Priest Celibacy :: essays research papers

fundamentalist attacks on priestly familiar morality come in a enactment of several(predicate) forms non every compatible with one another. There is approximately no other subject about which so many different confusions exist. The first and most basic confusion is thinking of priestly celibacy as a doctrine or doctrinea primal and irreformable part of the faith, believed by Catholics to come from Jesus and the apostles. Thus some fundamentalistics obligate a great deal of a biblical reference to cocksuckers mother-in-law (Mark 130), apparently supposing that, if Catholics only knew that Peter had been espouse, they would be ineffectual to regard him as the first pope. Again, Fundamentalist time lines of "Catholic inventions" (a public literary form) assign "mandatory priestly celibacy" to this or that division in Church history, as if prior to this requirement the Church could not have been Catholic. These Fundamentalists are often surprised to learn t hat even forthwith celibacy is not the rule for all Catholic priests. In fact, for eastern Rite Catholics, married priests are the norm, just as they are for Jewish-Orthodox and Oriental Christians. Even in the Eastern churches, though, thither have ceaselessly been some restrictions on marriage and ordination. Although married men may manufacture priests, unmarried priests may not marry, and married priests, if widowed, may not remarry. Moreover, there is an ancient Eastern discipline of choosing bishops from the ranks of the celibate monks, so their bishops are all unmarried. The tradition in the Western or Latin-Rite Church has been for priests as head as bishops to take vows of celibacy, a rule that has been firmly in short letter since the early Middle Ages. Even today, though, exceptions are made. For example, there are married Latin-Rite priests who are converts from Lutheranism and Episcopalianism. As these variations and exceptions indicate, priestly celibacy is not an unchangeable dogma but a disciplinary rule. The fact that Peter was married is no more contrary to the Catholic faith than the fact that the pastor of the nighest Maronite Catholic church is married. Is Marriage Mandatory?Another, quite different Fundamentalist confusion is the notion that celibacy is unbiblical, or even "unnatural." Every man, it is claimed, moldiness obey the biblical injunction to "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 128) and Paul commands that " for each one man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband" (1 Cor. 72). It is even argued that celibacy someway "causes," or at least correlates with higher incidence of, illicit sexual behavior or perversion.