Pope Paul VI and Cardinal Wojtyla, c.1967
Posted on 06/22/2014 2:42:07 PM PDT by NYer
A common criticism of the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual morality has to do with the largely unmarried clergy who are charged with preaching the message. The accepted wisdom is that celibate males have no business telling married couples how to live their lives: “What do they know about the subject?”
I remember a particularly egregious example. In 1974, Earl Butz, then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, ridiculed Pope Paul VI’s opposition to contraception, “He no playa the game, he no maka the rules.” He later apologized, but in reality he was only saying publicly what many, including many Catholics, were saying privately.
I’ve never understood this. Jesus, God Incarnate, was a celibate male. Why would any Christian assume that a man striving to emulate Christ in the flesh would have nothing to offer about the nature of love?
Christians agree that God is love. What they don’t agree on is what should be derived from this fact.
I’ve taught natural family planning for almost twenty years and I consider one of the most important elements of this instruction to be what is conveyed about the nature of love. I always hesitate to use an adjective such as “true” to describe a noun such as “love.” It seems inadvertently to give status to any falsehood parading as truth.
Love is what it is. Everything else is a pretender and should be described with its own noun. Love is not lust; love is not use; love is not convenience. Love is divine, with all that implies.
St. John Paul II’s pontificate emphasized church teaching about love and its incarnational aspects. From 1981 through 1984, he devoted a whole series of audiences to this subject, which he dubbed “The Theology of the Body.” These talks were later gathered into a book and became the basis of serious theological reflections
Although continence for the sake of the Kingdom was an important aspect of this teaching, the theology on marriage seemed to get the most focus when it was disseminated and discussed. Celibacy was initially given short shrift, which is unfortunate, because the fact of the matter is, if you don’t understand or appreciate continence for the sake of the Kingdom, you aren’t going to appreciate or understand the nature of the sacrament of marriage.
Pope Paul VI and Cardinal Wojtyla, c.1967
A keystone of St. JPII’s teaching in this matter is found in Gaudium et Spes:
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, “that all may be one. . . as we are one” (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself. [24]
The essence of love is a willingness to give a sincere gift of self. We only love when we act like God. God the Son showed us what this means by giving such a complete gift of Self that He emptied Himself, as St. Paul tells us, going all the way to the cross.
Our life of love is a continuum that starts here on earth and is fulfilled in Heaven. The crucifixion was completed by the resurrection, when love conquered even death. Celibacy for the kingdom is the eschatological symbol of love and it has much to teach those of us who are married.
In a 1981 audience, reflecting on Christ’s words about the resurrection of the body found in Mt. 22:30, St. JPII wrote:
The reciprocal gift of oneself to God – a gift in which man will concentrate and express all the energies of his own personal and at the same time psychosomatic subjectivity – will be the response to God’s gift of himself by man, a gift which will become completely and definitively beatifying, as a response worthy of a personal subject to God’s gift of Himself, “virginity,” or rather the virginal state of the body, will be totally manifested as the eschatological fulfillment of the “nuptial” meaning of the body, as the specific sign and the authentic expression of all personal subjectivity. In this way, therefore, that eschatological situation in which “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” has its solid foundation in the future state of the personal subject, when, as a result of the vision of God “face to face,” there will be born in him a love of such depth and power of concentration on God Himself, as to completely absorb his whole psychosomatic subjectivity.
It is the mutual gift of self that is imaged in conjugal love. Without denigrating the noble vocation of marriage, it can rightly be said that the couple undertaking marriage can find no better guide to understanding the essential nature of the gift of self than the celibate priest who has emptied himself in imitation of Christ.
Let’s thank our priests for showing us this most radical example of self-gift.
*B*
But you knew that already.
*no animosity* = *former Catholics are filled with ugliness* and have *no need to bash*.
Except to demonstrate how superior they are by tearing the former Catholics are down by claiming they are *filled with ugliness*.
FOTFLOL!!!!
Now that right there is the height of irony and hypocrisy.
An unmarried marriage counselor can only preach at you.
A married one can empathize and make suggestions on what they know works from experience.
Your points in post 95 make an excellent case.
There's some truth to that. OTOH, a priest has experience in speaking with many married couples, confidentially.
Besides, what does the Word say?
For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, should accept it.”
It's not. Because the issue is not about married priests. it's about the priesthood itself. If anything this is one of the more clearer examples of projection on the part of protestants. It's a hot button issue for them. Because the priesthood is set apart from the world it is attacked. It is seen as a vehicle by which the dark forces of the world can infiltrate. Destroy the priesthood, destroy the Sacraments, destroy the Church.
The MSM hates the Church and wants to bring it down because it stands against their agenda.
Protestants hate the Church and want to bring it down because total depravity demands it.
Catholics are merely defending the priesthood. And so some people will concern troll over the "issue" of married priests. Which is no issue to the Church at all.
However, that does not address the issue of whether an unmarried man can really counsel a married couple with the same effectiveness as a married man. All he can do is advise people based on anecdotal evidence from other people. He can NEVER speak from experience and he can never understand the difficulty and pain involved.
Indeed, Scripture says this....
1 Timothy 3:1-5 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?
So those who say that the man, by virtue of being a priest and being *married to Christ and the church* is qualified to marriage counsel have it backwards.
It's not the man who chooses to live celibate in commitment to God and knows how to manage the church who is qualified to marriage counsel, but rather the man who is married and knows how to manage his own house who is qualified to manage the church.
Celibacy is not a superior lifestyle as Catholics and the Catholic church posit. It's just different and whatever a person is called to the important thing is to live in obedience to THAT.
Married priests are not going to destroy the priesthood.
Having a married clergy,however, prevents the priesthood from being a safe haven for homosexuals and pedophiles.
The true church, the true body of Christ, is not going to be destroyed if the Catholic priesthood is destroyed. Christ said He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. If y’all think that Christ’s church can be destroyed by destroying the Catholic priesthood, y’all don’t really understand what the church is and how it works.
And HE is the great high priest and all believers are kings and priests. (1 Peter 2:5,9; Revelation 1:6 and 5:10)
Of course it isn't. But try telling the MSM and the protestant contingent that. I didn't say their operating principle was true, only that it is their strategy.
Having a married clergy,however, prevents the priesthood from being a safe haven for homosexuals and pedophiles.
And there you have it. Unlike the public school system, the military, and other organizations that are immune to such things by virture of permitting married members. Which is absurd seeing as how the Church screens prospective seminarians to weed out homosexuals. Unlike the rest of society.
Once again the issue, according to protestants, is not personal sin, but doctrine (or discipline in this case). This is the only issue where protestants claim that doctrine (discipline) is the cause of sin. Every other instance it's "Woe is us, the depraved sinner."
If y’all think that Christ’s church can be destroyed by destroying the Catholic priesthood, y’all don’t really understand what the church is and how it works
Didn't say it was our understanding. But it is certainly the view of many. Elizabeth I tried it, after all.
And the protestant contingent is dragged into that for what reason exactly?
Whoever said that they thought they were out to destroy the Catholic priesthood and thus bring down the RCC?
Do you guys just make up stuff like that all the time to accuse people of?
Which is absurd seeing as how the Church screens prospective seminarians to weed out homosexuals.
Speaking of absurd, how that working out for ya?
Like they're not going to lie about it?
This is the only issue where protestants claim that doctrine (discipline) is the cause of sin.
If it's not doctrine, then there's no need to demand it, then is there?
Celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma. The Eastern Catholic Churches, for example, allow married men to become priests. On the one hand, it resolves the issue of priestly shortage; on the other, it creates new problems. It is far easier to assign a celibate priest to a parish than one who is married. The celibate priest is flexible. The married priest follows the sequence of his vows. The first vow is to his wife; the second is to the priesthood. This places a greater financial burden on the parish to cover the expenses of a family vs a single individual. The bishop must take these factors into consideration when assigning a married priest to a parish. If, for whatever reason, problems develop, it is far more costly to move an entire family.
This bears out St. Paul’s basic concern that to be married is to be distracted from the spiritual:
The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband (1 Cor. 7:32-34).
How very true.
Good post. I never thought of it that way.
If you meant something different you should have written something different.
It never was.
She is always welcome to the title and the derision that comes with errors.
Read his exact words. I love the way you guys have to spin for each other.
Then by extending this (il)logic having a married clergy prevents Protestantism from having philanderers, adulterers; and fornicators.
Please keep talking.
Because the MSM and protestantism make common cause with each other. That's why. Oh sure, the MSM does it from the homosexual/abortion angle and the protestants do it form the doctrine angle. Truly a distinction without a difference, however. It's not like we haven't seen these types of alliances before, i.e., the alliance between leftists and islamists.
Whoever said that they thought they were out to destroy the Catholic priesthood and thus bring down the RCC?
Like I said, Elizabeth I made a go of it by suppressing the priesthood and the episcopacy specifically to prevent ordination so this is not without precedent. We just have a MSM and scores of ignorant protestants to take up the slack from where Elizabeth left off.
Speaking of absurd, how that working out for ya?
I hear its working good. Vocations are up. Lots of faithful, heterosexual priests are being ordained these days now that the seminaries have been cleared out. And now we're working on the convents.
Like they're not going to lie about it?
Well at least one protestant is willing to admit its a matter of homosexual infiltration and subversion; not a matter of discipline.
If it's not doctrine, then there's no need to demand it, then is there?
We have a visible Church that has structure. That requires administration. I know protestants hate to hear that with all of their secular talk of autocratic bureaucracy with its rules and regulations etcetera ad nauseum. Priestly celibacy makes sense administratively, theologically, biblically and in all manner of other categories.
As an aside, this whole protestant obsession with what is "needed" and "not needed" is merely a rationalistic tendency to serve self. To serve what is desirable according to the individual. It's not a measure of truth.
And if only public school teachers were allowed to be married!
Don’t tell anyone, I am, and so is about 90% of the staff I work with.
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