Posted on 06/11/2014 9:04:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
ROME — Pope Francis says he believes that Roman Catholic priests should be celibate but the rule was not an unchangeable dogma and “the door is always open” to change.
Francis made similar comments when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires but his remarks to reporters on a plane returning from a Middle East trip were the first he has made since becoming pope.
“Celibacy is not a dogma,” he said Monday in answer to a question about whether the Catholic Church could some day allow priests to marry as they can in some other Christian Churches.
“It is a rule of life that I appreciate very much and I think it is a gift for the Church but since it is not a dogma, the door is always open,” he said.
The Church teaches that a priest should dedicate himself totally to his vocation, essentially taking the Church as his spouse, in order to help fulfill its mission.
However while priestly celibacy is a tradition going back around 1,000 years, it is not considered dogma, or an unchangeable piece of Church teaching.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
Correct. Dogma is divinely revealed. Clerical celibacy is just discipline, which is why, e.g., Eastern-Rite Catholics don’t do it (they have a different church discipline).
Umm, no back at you. Read the ACTS of the apostles.
Ignatius of Antioch learned the faith from Peter and Paul directly. He refers to himself as a "bishop" of "the Catholic Church" before AD 110. What do you think happened in the third century that changed anything?
Read them. I’ve studied them and taught them. And as you know Catholicism is not mentioned in that book. The word Catholic itself was not introduced into Christianity until the 2nd century. And over time - many other unscriptual changes (such as popes in the 4th century) were made which resulted in a completely different religion.
Separate and apart from Christianity - Catholicism.
What about same-sex marriage and polygamy for priests?
The evidence actually seems to be the other way. this little passage, written long after the events record in the Gospels, certainly suggests otherwise.
1 Corinthians 9:5
New International Version (NIV)
5 Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas[a]?
Footnotes:
a.1 Corinthians 9:5 That is, Peter
Under the ancient canons still in force among the Orthodox (and the Uniates), bishops must be celibate from their consecration forward — either ordained to the priesthood unmarried, ordained to the priesthood married and subsequently widowed, or (a very rare circumstance, though it applied to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow) a married man who, together with his wife, by mutual agreement has taken monastic vows either before or after his ordination to the priesthood. (There is a very beautiful but rarely used rite in which spouses agreeing both to take monstatic vows bid farewell to each other before both entering their respective monasteries.)
One of the Ukranian Orthodox bishops in Canada is a widower and has a son who sits as a Justice on the Canadian Supreme Court.
Many Anglican priests are joining the Roman Church who are married with children. My parents attend a Roman Catholic Church with a married priest.
I do wonder if the prohibition against marriage in the Roman Catholic Church has had the unexpected side effect of acting as a magnet for homosexuals to join the priesthood since if they traditionally stayed out of the priesthood they would be expected to get married and have children...
I think the original prohibition of married clergy was to prevent the whole problem of hereditary lines though the church when the hereditary lines that were in the church were seen as a threat to the feudal system’s power at that time.
Not really an issue any more, well except for the families Bush and Clinton, etc...
One problem: the vow of poverty. If the wife divorces him, the priest has no personal assets to pay alimony or child support with.
Allowing priests to marry would make the RCC less of a magnet for child molesters. A celibate profession naturally becomes a magnet for people accustomed to concealing their sexual habits, and no group conceals its perversions more zealously than child molesters.
Diocesan priests do not take vows of poverty. They take obedience, celibacy, and prayer 5 times a day. Monastics take vows of obdeience, celibacy, and poverty.
Some priests retire rather well, since there usually is someone in the parish who is a good money manager that gives free financial advice to the priest.
I had heard there were Lavender Mafia in the seminaries, so I was on guard when I went there. I did see some men that are more effeminate than the average guy, but if there was a Lavendar Mafia, they did not approach me. Maybe it was because I was 40 at the time and former Navy. Anyone who did approach me like that would lose teeth.
I knew one seminarian who had difficulty fitting in with the population. After his second year he left. About 6 months later we all had to unfriend him on Facebook because every post was flaming pro-homosexual. He joined the Episcopalians, who are much more amenable to homosexuals. He just could not stomach staying with a religion that tells him there is something wrong with his tendencies. I figure any homosexual who makes it to high office in the RCC has to have more discipline than a Soviet deep-cover agent, because at every turn he would be face-to-face with teaching that is offensive to him.
It should be noted that I started attending at the time that Pope Benedict XVI put out the word that a man with those tendencies should not be ordained. By my third year the seminary was full, and they had to turn prospective students away. I heard other seminaries were also at capacity.
While I agree with you that young priests are sometimes a little awkward dealing with marriage issues, they are awkward on a lot of difficult issues just because of their lack of time in grade. When you're married, you only learn about your own family's issues. When you're counseling and in the confessional, you learn about everybody's.
Title: Celibacy for priests not unchangeable dogma, Pope Francis says
Pope: Celibacy is not a dogma ... since it is not a dogma, the door is always open
Suspect title.
You want to talk about artificial contraception? I know I have told you that I have more Roman Catholic women seeking it than Reformed.
Both statements are true
Just the numbers will explain that. There are many more married men who will sexually exploit their children than priests because there are so many more of them. There are also many, many, many more married men who do not abuse their children.
There are lots of who are evil and practice evil. What I was trying to say is that the Catholic church would be very attractive to homosexuals, for the reasons I listed.
I don't recall which order governed the seminary he joined but it *was* in the Boston area which,it's my understanding,was a hotbed of pervert seminarians and priests at one time.In fact there's a Boston talk host,who's Catholic,who,while investigating Whitey Bulger's crime career,happened upon strong connections between Bulger and a particular local seminary that was notorious for turning out pervert priests.So maybe the problem was only "noteworthy" in limited areas.Of course Boston has been one of the nation's capitals of all sorts of immoral behaviors for decades.
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