Ping!
I don't think that is correct. The accepted wisdom is that your church has no business telling the clergy that have to be celibate when that is clearly not what God has proclaimed.
I've heard and read many criticisms of the Catholic Church. But never that. That would be like saying a heterosexual cannot preach on the evil nature of homosexuality. Or that a monogamous man can't criticize adultery.
I think a person who has the calling to celibacy should walk in that calling and devote his or her life to God. But only if they are so called by God, not by man.
**“What do they know about the subject?”**
Gee whiz, don’t people realize that priests had parents! They saw how marriage works or doesn’t work.
“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.”
The problem in a marriage is that not only is the human a sinner, but the marriage partner is a sinner as well. If both partners are trying to make the marriage work, saving it usually is not that hard. But if only one of the two wants to save it...
“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?’”
People who say this have obviously never been in a confessional. Priests know just about everything there is no know about the subject. After hearing thousands of people confess their sins, it would be pretty damn amazing if they did not.
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It's not about the nature of love. It's about making a marriage work.
Experience is the issue.
It's easy to have all the answers until you've been there.
I don’t see what the big deal is; for Mary set the example!
I...
must...
resist...
I have a friend who is a non married pastor (son of a pastor) who does not marry because he saw the strain it put on his mother and siblings. A married pastor can have conflicting priorities. This gentleman felt that he was always second best to his father’s work.
I also have a friend who is a pastor and has a bunch of kids. He was also a pastor’s son, and used that experience to help his ministry. He uses Stephan’s ministers (not sure if the Catholic church has those, but you need them) to do the things that lay people can and should do. It helps build up a parish, and frees up Pastors for other duties. This man feels he can help relate more to other families being a father and a husband that he could not have being single.
There are benefits to both paths.