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Post by tisbearself on Jun 3, 2023 2:52:10 GMT
The purpose of clerical celibacy was to prevent Church property from getting entangled in/ separated from the Church through inheritance issues, and also to prevent the priesthood from becoming an hereditary career that would pass from father to son. Obviously, for this to become an issue, the Church would have needed some centuries to become fairly stable and have enough property holdings and disputes over same to bring the concern to the bishops' attention. In the early years of the Church where you had small groups of believers struggling to survive amidst oppression, there was little property involved and more pressing concerns, like not getting martyred. Then it would be nice for the Church to own up to that, and quit exalting celibacy as some kind of end in itself. I'm not aware of the Church exalting celibacy in this day and age. The Church nowadays says people need to be chaste according to their state in life. The Church also has married permanent deacons all over USA and a goodly number of married priests, with kids. It's no secret what I said above, it's not like the Church is trying to cover up the history. You're likely to find some individual Catholics, both clergy and lay, who have a thing aboit celibacy being holier. It's also true there is some stuff St Paul said along those lines. But if Christifideles laici is to be believed, lay people, including those having marital sex, aren't any less holy. They are called to be priests, prophets, and kings, and part of the body of Christ, and Christ simply called them to a different type of vocation in the world.
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Post by ralfy on Jun 3, 2023 3:12:10 GMT
About clerical celibacy, there are more pragmatic issues raised even today. There's a small number of married Catholic priests, as they converted from Episcopal and other Churches. In interviews, they and their spouses point out financial difficulties, like both of them having to work because the priest's salary isn't sufficient, and the need for them to stay in their place, as moving them around makes it difficult for wives to start all over again when it comes to employment track records, etc. In other places, senior clergy pointed out similar: are salaries enough, for example, to pay for the cost of living of families? Meanwhile, some have pointed out several elephants in the room: cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2019/10/in-synods-married-priests-debate-somebody-finally-names-elephant-in-the-roomBack in the 1980s, policies like basic Christian communities in developing economies were set up to deal with personnel shortages, i.e., lay religious workers had to take over, especially in remote villages. Thus, we have ideals, realistic views that might not be pragmatic, and real problems still not met. It's like a healthy discussion between Plato and Aristotle, but crises have not been resolved.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 3, 2023 13:50:12 GMT
About clerical celibacy, there are more pragmatic issues raised even today. There's a small number of married Catholic priests, as they converted from Episcopal and other Churches. In interviews, they and their spouses point out financial difficulties, like both of them having to work because the priest's salary isn't sufficient, and the need for them to stay in their place, as moving them around makes it difficult for wives to start all over again when it comes to employment track records, etc. In other places, senior clergy pointed out similar: are salaries enough, for example, to pay for the cost of living of families? Meanwhile, some have pointed out several elephants in the room: cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2019/10/in-synods-married-priests-debate-somebody-finally-names-elephant-in-the-roomBack in the 1980s, policies like basic Christian communities in developing economies were set up to deal with personnel shortages, i.e., lay religious workers had to take over, especially in remote villages. Thus, we have ideals, realistic views that might not be pragmatic, and real problems still not met. It's like a healthy discussion between Plato and Aristotle, but crises have not been resolved. How do other religious communions deal with supporting married clergy? To my knowledge, no non-Catholic religious sect requires celibacy (or even encourages it) among their ministers. Some even condone their ministers being in same-sex marriages ( miserere Domine). Short answer, their ministers either work second jobs, the congregation just gives more money, or a combination of both. And very often the wives work too. (Did they back in the day when a husband's salary supported the whole family?) Some sects also offer the minister and his family a parsonage, ergo free housing.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 3, 2023 13:58:29 GMT
Then it would be nice for the Church to own up to that, and quit exalting celibacy as some kind of end in itself. I'm not aware of the Church exalting celibacy in this day and age. The Church nowadays says people need to be chaste according to their state in life. The Church also has married permanent deacons all over USA and a goodly number of married priests, with kids. It's no secret what I said above, it's not like the Church is trying to cover up the history. You're likely to find some individual Catholics, both clergy and lay, who have a thing aboit celibacy being holier. It's also true there is some stuff St Paul said along those lines. But if Christifideles laici is to be believed, lay people, including those having marital sex, aren't any less holy. They are called to be priests, prophets, and kings, and part of the body of Christ, and Christ simply called them to a different type of vocation in the world. I've encountered many a Catholic who regards celibacy and the priesthood as being inseparable, and they are generally not conscious of either Eastern Rite priests or married priests who have received a dispensation (ex-Anglican, ex-Lutheran, and so on, but not all Protestant ministers choose to become priests, e.g. Scott Hahn and Gerry Matatics). In my young years, in that I had a great devotion to the Faith and the service of the altar, people would speak blithely of my "vocation" without giving a second thought to my desire to marry and have a family. One even mocked me for it. I've had a lot of experience with people whose attitude is "celibacy is the queen of all virtues, as long as it's someone else who's doing it". I have no greater respect for anyone, than a person who goes in the seminary, monastery, or convent, gives it a chance, possibly even stays for quite some time, yet in the end leaves because "they just can't do it". Talk is cheap, the litmus test is what you do.
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Post by theguvnor on Jun 3, 2023 14:52:50 GMT
Then we can explain about Eastern Catholicism to them. Remember many Catholics will never encounter Eastern Catholics much. Most of my extended family have no idea about them or the Eastern Orthodox. Why would they? They grew up in small towns in Ireland. With the influx of Ukrainians and the growth of Eastern Orthodoxy in Ireland, the next generation will need to be aware of these distinctions but when my father and aunts or uncles were born this was a totally different world. They had no idea such things existed. Perhaps it would have been better if they were told but many of these people had limited schooling and attempting to explain the different customs in this context could have been very awkward. I can't imagine being a priest in the 1950s in Offaly or Kilkenny where my parents are from and attempting to explain about Eastern Catholicism to the parishioners. Only a small minority of the most educated parishioners would have been likely to have been interested or understood the points made. It would introduce topics that would likely cause major arguments or rows.
The ability to quickly find out about this stuff without doing substantial research or having to visit a library or leaf through something like the hard-bound copies of Britannica is a relatively recent development in our history. It would be nice if people did learn about such things, but most people did not and even now most people are not likely to.
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Post by tisbearself on Jun 3, 2023 15:10:42 GMT
Well we all know there are plenty of crazy Catholics out there, they were all over CAF and you can find them all over the Internet and presumably in parishes as well. There are Catholics who think it's immoral for women to wear trousers too. Doesn't mean the Church endorses their silly opinions.
There's always going to be people of every religion and no religion who have hangups about sex, even when it's marital sex that's perfectly fine and even encouraged in the eyes of the Church. The opinions of individual Catholics, on many subjects including but not limited to celibacy, need to be distinguished from actual official Church teaching.
Having said that, I think it's pretty normal for people to be a little bit impressed with someone who can "give up" a temptation. Most people I know would say "wow, that's fantastic" to another person who was able to say "no" to some high-calorie dessert, or stay on a diet. When we meet someone who is living in a monastery (Catholic, Buddhist etc) and has given up sex as well as other things, it's normal to have some respect for that. I don't think it's a good idea to put it up on a pedestal or make a big deal out of it though, because people can and do fall.
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Post by theguvnor on Jun 3, 2023 15:17:56 GMT
Absolutely, fortunately, my own parents never endorsed such nonsense. My mother would have rolled her eyes at the whole trouser-wearing squad on CAF and maintained that most of them needed a cold shower. Where someone leaves the seminary because of particular issues, I view this as ultimately a matter between that person and those set in authority over them in that context.
There were some Catholics when I was growing up ashamed of sex, but most just viewed it as a facet of life, they didn't go on about it every minute but they weren't ashamed of it either. Realistically, do I need to be discussing it constantly? Human life has many aspects, it is only one of them.
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Post by ratioetfides on Jun 3, 2023 17:25:16 GMT
The whole concept of clerical celibacy and religious chastity as ‘giving up’ sexual relations or activity need be considered in the context of what is actually happening in practice.
Richard Sipes’ psycho-sexual study completed in the 1990’s suggest that at the time approximately 50% of clerics and religious in the US were actively engaged in relationships in conflict with these promises and vows.
Sipes concluded 60% of these clerics and religious were involved in heterosexual relationships, 30% in homosexual relationships, and 10% in relationships/activity with minors.
These numbers do not even address the consumption of pornography and the practice of masturbation in seminaries, rectories, and religious houses through the country.
When considered in this context the faithful should be far less shocked when clerics are in affairs and leave the clerical state or are transferred to some backwater assignment, when clerics and religious are found on dating apps, or when someone finds pornography in their possession.
At least in the US, the notion of active celibacy and chastity is largely window dressing in practice. In reality the focus is on the call to clerics and religious for continual conversion and in many cases just doing the best they can.
In heathy formation programs those seeking such a life are well informed of the struggles that lay ahead. They are given resources for dealing with the efforts to live out celibacy and chastity along with professional counseling and proactive support. They are also given clear and realistic guidelines for what is in bounds and out of bounds for them to be able to continue living such a life.
Some will struggle more than others. There is nothing in the hands of a bishop or religious superior that removes sexual urges and relational needs of newly ordained clerics or newly vowed religious.
The naivety of many of the faithful in these matters can be a little disconcerting and perhaps is a remnant of the hyper-clericalism of days past. Clerics are just men. And religious are just people. All with similar interior struggles as all humans face.
With this type of context it is much easier to see the equality and dignity of each vocation and state of life available to the faithful.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 3, 2023 17:59:01 GMT
The whole concept of clerical celibacy and religious chastity as ‘giving up’ sexual relations or activity need be considered in the context of what is actually happening in practice. Richard Sipes’ psycho-sexual study completed in the 1990’s suggest that at the time approximately 50% of clerics and religious in the US were actively engaged in relationships in conflict with these promises and vows. Sipes concluded 60% of these clerics and religious were involved in heterosexual relationships, 30% in homosexual relationships, and 10% in relationships/activity with minors. These numbers do not even address the consumption of pornography and the practice of masturbation in seminaries, rectories, and religious houses through the country. When considered in this context the faithful should be far less shocked when clerics are in affairs and leave the clerical state or are transferred to some backwater assignment, when clerics and religious are found on dating apps, or when someone finds pornography in their possession. At least in the US, the notion of active celibacy and chastity is largely window dressing in practice. In reality the focus is on the call to clerics and religious for continual conversion and in many cases just doing the best they can. In heathy formation programs those seeking such a life are well informed of the struggles that lay ahead. They are given resources for dealing with the efforts to live out celibacy and chastity along with professional counseling and proactive support. They are also given clear and realistic guidelines for what is in bounds and out of bounds for them to be able to continue living such a life. Some will struggle more than others. There is nothing in the hands of a bishop or religious superior that removes sexual urges and relational needs of newly ordained clerics or newly vowed religious. The naivety of many of the faithful in these matters can be a little disconcerting and perhaps is a remnant of the hyper-clericalism of days past. Clerics are just men. And religious are just people. All with similar interior struggles as all humans face. With this type of context it is much easier to see the equality and dignity of each vocation and state of life available to the faithful. Yes, and celibacy means celibacy. In various parts of the African Church --- the one we're always having presented to us as "the Church of the future", where supposedly faith abounds and is pure, the Church we should all aspire to be like --- violation of the promise of celibacy approaches 100%, with some priests even openly having concubines and children. That is just wrong. Do we allow people to marry with the expectation that infidelity after marriage is "just the way many people are"? Intention to be unfaithful after marriage, if it existed at the time of the marriage, can be grounds for nullity. If a man doesn't intend to make celibacy a lifelong, actual commitment, then he shouldn't pursue the priesthood in the first place. If the Church would acknowledge "celibacy is too much to ask", then drop the requirement, and oblige Catholics to donate more money, to support priests with wives and families, just as the Protestants do. Allow them to have side jobs, that could even provide great witness to the world, to have priests working alongside laypeople. And I'm just going to say this, having men with normal aspirations to marriage, being obviously heterosexual, embedded in seminaries and dioceses, could serve to break the "wink and a nod" culture of harboring homosexual activity in the ranks. "Gay cliques" in seminaries are well-known, you need go no further than the excellent book Goodbye, Good Men. Finally, in Orthodoxy, multiple generations of priests aren't unknown. I once heard of a Middle Eastern family where the fathers had been priests for 60 generations. That resembles the cohenim found in Judaism, and I fail to see how that's a bad thing.
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Post by theguvnor on Jun 3, 2023 18:09:46 GMT
It can become a bad thing in Orthodoxy because such families can become local 'powers' and a son can become a priest simply for that reason. Not everyone in Orthodoxy is overly fond of that sort of thing. This sort of stuff was common in the Russian Empire where the priesthood would pass down through families in villages. Many of these priests were not all that well schooled in theology and you will find no end of Russian writers who critiqued this practice. It can also produce generations of people who are saintly. There are no absolutely right or wrong answers with that but you will find the the stereotype of the half-educated village priest who became priest because his father was one is common in older Russian literature. It's one to be careful of as it likely had some truth to it but it was also probably an over-simplification of a complex issue.
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Post by tisbearself on Jun 3, 2023 19:08:37 GMT
We also have a lot fewer men becoming priests now, at least in Western countries. The priesthood in US is arguably no longer the safe haven for gays that it once was, and gay men are probably less likely to be turning to the priesthood for a variety of reasons. In the 50s and 60s there were a lot of heterosexual priests who assumed the Vatican would soon let them marry, but since that didn't happen we no longer have priests getting ordained with that expectation.
Time will tell if the fact that we now have far fewer priests in US means that more of them will take their vows of chastity seriously.
Being a priest in the US nowadays is a pretty thankless and difficult job. It's no longer something a guy would turn to for a cushy life and an expectation that he'd have covert access to sexual partners of his choice.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 3, 2023 19:16:44 GMT
It can become a bad thing in Orthodoxy because such families can become local 'powers' and a son can become a priest simply for that reason. Not everyone in Orthodoxy is overly fond of that sort of thing. This sort of stuff was common in the Russian Empire where the priesthood would pass down through families in villages. Many of these priests were not all that well schooled in theology and you will find no end of Russian writers who critiqued this practice. It can also produce generations of people who are saintly. There are no absolutely right or wrong answers with that but you will find the the stereotype of the half-educated village priest who became priest because his father was one is common in older Russian literature. It's one to be careful of as it likely had some truth to it but it was also probably an over-simplification of a complex issue. The last thing we need, married or celibate, is uneducated priests. That said, in the past we had "simplex" priests, who while they were somewhat educated, they simply didn't have the intellectual chops to preach sermons or hear confessions. They simply offered Mass and that was about it, presumably they conferred baptisms and witnessed marriages as well, and might have administered Extreme Unction where it's not all that important to give the penitent a penance or advice for the future, because they are dying --- I honestly don't know about the latter. As a practical matter, they were somewhere between a deacon and a fully-functioning priest. I have to think that simplex priests could always have read sermons prepared by other priests, or even drawn from the great priest-saints of the Church such as St Jean Vianney, as long as it were made clear that the sermon were more of a reading than anything else. For all I know, some may have done precisely that. Stable married men, viri probati, as well as older widowed men for whom seven years of preparation takes a huge chunk out of their remaining lifespan, could be ordained as modern-day simplex priests, with further education being pursued after ordination, with the goal in some cases to get the priest to a point where he could, indeed, preach and hear confessions. Online classes and formation, with low- or no-residency requirements, would be a possibility that didn't exist 100 years ago.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 3, 2023 19:25:29 GMT
We also have a lot fewer men becoming priests now, at least in Western countries. The priesthood in US is arguably no longer the safe haven for gays that it once was, and gay men are probably less likely to be turning to the priesthood for a variety of reasons. In the 50s and 60s there were a lot of heterosexual priests who assumed the Vatican would soon let them marry, but since that didn't happen we no longer have priests getting ordained with that expectation. Time will tell if the fact that we now have far fewer priests in US means that more of them will take their vows of chastity seriously. Being a priest in the US nowadays is a pretty thankless and difficult job. It's no longer something a guy would turn to for a cushy life and an expectation that he'd have covert access to sexual partners of his choice. And back in the day, a homosexual (or otherwise sexually divergent) man could find both a safe harbor, and respectability on many levels, in the priesthood, not to suggest that they would have no spiritual motives or desire for the cure of souls at all, just that there was no expectation of marriage --- you get to help people to save their souls, you have a good life, and you are able to evade any suspicions about yourself. Even among the unordained laity in the world, a man could simply say "marriage isn't my calling" and that would be the end of it. (To be fair, being a "confirmed bachelor" as a layman wasn't always seen as indicating sexual dysfunction either, this person or that might murmur about it, but the idea of a man desiring men was so taboo as to be dismissed. For a woman to be an "old maid" or "spinster" was so commonplace as not to inspire any speculation whatsoever.) Within the Church, the suggestion that "Father might be queer" (that was the word they used in those days) would have earned the rebuke of "may the good Lord look sideways on you for even having such a thought!".
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Post by ralfy on Jun 4, 2023 7:41:51 GMT
About clerical celibacy, there are more pragmatic issues raised even today. There's a small number of married Catholic priests, as they converted from Episcopal and other Churches. In interviews, they and their spouses point out financial difficulties, like both of them having to work because the priest's salary isn't sufficient, and the need for them to stay in their place, as moving them around makes it difficult for wives to start all over again when it comes to employment track records, etc. In other places, senior clergy pointed out similar: are salaries enough, for example, to pay for the cost of living of families? Meanwhile, some have pointed out several elephants in the room: cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2019/10/in-synods-married-priests-debate-somebody-finally-names-elephant-in-the-roomBack in the 1980s, policies like basic Christian communities in developing economies were set up to deal with personnel shortages, i.e., lay religious workers had to take over, especially in remote villages. Thus, we have ideals, realistic views that might not be pragmatic, and real problems still not met. It's like a healthy discussion between Plato and Aristotle, but crises have not been resolved. How do other religious communions deal with supporting married clergy? To my knowledge, no non-Catholic religious sect requires celibacy (or even encourages it) among their ministers. Some even condone their ministers being in same-sex marriages ( miserere Domine). Short answer, their ministers either work second jobs, the congregation just gives more money, or a combination of both. And very often the wives work too. (Did they back in the day when a husband's salary supported the whole family?) Some sects also offer the minister and his family a parsonage, ergo free housing.
I read that some require or strongly encourage tithing. There are more, like very effective financing and business management.
I also hear that several even check up on religious service attendance.
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Post by ralfy on Jun 4, 2023 7:50:25 GMT
To anyone interested, here's one article about married priests: www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pope-married-priests-2017-story.htmlAlso, from the same article, and in light of the thread topic: Also, many parts of the Catholic world can barely afford to pay the wages of priests they already have, let alone new ones. They also can't afford to pay for things like a permanent diaconate. Actually, they also don't have enough funds for even personnel like doctors and nurses, as well as teachers, in Catholic hospitals and schools.
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