Priests Do Not Have Experience to Prepare People for Marriage, Says Vatican Cardinal

Pope Francis, ‘unnoticed, has gradually been putting women into positions of power’

Priests have no credibility when it comes to training people for marriage, according to the most senior Irish cleric in the Vatican.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, from Drimnagh in Dublin and prefect (head) of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life said “priests are not the best people to train others for marriage.

“They have no credibility; they have never lived the experience; they may know moral theology, dogmatic theology in theory, but to go from there to putting it into practice every day....they don’t have the experience.”

Clericalism is dead, the Cardinal behind the World Meeting of Families in Dublin next month also said, “not because we’ve done anything to kill it, but out of sheer numbers.” In Dallas, where he was Bishop from 2007 to 2016, “we have a million and a half Catholics and 75 priests, with a 45 to 50 per cent rate of (Mass) attendance.Those 75 priests are not going to be interested in organising marriage meetings,” he said.

“We have to worry about the 99 per cent, about the baptised, and not worry about the other things we have been obsessed with.” (Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese, with a population of 1.15 million Catholics, has 413 diocesan and religious priests).

My point is that none of these three offices --- diakonoi - presbyteroi - episcopoi --- were, at the beginning, elaborately distinguished from each other.

At the "embryonic" stage these job-descriptions were not well-defined, and this can be seen in action. For instance, the diakonoi were instituted to wait tables and supervise the distribution of food, so that the Apostles could focus on prayer and the Ministry of the Word (preaching: they didn't yet have New Testament Scripture) but the deacon-evangelist Philip was led by the Holy Spirit to preach to the Ethiopian eunuch ("Ministry of the Word") and deacon-martyr Stephen was martyred for his "Ministry of the Word."

Similarly, the "elders" and "overseers" (presbyteroi and episcopoi) were to some extent distinct, and to some extent synonymous.

It's interesting to see this developing in the next two generations, when St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107 AD) wrote his letters to the churches as he traveled to his execution in Rome. In each of these seven letters we can learn something about the nature and structure of the Church at the turn of the 1st-2nd century.

In his Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Ignatius refers to Onesimus (yes, that Onesimus) as the bishop of the Ephesians (c. 1). Then he writes that they should "by a unanimous obedience" you may be perfectly joined and, "being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may in all respects be sanctified." (c. 2)

So you've already got a territorial bishop, a "settled" bishop as distinguished from an itinerant, "missionary" bishop.

He speaks of bishops being already established all over the world, writing: "For even Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the manifested will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds of the earth, are so by the will of Jesus Christ." (c. 3)

Then he writes

“Wherefore it is fitting that you should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also you do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp."

So there you have the presbyteroi seen as operating with the "will" of the bishop, "fitted to him" as strings to a harp. They are in a supportive role, subordinated to the bishop and harmoniously coordinated with each other.

There's a whole lot more, of course, Ignatius helps you see that this is all a development from the basic structures set up by the Apostles in Acts/Epistles, and also that the church is defined as the people of God gathered around their bishop.

There is nothing in Scripture that says all clergymen must have wives, whether before or after their ordination.

1Ti 3:2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;

Doesn't say but one, only one, or unless you chose not to have one, and it certainly does not forbid a bishop to marry, as your religion does in the case of Catholic priests and bishops...

1Ti 4:3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

1Ti 3:4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
1Ti 3:5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)

That couldn't be more simple and clear...One must be able to PROVE he can take care of his own wife and children before he is given any responsibility in the church...

I understand why your Church would teach otherwise but don't try to pawn it off as biblical...

Paul clearly lays out two different offices in 1 Timothy 3, that over overseer and deacon. He also speaks of a presbytery (or group of elders) in 1 Timothy 4.

The distinctions between overseers and elders, as you have pointed out, came after Paul’s writing. I can see how that could be necessary, in times when travel was more difficult, to have a senior leader over a region. But it could also be done by other means.

I’m not saying that a hierarchy of religious leaders is necessarily wrong, but the simple fact is that not all see a hierarchy of religious leaders as a necessary requirement.

If you're interested in adding to your store of knowledge on this subject, try looking into the true history of celibacy.

I did that and found this little excerpt:

True, we know little of the early period, though St Peter boasted, “we have left our homes and followed you”, when Our Lord commended leaving house or wife (Luke 19:28-9), and St Paul says bishops must be “self-controlled” (Titus 1:8; in Greek “continent” or “abstinent”)

So when we look at Titus 1:8 we see a peculiar phenomenon...Paul uses the word ἐγκρατής which is translated to the English word temperate which we know means 'moderation'...

Titus 1:8-temperate

ἐγκρατής
egkratēs
eng-krat-ace'
From G1722 and G2904; strong in a thing (masterful), that is, (figuratively and reflexively) self controlled (in appetite, etc.): - temperate.

Your source choses the word, self controlled instead of temperate...Even tho the Greek word for self controlled is afto elenchomeni

Your Douay bible goes so far as to insert the word 'continent' which is Iperios in the Greek but it still does not mean celibate...

And the example is given in the definition of 'temperate' which equates temperate with self control and continent as in ones appetite...It doesn't say or mean to quit eating like your article suggests it means to stop having sex with your wife...

Your Church has convinced you and others that there is biblical evidence to support celibate clergy but they are deceptively twisting the meaning of the Greek language to make it so...

To equate continent and self control and temperate with 'abstinent' is a lie...Your history is dishonest...

That's a good question!

It's as good a question as "What if the Epistles of Paul -- or Peter --- are forgeries?" Various Reformation figures wanted to throw out James, some of John's Letters, Jude, the Epistle to the Hebrews (whose author is unknown) and even the Revelation of St. John.

What if the four Gospels were forgeries? They were all written anonymously --- none is signed or has internal attribution --- and the very earliest whole manuscripts (of books, not the whole NT) are from the late-3rd century and 4th century.

Why do I bring all this up? Because experts have evaluated the Ignatian manuscripts just as they have evaluated the Scriptural manuscripts. And you can find scholars who discount the Gospels or consider them hopelessly corrupted (Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus; Jesus, Interrupted; God's Problem, and Forged, is just one example of a whole swarm of these skeptics.)

I do not say that the NT and Ignatius rise or fall together.

Neither do I say that the NT or Ignatius should be shielded from textual criticism.

I do say that nobody should be shocked that there will be writers out there who will try to convince you of the irretrievable textual corruption of ANY late-Roman-Empire texts.

By far the most --- which includes Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox --- set aside 6 of the 13 available manuscripts as doubtful, and attest to the authenticity of the other seven Ignatius manuscripts known as the "Middle Rescension."

If you want to see some really interesting stuff here, check out Jaroslav Pelikan (d. 2006), a Lutheran scholar and historian (later converted to Eastern Orthodox) who wrote Development of Christian Doctrine.

Pelikan says it was Protestant historians who did the principal scholarly work that confirms the "Middle Rescension" manuscripts of Ignatius.

You'll find Pelikan very much worth your time.

It's weird to imply that the practice of celibacy was based on one Greek word ἐγκρατής --- supposedly misconstrued in the Douai English translation Bible, published 1528 --- when the Byzantine Greek Catholics, with a long history of reading Greek, have, and have always had, both celibate and married clergy. Please "get" that: celibate AND married priests in the Catholic Church: that would be the 21 Eastern churches in communion with the See of Rome.

Even basing developments in the West on the Douai English translation is Time-Machine-Level weird, since the canonical norms for celibacy in the West were made uniform at the Second Lateran Council held in 1139.

A Conciliar decision (call it "A") in 1139 could not have been caused by, or even influenced by, a translation (call it "B") published in 1582.

In short: "A" was not caused by "B", because "A" happened 443 years before "B".

If I am misunderstanding your argument here, please correct me.

If you're NOT arguing that the Douai translation of ἐγκρατής influenced the adoption of a norm of clerical celibacy in the West, why bring it up at all? It's irrelevant. It's an anachronism.

Let me say, also, that attributing nuances of translation to "dishonesty" is historically inane, and attributing celibacy norms to widespread homosexuality is simply misinformed.

I've heard polemicists claim simultaneously that 12th century clerics were simultaneously (1) homosexuals, (2) shacking up with mistresses and kids, and (3) full of hated for the body and rejecting everything to do with sex.

May I point out that this "take" on the history is a bit feeble?

It goes to show that no matter how contradictory, any stick is good enough to hit a Catholic with.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.