[sitetest]

Dear sinkspur,

"Catholics are cheapskates; we're used to people who live in poverty serving us."

This sounds implicitly critical, that we should better support those who serve us, so that they can live well.

And certainly, your criticism is on the mark if we were to permit men to marry prior to ordination, and then have families. It would seem wrong to make them live in altogether modest circumstances. You compare to Protestant pastors. Indeed, some of the pastors in my area, who have large and successful churches, live rather comfortably, enjoying good salaries and benefits.

But you keep telling us that our priests and bishops should live lives of ascetism.

Which is it?


;-)


sitetest

[sinkspur]

But you keep telling us that our priests and bishops should live lives of ascetism.

Quibbling, sitetest.

Lots of families in my city live modestly, some ascetically, and they're not even clergy.

My suspicion has been, over the last ten years, that the underlying, unspoken reason for not looking at a married priesthood more seriously has been financial.

Look at the sexual abuse scandals. Bishops are acting like ogres toward suffering victims, all to save a buck or two in a civil suit.

You know as well as I do that there are some hierarchs who look at the checkbook balance before they get on their knees in the morning.