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To: metmom
An unmarried marriage counselor can only preach at you. A married one can empathize and make suggestions on what they know works from experience.

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.”

104 posted on 06/23/2014 2:11:41 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas; Alex Murphy; bkaycee; blue-duncan; boatbums; caww; count-your-change; ...
There's some truth to that. OTOH, a priest has experience in speaking with many married couples, confidentially.

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.

106 posted on 06/23/2014 2:21:35 AM PDT by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith....)
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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas; metmom
PLEASE tell me you know the difference between “eunuchs” and “celibates”???!!!
196 posted on 06/23/2014 1:57:59 PM PDT by boatbums (Proud member of the Free Republic Bible Thumpers Brigade.)
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