Posted on 03/09/2014 7:07:43 PM PDT by iowamark
Yeah. The discipline of celibacy is a dogma, for sure. And obviously it is only hypocritically ever broken at all when Protestant clergy are threatened into asking to become married Catholic clergy due to the outrageous machinations of not accepting female clergy and ‘gay marriage.’
Freegards
It’s not a dogma, it’s a discipline. Clerical celibacy is, IMHO, a very good thing, and really does give us priests who are very focused on their ministry. However, it can be relaxed for prudential reasons, and receiving an already-married Protestant would be one of them.
There’s nothing hypocritical at all in it.
It’s hard to escape being the state church; Anglicans have the same problem. Hopefully the Orthodox solution will work out for them.
Or rather the begining of the reunion of the Christian Church, the fruit of prayer for full Christian unity.
Awesome. Another thread that will devolve into Freeper Catholics v Protestants. God knows we need another one.
Lutheran Synods are typicaly a bit easier. The German Free Church is Lutheran, and totally outside the state church.
The trouble is funding. The State collects taxes, and either gives it to the State church or to the Catholic church. People are not used to giving on Sunday.
The ban on married priests is a regulation, not a “dogma”. The Catholic Church has never preached that you CANNOT be validly ordained unless you are unmarried, and married priests were allowed prior to the 1100s.
Giving is always a problem in state churches because, as you say, people aren’t used to it. They regard the church as kind of a public utility.
The Europeans have a very strange system anyway,and even states that don’t have an official state church do some strange state funding of churches that actually serves to give the state some control over the churches or at least their schools.
In many European countries, education must be entirely state controlled, and the state “contribution” is considered to be payment for the schools and other social services run by the different churches (particularly the larger ones, such as the Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, etc.). The Catholic Church had long provided education, ranging from basic literacy taught by the village priest all the way up to universities, but at various times in the 19th century, the Church (and this probably applies to some larger Protestant churches, too) was forbidden to run schools and the state school system was established.
Of course, this gives the state enormous control over the curriculum and other conditions, which is not a good thing. But most parents don’t seem bothered by it, unfortunately.
Tell that to the saints, martyrs, early Church fathers who authoritatively decided which books, should be included called in what is called the “Bible” and a litany of theologians from Aquinas to Augustine to Benedict. Beats Billy Graham and David Koresh and Jim Jones and Jeremiah Wright and Joel Osteen.
An official Catholic thread now. God's Word, not the church's.
God bless them.
Thought you'd want to know.
Based on the authority handed to St. Peter and his successors as to what are the “authentic” words of God, this monumental decision was given to the early Church fathers. The included the Books we call the Bible and rejected scores of other written works. This authority of the Church is unbroken and continuous to this day.
conversion != conservative
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