Why Doctorates?

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PiousTemplar

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Why is it, from the debates that I have seen,
Protestants always seem to have a Doctor on their team, yet the Catholics do not.
I asked my parents and they just said ‘Perhaps protestants are more academic than Catholics’.

I highly doubt it.

My question is, why do Catholics rarely have a Doctor on their team? Wouldn’t you think 10 years study at a Theological Seminary would count as a ‘Doctorate’?

Sorry I don’t know much about how to achieve them, just that they mean your smart. 😃
 
PiousTemplar said:
Why is it, from the debates that I have seen,
Protestants always seem to have a Doctor on their team, yet the Catholics do not.
I asked my parents and they just said ‘Perhaps protestants are more academic than Catholics’.

I highly doubt it.

My question is, why do Catholics rarely have a Doctor on their team? Wouldn’t you think 10 years study at a Theological Seminary would count as a ‘Doctorate’?

Sorry I don’t know much about how to achieve them, just that they mean your smart. 😃
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That’s interesting, might I ask what debates you’re referring to?
Examples of Dr.s of the faith would be Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. Peter Kreeft, Fr. John Trigilio, PhD, Dr. Alan Schreck, etc. (you can find many)
But then we have Dominicans and Jesuits who devote their lives to learn and teaching so their degrees often exceed PhDs.
Also, consider catholics who have formed Christianity from its inception on with insane levels of education like Augustine, Aquinas, etc. or little to no formal education like G.K. Chesterton (often known as the theologian of common sense though the man was a genius)
God bless,
B
 
There are a lot of genuine PhDs in the Protestant world, but there are also a lot of people who have gotten “honorary doctorates,” sometimes from institutions that don’t even have a real doctorate program. Kenneth and Gloria Copeland come to mind, although I believe that their honoraries were from Oral Roberts University. Anyhow, the honorary PhDs then go about advertising themselves as Dr. This or Dr. That.

There’s a joke in there somewhere. A Baptist minister named Sam Fiddle went to seminary for his MDiv. When he had finished that, someone asked him if he was going to go for a doctorate, and he said, “No, I don’t want to be known as Rev. Sam Fiddle, D.D.”

DaveBj
 
Hmm Thats interesting.

The debates I have looked at (Catholicism is Biblical) never really have a high grade Catholic Apologist. Maybe I’m not searching good enough.
 
My friend a Discalced Carmelite Priest and former spiritual advisor to our 3rd order group, has a doctorate in Liturgical History and Spirituality which He obtained in Rome.

He has written a book, which I believe will be coming out this year.

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
My friend a Discalced Carmelite Priest and former spiritual advisor to our 3rd order group, has a doctorate in Liturgical History and Spirituality which He obtained in Rome.

He has written a book, which I believe will be coming out this year.

Jim
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Not to derail, but Jim how did you know third order was what God wanted for you? and how did you know of all the tertiaries, the Carmelites were for you?
I’m considering joining the third order Dominicans while I attend grad school in St. Louis, but I want to be sure before doing something like that.
God bless,
B
 
I was part of a parish in another state and I couldn’t figure why we had three priests WITH doctorates? I mean, how did we get so lucky? We didn’t have more than a grade school and a high school, yet we had all these highly educated priests in one place.

In a relatively small parish in a more rural town in that state, we had a priest with a licentiate in sacred scripture from one of the Vatican colleges, maybe the American college.

By the same token, I wasn’t always impressed by these priests. One of them mentioned, I’m sure he was kidding, that he wasn’t sure whether he should be called Father Doctor or Doctor Father.

These people tended to want to give courses at the parish level, but at that, not very often. They were often travelling elsewhere to dispense their knowledge or it was behind the scenes.

Fr. Mitch Pacwa on EWTN has a doctorate in theology. I saw him in a debate with some Protestants on the John Ankerburg show, 15 or 20 years ago. I thought he was holding his own very well in the discussion.
 
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