wealth for the Church. You had priests from nobility coming into the Church, and would be in line to inherit. By pushing for celebacy, the line would die out with the priest and the Church would claim the land.
It was a cynical political ploy, in line with other actions of the Church at the time (Crusades, etc).
Watch out Catholics ... the “progressives” are in your pews ... getting you to question every believe and doctrine you have. Don’t doubt me (as the man says).
You mean there isn’t a continuity from Paul’s recommendation to stay celibate if one could?
Correction: If you look at the urban legend revisonist history myth of priestly celibacy perpetuated by the ignorant you will see that this was created to generate wealth for the Church.
Suggest you engage in some much needed edification unless of course you enjoy wallowing in ignorance.
You wrote:
“Honestly, if you look at the history of priestly celebacy (not the Church version, but historical) you will see that this was created to generate wealth for the Church.”
That’s complete nonsense. No wealth is generated by celibacy. I could at least see if someone made the claim that celibacy helps maintain wealth because it stopped cold the possibility of passing on of parishes from father to son but that would preserve wealth not generate it. Can you explain how celibacy supposedly generated wealth?
“You had priests from nobility coming into the Church, and would be in line to inherit. By pushing for celebacy, the line would die out with the priest and the Church would claim the land.”
False. Sorry, didn’t happen. When a man joined the Church - especially a religious order - he gave up family inheritances. Also, and you seem to not know this, it was almost always the lesser sons who joined the clergy. As lesser sons they, 1) would rarely have been able to inherit anyway because they had older brothers, 2) in some societies they would have gotten nothing by law (primogeniture) upon the death of their father.
“It was a cynical political ploy, in line with other actions of the Church at the time (Crusades, etc).”
Nope. It was a worthy and even noble ideal and it helped lead to tremendous evangelistic efforts for the Church that no other ecclesial body in the world could even dream about achieving.
I think you need to brush up on your history.
We know. They’ll lose.
Priests from nobility coming into the Church, ...in line to inherit? They weren’t the only rich priests. The policy of priestly celibacy also prevented the holy grifters and extortionists, the middle ages’ version of urban machine politicians, from leaving their ill-gotten gains to their smarmy progeny, as well.
Can you please break this book down for us? What does it say?
You rely too much on long ingrained mainstream (and so anti Church) information to interpret some of these past actions, the crusades were in fact carried out for a very good reason, did abuses and horrendous atrocities take place during them? YES and those should be condemned, but the crusades were basically the same reason the western world is in Iraq and Afghanistan today - self defense.
Have we not had incidents in our modern wars of abuse or atrocities, does that then condemn the overall reason for the war? Does Abu Garib make the entire Iraq effort worthless? The left of course would say yes, but we can see beyond that can’t we? The Muslim forces were trampling on Christians of the Middle East the crusades were launched in their defense and essentially the defense of Europe itself, so was its core goal wrong? Not at all, and in fact it did succeed for a while in giving respite to the Christians of the Mideast.
Liberal theology of the 60s is what gave us our current crop of pedophile priests, once this rot is cleaned out never again must the church go back on the truth, the world be damned. It’s like all the opinions Democrats and liberals give Republicans on how to succeed (be more moderate) why should we listen to avowed enemies on how things should be done, would they ever have the best interest of the church at heart, I think not.
“You mean there isn’t a continuity from Paul’s recommendation to stay celibate if one could?”
It was never more than a recommendation for those who could. It also always balanced it with the allowance for marriage for those who couldn’t. (And the Catholic priesthood contains amny man who tried and couldn’t, and yet weren’t afforded the appropriate escape from sin.) Go read 1 Corinthians 7 - there is no way it supports an absolute requirement for celibacy (nor was it exclusively talking about church leaders.)
7:1b-2 - It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
7:8-9 - But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
The qualifications for church leadership always list “a husband of one wife” as one of the requirements. (1 Timothy 3:2,12, Titus 1:6
If you look at the historical interpretation, post 2 is correct.
Honestly, if you look at the history of priestly celebacy (not the Church version, but historical) you will see that this was created to generate wealth for the Church. You had priests from nobility coming into the Church, and would be in line to inherit. By pushing for celebacy, the line would die out with the priest and the Church would claim the land.What odd "history" book taught you this?
**If on the other hand a priest is a sign of absolute commitment to God, of communion, of prayer, of otherness, then celibacy is of supreme importance. **
I’ll take this option!
Yes, he's exactly right. But a baby can come awfully close ...
Good description!
That piece of Protestant propaganda has been dispelled dozens of times here on FR. I'm surprised anyone can even raise it with a straight face.
LOL! How can you call someone progressive when they advocate a return to the good old days?
For history of celibacy I would go to “History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church” by Henry Charles Lea.
Priestly celibacy worked well enough I suppose when the only way up the social ladder for intelligent and reasonably ambitious young men was the Military, the Royal Bureaucracy, and the Church. But that's not the case nowadays, and it hasn't been the case for the last century, at least. Now many other avenues are open for social advancement.
So in the context of modern America, who wants to be a priest? Who wants to walk around with an "open wound?" Far too often it is young homosexual men who want to have the automatic social acceptability that being the pastor of a parish affords, while indulging their disgusting sexual appetites, often openly, but more often on the "down low."
This is certainly in keeping with my very extensive experience with the American Catholic clergy. So many of our American Catholic priests are gay and sexually active. At one point in the 1990s Catholic priests were at the top of the list for risk of AIDS. Our seminaries are "pink." At least many of them. And even if an American Catholic priest is not gay, from my experience they suffer from some other basic personality flaw, like alcoholism, pill addiction, low self-esteem, and so on. One can only ask how much of these other problems are part and parcel of the whole misplaced celibacy thing. Is a purported desire to live without a woman healthy in most young men? Or is that young man actually trying to avoid having to face up to his immaturity and do what he has to do to achieve a Christian marriage?
I think that to ask the question is truly to answer it.
Maybe others have had different experiences, but all I can say is that as far as I can see Catholic priests in America at least are as a group (and no doubt with many exceptions) sexual deviants, alcoholics, addicts and/or fundamentally suffer from some other very fundamental personality flaw.
It seems impossible to ignore. And the most logical place to lay the blame is the anachronistic celibacy rule for parish priests.
Let celibates go to monasteries and pray. But don't let them have much contact with normal people, and certainly essentially no contact with children (that much seems absolutely imperative, given the horrible betrayal of trust of the laity by the celibate clergy that has brought such disgrace to the Body of Christ on Earth."
Yes, but what about for mathematicians?
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