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To: sinkspur
Celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine, and the Church won't crumble if the discipline is changed.

Currently, if a married Anglican priest converts to Roman Catholicism, he may be both married and a practicing priest.

39 posted on 03/16/2002 11:54:36 AM PST by maica
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To: maica
Currently, if a married Anglican priest converts to Roman Catholicism, he may be both married and a practicing priest.

Yes indeed. But a news story that appeared in the Pittsburgh Gazette(?) about nine months ago calls that type of arrangement into question. One of these married priests was profiled, and it was implicit that he was on the edge of burn-out. It was explicit that his family was unhappy with the situation -- his responsibilities made it impossible for him to be home more than minimal amounts of time. His wife and children were suffering as a result.

Pius XII rightly condemned what he termed a "false archaeologism" that during his reign was showing the first signs of life. This movement essentially made the assumption a priori that the practices of the early Church were superior to those of later centuries. The movement of course excluded any notion of a return to the early Church's severe penitential practices from its agenda, since those practices do not comport with the arm-chair radical, bourgeois mentality that has so distinctly marked this movement from the beginning.

We must remember that Church practices were not instituted on capricious whim. They were instituted after the Church learned -- from the experience of centuries -- that a new or different practice would be better than the particular practice of the early Christians. Celibacy, aside from being a higher state in life in a metaphysical sense, helps the priest to better model the great High Priest, whose instrument He is.

As with Christ, the priest's spouse is the Church. A married priest's heart is divided between his wife and family and his flock. All parties suffer as a result.

75 posted on 03/17/2002 8:31:39 AM PST by Squire
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