Split from "A question for some Protestants who try to proselytize Catholics": Are Catholic priests "Forbidden to Marry?"

[guanophore]

There is no verse I’m aware of that priest can not marry. I think the Bible teaches it would be better for them not to be married but it is NOT a prerequisit for priesthood. The CC seems to teach in practice that it is a prerequisit. Sure the CC has one or more exceptions.

You are right that celibacy is not a prerequisite for the priesthood. What is a prerequisite is that one have a calling. Catholic discerners of priestly service go through many years of spiritual formation and training. The Latin Rite prefers to choose for priests from among those who are also called to celibacy. This is because there is such a great need for one whose attention is not divided. Since this is a discipline, not a doctrine, it could change. It does not look like it is going to change anytime soon.

 

[guanophore]

I don’t care but the CC should care.

You obviously DO care, Doki, or you would not continue to bring it up over and over again on multiple threads, over a long period of time.

And the statement "the CC should care’ is evidence of what is called an expectation. the word “should” expresses something that the person expectes. And, as your post has shown, you also demonstrate hurt and resentful feelings because this “should” of yours is not being met by concern on the part of Catholics. You have proferred that this Catholic practice is “unblbilical” and inappropriate - a twisting of the meaning of scripture.

If Jesus doesn't force the discipline, Paul and the other NT writers don't force the discipline, why does or should the CC?

the CC does not, should not, and indeed cannot. It is not possible to “force” a spiritual gift on anyone. Either God has given the person the gift, or He has not. What the Church does is choose from among those persons so gifted for the service of parish pastors.

The discipline is not the celibacy. That is a free gift of God that Jesus said “those who can receive it should do so”.

The discipline is the practice of choosing priests from among those so gifted.

I’ve said the Bible says that celebacy could be a blessing. Paul says for those who can’t be celebate, get married so you won’t sin. Celebacy is more than just physical. It is mental as well if we take Jesus at His word when He said adultery isn’t just physical, but mental (one can commit adultery in the mind).

Indeed, this is well said. that is why so much time and preparation is taken with persons who wish to take vows of celibacy. this is the case as much for those who are not called to the priesthood as those who are.

 

[Nicea325]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicea325
Originally Posted by Nicea325
The alternative is worse? Why are you so against celibacy? Is it because you are not capable of it,thus you have to bash it or attack it?

And my aren’t we against what you have been told a billion times. You are doing it again,well then again you do it most of the time.

Of course you are,so who are you kidding? See and there you go again,insisting it is BEING forced. How do you know it is forced? Were you a priest before? Did you enter the seminary and were told it will be FORCED on men?

Again,tell me what part of the terms: VOW and DISCIPLINE you do not comprehend,so I can elaborate on them,since it is not sticking to your senses.

And we Catholics are not? You have been given plenty of verses to support it. So why haven’t you answered the question that many non-Catholic ministers are required to meet certain requirments? Where in the Bible does it state to earn a degree in theology? Are you going to deny many non-Catholics do have processes?

You play the double-standard game a lot.

You are welcome to your opinion even if it may be incorrect.

On the contrary,it is your opinion,because you are not Catholic. The line of "it is your opinion"is getting old Dokimas,coming up with something with more intelligence.

Quote:
So tell me who FORCED St.Paul to be celibate?

Silly question.

Silly rebuttal.

 

[Dokimas]

On the contrary,it is your opinion,because you are not Catholic. The line of "it is your opinion"is getting old Dokimas,coming up with something with more intelligence.

Silly rebuttal.

I guess we’ll have to let the other readers be the ‘judge’.

 

[guanophore]

 If all priest may get married AND stay a priest, then you are correct.

I think you are suffering under some misunderstanding that a person has a "right"to be apriest or bishop, or that one can do this if he so chooses. However, this is not the case. Unlike celibacy, which is a personal choice anyone can make for themselves, those who are called to ordination must be confirmed in that role by the successors of the Apostles. It is not a vocation like a bricklayer, that does not require approval from the authority appointed by Christ.

If all bishops may get married AND stay a bishop, then you are correct.

If all cardinals may get married AND stay a cardinal, then you are correct.

If the pope may get married AND stay a pope, then you are correct.

If a seminary student studying for the priesthood may get married and become a priest, then you are correct.

If not, you are incorrect.

Clearly your reasoning indicates you believe these offices belong to a person by right of choice, and that is not the case.

Also, it is like saying "if the man gets married and is not still free to have an affair or a girlfriend ont he side, then you are forbiddng marriage."f

By definition, when one takes a vow, it excludes other choices. That is why one must freely take the vow. Only the person taking the marriage vow can commit to chastity in his marriage. No on can 'force" him to be faithful to her.

 My guess you've thought I wasn't teachable for some time now.

Yes, this is true.

It would help if you could just be able to accept how we see it, even if you don’t agree. Instead, you seem to intractibly refuse to look at it from another point of view.

 

[Dokimas]

It would help if you could just be able to accept how we see it, even if you don’t agree. Instead, you seem to intractibly refuse to look at it from another point of view.

I accept that you have the right to see things your way. I accept your right to believe what you are taught by the CC.

I don’t get the same ‘feeling’ from you.

I only post on the non-catholic forum. I respond with what I believe to be true. You have come hard, at times, at what I believe. No big deal.

Why are you making it a big deal when I respond to what is said and by sharing, as often as I can using Bible verses, my differing understandings.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Jesus did NOT require the vow. No one should be made to make the vow.

]Excuse me, Jesus said that there would be those who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, and he who can hear this, let him hear. You really have a problem with authority, hon. No man seeking the priesthood is MADE to take the vow, anymore than you were MADE to take the vow of marriage./

 

[Teneas]

@ Dok:

The single most obvious fact alludes you on this matter, not being rude, just honest. The fact remains that these men that are priests CHOOSE to take that vow. It is not forced upon them. They have EVERY right to not be priests if sex is more important than the priesthood.

 

[Dokimas]

@ Dok:

The single most obvious fact alludes you on this matter, not being rude, just honest. The fact remains that these men that are priests CHOOSE to take that vow. It is not forced upon them. They have EVERY right to not be priests if sex is more important than the priesthood.

I think you missed a very important point too. It can be espressed in a question. Does Jesus only call men to the priesthood as a celebate? Be careful.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

I think you missed a very important point too. It can be espressed in a question. Does Jesus only call men to the priesthood as a celebate? Be careful.

Does He ever state that He has made a permanent decision that for all time, men called to the priesthood may be married, and that this decision cannot be ‘bound or loosed’ by the apostles?

Be careful. If the apostles have the power to ‘bind and loose’ and if the Holy Spirit guides to ‘all truth’, then provided something does not contradict Scripture, it can exist.

For example, if the Church decided, for pastoral good reason, that the best possible thing for Christianity was to have married priests rather than single men (no need to give reason, only the decision). . .the Church could absolutely decide that only MARRIED men could become priests, and it could point to the Scripture as saying that at one time, married men (and celibate men too of course) were priests.

If the Church did this, Dokimas, what would you say?

Remember, if the Church only required married men, it would ‘force’ men who otherwise wished to be ‘celibate’ into matrimony, by your logic. If you would not support the ‘force’ for celibacy, you should not support a force for matrimony.

If you would support matrimony, then you would automatically support celibacy because supporting matrimony would mean you acknowledged the Church’s right to make a ‘bind and loose’ decision.

So. . .what do you say?

 

[jmcrae]

I think you missed a very important point too. It can be espressed in a question. Does Jesus only call men to the priesthood as a celebate? Be careful.

Jesus calls only celibate men to the priesthood of the Latin Rite at the present time, yes - because Jesus said, “What you bind on earth is bound in Heaven.”

The priesthood is not a job that you find on a card at the unemployment centre. When a position becomes vacant at a parish, they don’t advertise it in any kind of classified ads, hoping for an applicant, and then interview him to find out if he is celibate, and where he was ordained, etc. (Although I have known Protestant churches that hired like that, although instead of celibacy they were looking for married men).

Rather, when a position is likely to come open, the Bishop contacts the Seminary to get the next available celibate man who has been living the priestly lifestyle for many years, now. Over the course of two years, the man is made ready, and then he receives Ordination to the Priesthood from that same Bishop.

It’s a vocation that takes up every aspect of your life - where you live, what you eat, who you socialize with - as I mentioned earlier, it’s not a nine-to-five job from which a man comes home to his wife and children, or some kind of thing that a teenager or housewife would try out for a bit until they get bored of it and move on to something else.

There is no “going home” in the priesthood - he lives in the Church, and he does the work of the Church every waking moment.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Oh, and Doki, I might have missed this if you answered it but I don’t think you have.

Most Protestant denominations require their pastors to have a degree in theology from an approved divinity school.

WHERE in the Bible does Jesus specify this as a requirement for his ‘pastors?’

 

[Dokimas]

Does He ever state that He has made a permanent decision that for all time, men called to the priesthood may be married, and that this decision cannot be ‘bound or loosed’ by the apostles?

Show me where Jesus told us to stop believing what He taught.

Be careful. If the apostles have the power to ‘bind and loose’ and if the Holy Spirit guides to ‘all truth’, then provided something does not contradict Scripture, it can exist.

Let’s take care not to teach something against what Jesus says. Let’s not assume the apostles would teach differently. Paul restated what He said.

For example, if the Church decided, for pastoral good reason, that the best possible thing for Christianity was to have married priests rather than single men (no need to give reason, only the decision). . .the Church could absolutely decide that only MARRIED men could become priests, and it could point to the Scripture as saying that at one time, married men (and celibate men too of course) were priests.

If the Church did this, Dokimas, what would you say?

They’d be wrong again. Jesus NEVER forbid married or single priests.

 

[Dokimas]

Jesus calls only celibate men to the priesthood of the Latin Rite at the present time, yes - because Jesus said, “What you bind on earth is bound in Heaven.”

Careful!!!

 

[Dokimas]

Oh, and Doki, I might have missed this if you answered it but I don’t think you have.

Most Protestant denominations require their pastors to have a degree in theology from an approved divinity school.

WHERE in the Bible does Jesus specify this as a requirement for his ‘pastors?’

The Bible doesn’t, you are correct. Take their practice up with them if you think they are wrong. But then you’d have to disagree with the CC too. Oops, you can’t do that, can you?

BTW, getting a theology degree doesn’t contradict the Bible. Keeping a man from the priesthood for not wanting to be celebate is not in accord with the teaching of Jesus and Paul.

 

[wanner47]

BTW, getting a theology degree doesn’t contradict the Bible. Keeping a man from the priesthood for not wanting to be celebate is not in accord with the teaching of Jesus and Paul.

Celibate, not celebate. I keep misreading it as “celebrate”!

As to your comments, here’s an excerpt from this tract (all bolding is mine):

"In fact, the Catholic Church forbids no one to marry. No one is required to take a vow of celibacy; those who do, do so voluntarily. They “renounce marriage” (Matt. 19:12); no one forbids it to them. Any Catholic who doesn’t wish to take such a vow doesn’t have to, and is almost always free to marry with the Church’s blessing. The Church simply elects candidates for the priesthood (or, in the Eastern rites, for the episcopacy) from among those who voluntarily renounce marriage.

**But is there scriptural precedent for this practice of restricting membership in a group to those who take a voluntary vow of celibacy? Yes. **Paul, writing once again to Timothy, mentions an order of widows pledged not to remarry (1 Tim 5:9-16); in particular advising: “But refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge” (5:11–12).

This “first pledge” broken by remarriage cannot refer to previous wedding vows, for Paul does not condemn widows for remarrying (cf. Rom. 7:2-3). It can only refer to a vow not to remarry taken by widows enrolled in this group. In effect, they were an early form of women religious—New Testament nuns. The New Testament Church did contain orders with mandatory celibacy, just as the Catholic Church does today.

Such orders are not, then, what Paul meant when he warned against “forbidding to marry.” The real culprits here are the many Gnostic sects through the ages which denounced marriage, sex, and the body as intrinsically evil. Some early heretics fit this description, as did the medieval Albigensians and Catharists (whom, ironically, some anti-Catholic writers admire in ignorance, apparently purely because they happened to have insisted on using their own vernacular translation of the Bible; see the Catholic Answers tract Catholic Inventions)."

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Show me where Jesus told us to stop believing what He taught.

Excuse me, we Catholics have not ‘stopped believing what He taught.’

Let’s take care not to teach something against what Jesus says. Let’s not assume the apostles would teach differently. Paul restated what He said.

The Catholic Church does not teaching anything against what Jesus says. Please do show me where Jesus said, “Those who aspire to the priesthood must be free to either marry or be celibate; they may never ONLY choose FREELY celibacy.”

They’d be wrong again. Jesus NEVER forbid married or single priests.

We don’t ‘forbid’ married priests. In the Latin Rite, men who aspire to the priesthood VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE TO BE CELIBATE. They are not FORBIDDEN to marry, they CHOOSE to be celibate, just as St Paul taught was the BETTER thing, and as JESUS said men would do to make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom.

It seems to me that the one denying what Jesus taught is you, Doki.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

The Bible doesn’t, you are correct. Take their practice up with them if you think they are wrong. But then you’d have to disagree with the CC too. Oops, you can’t do that, can you? And of course, remarks like this, meant to imply that I’m being FORCED into agreement with some monolith Church, reek of your Christian charity, Doki. . .

BTW, getting a theology degree doesn’t contradict the Bible. Keeping a man from the priesthood for not wanting to be celebate is not in accord with the teaching of Jesus and Paul.

The Catholic Church does not keep a man from the priesthood for not wanting to be celibate. A man who has a vocation to the priesthood VOLUNTARILY AND FREELY CHOOSES TO BE CELIBATE. Just as St. Paul taught was the better thing for a man seeking to serve the Lord wholeheartedly. Just as Jesus Himself spent His life on earth.

 

[darren263]

Good one dude…keep doing nice work

 

[PRmerger]

The Bible doesn’t, you are correct. Take their practice up with them if you think they are wrong.

We’re not saying it’s wrong to get a degree prior to entering the ministry.

We’re just saying that you are being hypocritical. You require something for your ministers–getting a degree–which is not commanded in the Scriptures…

Yet you criticize Catholics for “requiring” something for its priests that’s not commanded in the Scriptures.

You ought to apply your own standards to your own ministers.