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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
If you look at actual history, that is simply a canard, pushed mainly by English Protestants after Henry VIII confiscated the monasteries.
The standard propaganda book on the subject, written in the sixteenth century, claimed that all that money had been taken from productive use and was being spent on the dead, who were being prayed for. But, in fact, the money was put to good use in this world as well. Hospitals, universities, schools, orphanages, places to give food and shelter to the starving, all were run by the Church.
When Henry VIII closed all that down, he basically closed down most of the hospitals and many of the schools. The universities were kept open and continued to be run by clergy, because the nobles found that useful for themselves.
Monasteries provided water mills to grind flour for bread. They provided farms, and people to work them. They provided numerous charitable works. Do you suppose Henry VIII and his pals used any of the money they stole from the Church for good works like that? Of course not.
It was no coincidence that after the Reformation, England was suddenly filled with beggars, crippled ex-soldiers, and various sorts of wanderers and vagabonds. They notoriously flooded the country during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Why? Because most of England’s hospitals and charitable institutions had suddenly been destroyed.