I didn't know that, could you point me in the direction of where it says that in scripture?
Starting the day at 3 AM with Midnight Office and Matins in the Church has a way of dampening the passions...
I imagine it would! :)
As annalex says, Catholic clerical celibacy is a matter of discipline, not dogma.
I want to thank all of you for your responses on this issue. I have learned much. If I understand the discipline/dogma difference then, I gather that this would be one of those things that the Church "could" change, without it being some major contradiction in faith or something. If circumstances were that too few young men were entering the priesthood for this reason, then the Church could change the standard?
The Orthodox Church does not claim that universal clerical celibacy is wrong, it just maintains that it is unwise. You have to believe me when I say that there is no schadenfreude involved in the Catholic sexual abuse scandals. But we definitely look at Catholic norms and say, "what did you expect would happen?"
Oh yes, I believe you, and I am with you. No Christian could have schadenfreude over something like this. And, as a complete outsider, I also agree with your question. My prayers are with my Catholic brothers for God to move and to act to do whatever is necessary to eliminate this situation. They really are.
I remember having a friend tell me that he talking to his father-confessor after confession, and his father-confessor said "so what are you going to do? Get married or become a monastic? It is not good for man to live alone."
Wow! No small hint. :) Do you all have something like a "singles department" in either Sunday School or for social events? We do have one, but frankly, it has been a disaster the last few years. We have even lost some single members to other churches with better programs. That makes me sad, but I can only imagine how hard it must be for Christian adults to meet each other nowadays. That was one problem I was blessed enough to avoid. Since I was engaged at 20, I've never really dated an adult. :)
It would be very difficult to be a good bishop and be married. It would also put the priest's wives into competition with each other and introduce a level of competition between priests that is just unhealthy.
By "competition" do you mean to be promoted to the "next level"? Thank you for all of your comments as to how all of this works. I really enjoy learning about it.
"could you point me in the direction of where it says that in scripture?"
I Cor 7 --
8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
In I Timothy 5, St. Paul introduces a little common sense, though, by refusing women under the age of 60 from being taken into the order of widows, pointing out that they will have a tendency to want to remarry.
Orthodox canons from the days when there were still deaconesses many centuries ago used these guidelines -- the deaconesses were drawn only from the ranks of widows or never married women who were over the age of 60. Any woman who had been the wife of more than one man in her life was barred from being a deaconess, again following St. Paul in I Timothy.
With regard to discipline/dogma, the Catholic distinctions are pretty sharp. They tend to be experts at categorization and systematization. We Orthodox tend not to have such sharp lines between discipline and dogma. The difference is there and can be seen by the things that do slowly change over the centuries and those that do not. But in general, our stance is to try to avoid changing anything outward, and actively to try to continually return to Biblical/patristic roots in our internal lives. Of course, outward things always do change, almost imperceptibly, in terms of praxis or discipline.
The Orthodox Church accepts the Council in Trullo as having produced canons that were part of the 5th and 6th Ecumenical Councils. Those canons specify the celibacy rules that the Orthodox Church follows. It would take an Ecumenical Council to change them -- and I'm unaware of a precedent for subsequent Ecumenical Councils overturning canons of previous councils. I'm not sure where the basis for clerical celibacy lies in Roman Catholicism.
That's about as strong a statement (in the context of the previous verse 1 Tim 5;10) that a widow who re-marries is "against Christ."
Not the Protestants' favorite +Paul's verses, eh?
according to a long-standing usage a dogma is now understood to be a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. It might be described briefly as a revealed truth defined by the Church -- but private revelations do not constitute dogmas, and some theologians confine the word defined to doctrines solemnly defined by the pope or by a general council, while a revealed truth becomes a dogma even when proposed by the Church through her ordinary magisterium or teaching office. A dogma therefore implies a twofold relation: to Divine revelation and to the authoritative teaching of the Church.Another word, doctrine, is sometimes used to differentiate between "truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God and taught by the Church", and anything else the Church teaches, even if not strictly speaking a dogma. For example, the late John Paul II advanced a certain view on human sexuality, so-called Theology of the Body. It is something the Chruch considers true and helpful, but a good Catohlic may still disagree with it, or over time it may be reviewed and changed.
A discipline is something pertaining to ceremony and behavior; it does not teach anything in itself. It comes from the authority of the Church, but is not claimed to be a revealed truth. It can change, but perhaps not for simply practical reasons, -- there has to be a connection to the formation of the faith. This is why I hesitate to agree that priestly celibacy can change merely to get more priests; for one thing, celibacy not only forms an obstacle for some, but it also attracts those who seek a more complete transformation of self. Celibacy connects to the theological fact that a priest is married to the Church. It is not likely to change as a matter of convenience.
Here is a good overview of these three terms: Dogma, doctrine, and discipline