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To: Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
If you were close to either priests or seminarians, you would understand why clerical celibacy is extremely important. The vocation is all encompassing, the call goes on 24/7. I've watched priests give Last Rites and support the a widow in the middle of the night and then get up at 0600 to celebrate Holy Mass. Father does not just work on Sundays.

Not getting into any theology, the wife would become the parish gatekeeper and power player, people would resent and speak against her. His salary would have to be increased substantially to cover another car and insurance. She would not answer to the bishop and because of the amount of time spent with others, the marriage would become strained since a parishioner's call would come before the family plans. Divorces would occur and would present a poor example to the people.

BTW, our very learned pastor gave us four sermons on priestly celibacy from Apostolic times, quite interesting.

14 posted on 05/06/2015 7:53:11 AM PDT by pbear8 (the Lord is my light and my salvation)
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To: pbear8

Well I do like getting into the history of it, I have read many books on the topic. I can find no Biblical reason to pursue the policy. And since no less than the Pope himself has stated the policy is not a dogma or a doctrine of the Church, but rather a discipline, and that policy is always subject to change. I think we can at the very least discuss it and consider its merits.

You bring up the point of economics. A good point btw. Is the Church clinging to celibacy because it doesn’t want to pay its priests more? If so, I would think that is rather shallow reason to continue with the policy. And then there is the argument that priests are overworked and have no time for wives and families. In the wake of the pedophile/homosexual priest scandal I find that hard to believe. They seemed to find time to engage in those activities. Further, if we had more priests, they would be less overworked. Marriage and family help balance a person’s life and keep things grounded. Finally, we do in fact have a number of married priests in my archdiocese, and they do just fine from all that I have observed. And so do Orthodox priests I might further add.


17 posted on 05/06/2015 8:04:01 AM PDT by Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
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