Well, they should be careful what they ask for, IMHO.
Meanwhile, looks to me like about 80% of catholic politicians in leadership roles support abortion. So forgive me if I’m not moved by the poll numbers.
I’m not asking anyone to be moved by the poll numbers. I only offered the reportage because it was my impression earlier on in this thread that some or many thought that the percentage of Catholics and Catholic priests who support allowing priests to marry is small. It is, apparently, not.
Someone said that it is a good thing that the Church is not “democratic.” Of course, as an institution on paper, or in passing on faith and morals it is not. In practice, as it is comprised of people, it is totally democratic from the top down, as evidenced by the actions of everyone from popes to laity from the alleged beginning of the institution, as it is in all religious institutions.
What this means, and it means it for all of christianists and all of
any religion, is this: The public statement and standard of any religion might be some canon of beliefs-- not knowledge, a distinction the faithful almost always fail to take into account. Each necessarily has their own version of that religion (I hope I don’t have to explain that) no matter how subtly different. And as each one’s life is unique, each is pragmatic about their religious affiliation in many ways, from attendance on through whatever.
And like the courts and their legalism, religionists are very often publicly judged by the paper of their institution, or by some public mean moral standard, hypocritical or no, not the actual pragmatics of their lives, . That there is a god who judges according to the fine points of the 40,000 sects of christianism as written on paper and allegedly believed, and all the other isms of the world, is highly improbable, even if there is a God. Further, the fact that all the isms of the world exist at all goes to the idea that man makes god in his own image and likeness far more than the other way around, though I do hold that that is so.
But why that is pertinent here is that celibacy as such, and as applied to priestly practice, is a concept and a convention. And the problem with it may not be that is it is generally applied, but that it is applied legalistically without concern for individuality. “ALL these priest will go into these priest shaped holes.” It is a semantic impossibility, and to make demands beyond not harming another human, animal, or their means of living in peace, is absurd. What is ended up with is an ideologue institution not unlike, well, another that is wreaking economic and social havoc in our Nation.
So it is little wonder that ideologues are adamant in legalistically promoting codes and judging others. But not one of us has met Jesus, or an apostle, or (maybe)speaks Aramaic as He did, nor have we read an original document, given that even those, with the known vagaries of witnessing, may not be complete. And from Mark 4:33, 34 and a passage in John, we know darned well that we really don’t have other than a smattering of a distorted clue as to what Jesus was really about at the core.
To me, the arrogance of belief,
in general and as such is appalling, whether religious or or political or whatever, and it demands remedial work in all areas of our lives. In other words, this kind of debate is mostly just intellectualism regarding concepts known to be highly malleable. So it’s fun, but it seems some are actually taking it seriously.
