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).
**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!
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?