Posted on 10/11/2021 7:26:57 PM PDT by marshmallow
Just four men started studying for the priesthood for Ireland’s 26 dioceses this autumn, with a further two Neocatechumenal Way students entering that movement’s seminary in Dundalk for the Archdiocese of Armagh. When ordained, Neocatechumenal students traditionally serve for a period in the diocese before being reassigned overseas.
A further ten men began a pre-seminary year raising hopes that they will proceed to seminary next year.
The pre-seminary programme – known as a propaedeutic year – is increasingly a feature of the path to priesthood and is usually conducted in Spain.
A survey by The Irish Catholic newspaper revealed the extent of the vocations crisis across the country’s dioceses with eight dioceses having no students in seminary at all. In all, just five of the dioceses – including the two Neocatechumenal students for Armagh – had new entrants this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at irishcatholic.com ...
Bet at least three of them are Polish.
Didn’t they just put H->! in charge?
Bet all 4 are gay.
That is what happens when homosexuals run wild within the Church.
Maybe just four, but four fully vaxed.
The other 100 identify as women.
Let your men get married and you’ll get a lot more interest. It’s is asinine to not allow it because some Pope a while back said not to.
Did Jesus Christ marry?
He has a Bride.
There is a Wedding Feast planned.
The Song of Solomon has a duality of interpretation that speaks of the relationship of Christ to his Bride.
Put me like a seal over your heart, Like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, Jealousy is as severe as Sheol; Its flames are flames of fire, The flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, Nor will rivers flood over it; If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, It would be utterly despised.”
— Song of Solomon 8:6-7 NASB2020
https://bible.com/bible/2692/sng.8.6-7.NASB2020
Priests represent Christ in the flesh, they therefore have a marital relationship to the Church as well.
Did the Apostle Paul say that it is better to marry than to burn?
Read the whole of 1 Cor 7. Note especially v 8 and v 32.
I fully understand the argument. However, Paul never states not to get married. In fact he says that you should get married if you can’t control your urges, essentially.
Additionally in 1 Timothy 3, Paul talks about Church leaders and being faithful to his wife, and controlling his family. Now I wonder why Paul would say such things?
I’m not going to argue about this with anyone, it’s as plain as day what Paul has laid out, It is also as plain as day that men of God throughout history have been married. The only question is if people are willing to forego dogma and tradition.
You didn’t address the question: Was Jesus Christ married?
That's not what Bergoglio states in his heretical "Amoris Laetitia". Sometimes those darn Commandments are just too hard to keep.
You toss that out there simply to argue. I won’t answer it.
Because it would defeat your argument.
THIS is The Wedding announcement:
6 Then I heard what seemed to be the thunderous voice of a great multitude, like the sound of a massive waterfall and mighty peals of thunder, crying out:
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns!
7 Let us rejoice and exalt him and give him glory,
because the wedding celebration of the Lamb has come.
And his bride has made herself ready.
8 Fine linen, shining bright and clear,
has been given to her to wear,
and the fine linen represents
the righteous deeds of his holy believers.”
9 Then the angel said to me, “Write these words: Wonderfully blessed are those who are invited to feast at the wedding celebration of the Lamb!” And then he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
— Revelation 19:6 - 9
As to the betrothal of The Church...
Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn while the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast.”
— Matthew 9:15 (cf. Mark 2:20; Luke 5:34 & 35)
Jesus, himself, is the bridegroom in the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25.
St. John, The Baptist, called Jesus “the bridegroom,” and himself “the friend of the bridegroom.” He said, “You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but rather, ‘I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. This then is my joy, and it is complete. He must become more important while I become less important.”
— John 3:28-30
And, as to priesthood... not to assail the RC grasp of the matter, but to relate relevant scriptural references to the topic:
St. John, last of the Twelve, The Beloved Apostle, having seen the Risen Christ there on the Isle of Patmos; wrote to the seven churches in the Asian region and declared, “To the one who loves us and has set us free from our sins at the cost of his own blood and has appointed us [to be] as a kingdom, as priests serving his God and Father — to him be the glory and the power for ever and ever!”
— Revelation 1:5 & 6
St. John saw, and recorded four living creatures, and twenty-four elders singing a new song in worship of The Lamb:
“You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth.”
— Revelation 5:9 & 10
So, there is a commissioning of Believers to be in the functional role of a Kingdom, as rulers in it, and as Priests in service to God. This last distinction couples with the Old Testament priestly functions in emphasizing that the priestly ministry was done FOR the people, but in service TO God. It was as service TO God, that the priests of old performed all the sacrifices and ordinances given to Moses FOR the people.
This may seem a quibble, but an examination of the difference exposes that it is both elemental, and changes EVERYTHING about the priesthood. The Aaronic priests were God-facing agents whose ministry was to be consciously directed to Him in every element as they performed the offerings and sacrifices of the people. In all, God was to have the preeminence in harmony with The First Commandment. Paul here highlights that this God-ward focus is to carry on in the priestly ministry of Believers under the New Covenant; that we remain a God-facing priesthood among whom God has the preeminence in continuing harmony with The Greatest Commandment (ref. Matthew 22:36 - 40), and not fall into a people-facing posture and thus become agents of humanism of no use to The Kingdom and to the King of Kings.
In service of this exact point I cannot with due force urge strongly enough that you pause your busy life and give your mind and heart for awhile to what is, in my personal experience, one of the ten most powerful sermons of all time: Paris Reidhead's famous exhortation “Ten Shekels And A Shirt”
Addressing celibacy, since this is central to the discussion...
St. Paul, wrote, “I’m not giving you a divine command, but my godly advice. I would wish that all of you could live unmarried, just as I do. Yet I understand that we are all decidedly different, with each having a special grace for one thing or another. So let me say to the unmarried and those who have lost their spouses, it is fine for you to remain single as I am. But if you have no power over your passions, then you should go ahead and marry, for marriage is far better than a continual battle with lust.”
— I Corinthians 7:6 - 9
And I include this footnote: The Aramaic can be translated “I wish that all humanity lived in purity as I do.” It is possible that Paul was once married and became a widower. Some suggest he had to have been married at the time he persecuted the early church, since only married men could be part of the Sanhedrin and cast a vote. However, there is also evidence that some Jewish leaders during his time were committed to celibacy. See Acts 26:10.
But St. Paul adds yet more (and I STRONGLY recommend a complete reading of I Cornithians 7), and he concludes with this summation, “...if a man has decided to serve God as a single person, yet changes his mind and finds himself in love with a woman, although he never intended to marry, let him go ahead and marry her; it is not a sin to do so. On the other hand, if a man stands firm in his heart to remain single, and is under no compulsion to get married but has control over his passions and is determined to remain celibate, he has chosen well. So then, the one who marries his fiancée does well and the one who chooses not to marry her does better.”
— I Corinthians 7:36 - 38
So, it becomes clear what the origin of the Roman Catholic constraint is that Priests must remain single, and that's fine, but there is a great conflict in the flesh that St. Paul, here, more fully addresses, and my heart is that The Church ought to think more of it than to proscribe marriage, for indeed many a priest and prelate has succumbed to exactly the “continual battle with lust” St. Paul warned about, and much of that pain, and anguish, and the resulting guilt and relational, and organizational upheaval and wreckage might well have been averted if The Church thought and taught St. Paul, and not its own mind, at this juncture.
Speaking to ministerial roles within the church...
St. Paul, writing to the congregation at Ephesus, taught that, “[Christ] himself gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, that is, to build up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God — a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature.”
— Ephesians 4:11 - 13
These have been called The Five-fold Ministry, and the point has been made that one may be called one or another of these as to a specific Office, on an ongoing vocational basis; but also that anyone, really, may be anointed by the Holy Spirit to function in one or another of these as a specific Role, on an ad hoc basis. And we see examples of both in the pages of Scripture. Manifestly, Paul and other early prominent followers of Jesus were called into the Office of Apostle. By contrast, in John chapter 11, here's Caiaphas, the High Priest, anointed in the moment to function in the Role of a Prophet saying, “Don’t you realize we’d be much better off if this one man were to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish?”
Beyond the Five-fold Ministry, all Christians serve as “Ambassadors” for Christ, as St. Paul taught the Corinthian congregants, “...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his plea through us.”
— II Corinthians 5:19 & 20
In sum, I don't begrudge any organization their titles or hierarchy, or the constraints they place on any in those capacities, but there's a scriptural foundation that ought to have been kept more in the forefront, and if the goal is maximal honor to God and to His Christ, then our Earthly practice ought well be maximally conformed to what we see in scripture as The Canonical Template. Obviously some longstanding tradition is just a bit off, but one can predict such a hue and cry in response to the least suggestion at adjusting the matter to align with St. Paul's teaching that it is easy to understand why it remains as it is. Still, it remains that St. Paul allows more liberty than does The Vatican, and one is the Word of God, and the other claims to follow it. It's a bigger hat than mine that bedecks the head of the one who must answer to God for the discrepancy.
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.