[jt8d]

This installment begins an eight-part series of a dissertation presented last summer, during the height of the ongoing sex scandel within the Roman Catholic Church.

[Aloysius]

This is excellent. Thank you for posting it. I hope we get read the rest of the series.

[pegleg]

Outstanding! I'm curious, where was this dissertation presented?

[sinkspur]

During this period a man has every opportunity to contemplate his personal sacrifice, which is integral to the sacrament of Holy Orders. The assertion that a man renders his consent to these sacred vows without having a complete understanding of their consequence is absurd.

Maybe that's the case now, but it was not prior to the 1970s and 80s.

I attended a Roman Catholic seminary--THE MOST CONSERVATIVE seminary in the United States---from 1969 to 1976, and there was never a sermon, talk, discussion, retreat subject, meditation, or private spiritual direction about the subject of celibacy. None. Nada. Never.

The assumption was made that, if you were in the seminary, you knew how to handle celibacy.

Most of the men who stand accused of pederasty and ephibophilia are men of that time, and prior, when neither celibacy nor, indeed, sex itself, was discussed, except to condemn all exercise of it.

Thankfully, celibacy is now clearly explained with its implications and obligations. And, thankfully, most men ordained today are in their 30s and out of the testosterone-ridden 20s when men made decisions about a life of celibacy when they were clearly not mature enough to make them.

It is also clear that, as St. Paul said, not many are called to live as he did.

[sinkspur]

The anti-clerical liberal establishment foists the notion that celibacy is an unnatural state for any man to maintain. They do not accept that a consecrated priest is something more profound than a man.

While it is not unnatural, celibacy is not the calling of many men or women. Jesus Himself says as much when he declares:

Let him accept it who can.

A consecrated priest is not "more profound" than a man who is called to another vocation. That is contrary to Catholic teaching, especially the recent pronouncements of John Paul II.

In fact, Holy Orders does not require celibacy, as the Eastern Rite, the Permanent Diaconate, and the Anglican dispensation clearly proves.