“Why indeed, as i made it easy to see stats relative to that*, and if you had looked then you could have seen that evangelicals practice contraception more (71% perhaps due to having more sexual relations), contrary to historical teaching (Luther, Calvin, Wesley, etc., as well as women pastors).”
That’s not the question I was after. Most evangelicals are not Ex-Catholics. Nor are most Ex-Catholics evangelicals.
I’m aware of the statistics on evangelical contraceptive use. I’m not aware of any questions specifically asked to Ex-Catholics, and the percentage of whom disagree with the Church on contraception.
You can ask them the question as to why they leave, or you can ask them what they believe and see if you can find patterns. People give lots of reasons for their decisions, but in the end, you generally see uniformity of belief and opposition to Church teachings on contraception.
Moving onto the rest:
“I am aware that there are a few married priests within the Roman Catholic Church, converts from eastern Eastern Orthodox church, and that it is a church law, which can be changed. And therefore the Catholic can only argue that there is warrant for it, and not that Scripture requires it.”
Which was what I was saying. I was arguing against someone who was arguing that it was a requirement for priests to be married.
“what is presumptuous is requiring an entire class of clergy to have the gift of celibacy, however commendable and advantageous that practice is.”
I would argue that those who have difficulty with clerical celibacy are not called to the preisthood. And if you want to ask me why, I have discerned this in my own vocation. I am not called to the priesthood, because I would find clerical celibacy hard. That means I should focus on getting married and having children.
“then there would be a better case for clerical celibacy.”
Paul’s argument in Corinthians is sufficient evidence to warrant the clerical restriction. I agree that it is insufficient evidence to warrant a doctrinal decree, which is why it needs to be understood, as you have said here, that the Church does not require it out of doctrine, but as a discipline.
“In contrast, many church “fathers not taught that marital relations are sinful if not for procreation (Lactantius even says “merely for the creation of offspring”), but some indicate they saw sexual relations as impure even for that purpose within marriage, and some required the exact opposite of Paul in 1Cor. 7 for married men.”
Insofar as certain fathers taught this, they are in error, and contrary to what the Church teaches on this matter.
Augustine has issues. He’s a convert from neoplatonism, AND manicheanism. You can see this in his assertion here. The Church is very firm about this, the body was not made to be sinful, men corrupted the body at the fall. We will have purified bodies in heaven and our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and we must treat them as such.
Your reply can be seen is reasonable as regards Protestants in general, but I presumed that you were referring to my statistics on evangelicals, and as Catholics themselves are quite liberal when it comes to contraceptive use, and as surveys testify to evangelicals overall being more conservative in most things, my point was that it was unlikely that Catholics overall would convert to evangelicalism because it was more liberal.
And I do think that most Catholics who leave for a Protestant churches go to evangelical ones, and which the top stat on post 345 shows.
As for celibacy, I disagree that 1Cor 7 provides sufficient warrant for the clerical restriction, especially as it is not all the Scripture says on the matter. To mandate clerical celibacy after what Paul says in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1 is a problem which required enforcing celibacy within marriage sometime after Christ, as some of the church fathers showed, but which kind of marriage is unknown in Scripture among those who could leave and cleave, which marriages is described as being.
And here again, we have two Tradition-based churches disagreeing somewhat. But that’s all for now.