Why is the Pope not married?

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Mystically speaking, the Pope is married, He is married to the Church, and believe me, he has his hands full with this one and only bride.

The Magesterium of Saints, Popes and martyrs are revealed in heaven as these virgin men of God, I prefer to learn of the Gospel of Jesus Christ from our virgin Priests, and Magesterium, than a religious who has a wife and a family. Call me selfish; I dont want to impede on anothers family time, for my spiritual needs, this is one reason I Prefer a celebate priest.

But I thought all Priests and religious have taken vows before God to remain faithful to the bride of Jesus Christ. So do you want the Pope to go against his vow before God. Does anyone want to break their wedding vows? Dont need to answer that.

Peace:)
 
Hisalone said:
So was John the Baptist.
Aaron was not nor Zacharias nor Peter.
So you believe that Christ who chose married men to be apostles was in error?

Time for you to move on also.
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Hisalone, you asked how we could improve upon Christ because one of his Apostles, Peter, was married. What greater model is there for a priest, than the celibate Christ?

And which of the other Apostles married? We know Paul wasn’t.
 
Matthew 22:30 - Jesus explains, “At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven.”

If there are men who desire to make a vow of celibacy, to live as the perfected saints in heaven will live, here on earth, I don’t see why anyone should have an objection to it. No one forces a man to become a priest, he chooses so willingly, including the vow of celibacy. I really don’t see why this is an issue for some.
 
Eden said:
Hisalone, you asked how we could improve upon Christ because one of his Apostles, Peter, was married. What greater model is there for a priest, than the celibate Christ?

And which of the other Apostles married? We know Paul wasn’t.
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We don’t know that Christ was. Its an assumption. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us of Christ marriage or lack their of. The same could be said for most of the apostles.
 
teancum79 said:
We don’t know that Christ was. Its an assumption. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us of Christ marriage or lack their of. The same could be said for most of the apostles.
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Didn’t the BOM clear that up?
 
teancum79 said:
We don’t know that Christ was. Its an assumption. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us of Christ marriage or lack their of. The same could be said for most of the apostles.
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"We" meaning Mormons. For us, there is no doubt that He was unmarried and celibate.
 
Question/insight #73a:

I know Peter was/had been married. Were there other Apostles who were known to be married at the time when they were Apostles?

Response #73a:

According to the synoptic gospels (Mat 8:14; Mar 1:30; Luk 4:38) and according Paul (1Co 9:5), Peter continued to be married and to take his wife with him when he traveled. Paul’s authentic letters (certainly including Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon) predated the four gospels and Acts. So he provided us with the earliest written pieces of Christian history. In one of his letters to the Christian community in Corinth, he wrote:

“Do we not have the right to take along a Christian wife, as do the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Kephas?” (NAB, 1Co 9:5)

The biblical record in Paul’s writings as well as in the gospels and Acts points to Apostles and other 1st Century Christians traveling with their wives. (Of course, Kephas, more commonly anglicized as “Cephas,” was Peter’s Aramaic name.)

Then there is the case of Prisca and Aquila, who are described by the writer of Acts (in Acts 18) as wife and husband. When Apollos “began to speak boldly in the synagogue” about Jesus, “Priscilla and Aquila… took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately.” (Acts 18:26, NRSV) This was a wife-and-husband team ministry.

In two different letters indisputably written by Paul, he mentions this wife and husband team. In Romans 16 Paul refers to them as “Prisca and Aquila” (Rom 16:3), and in 1 Corinthians 16 he refers to them as “Aquila and Prisca” (1Co 16:19) The order in which Paul refers to them (i.e., male first or female first) does not seem to be theologically important to Paul, but it may have been important for his intended purpose.

It is also very significant to note that Romans 16 was not part of Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Rome, but most likely was written to the Christians in Ephesus as a letter of introduction for Phoebe, to whom Paul refers as a “deacon” and who at the time was the organizational leader of the Christian community in Cenchreae. For more details, you can read:

bibletexts.com/qa/qa073.htm
 
Eden said:
"We" meaning Mormons. For us, there is no doubt that He was unmarried and celibate.
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Indeed.👍 Can you imagine a sign of eternal life like a virgin birth followed by a life that’s just the same o same o? reproducing it’s kind just like all other things that die…I don’t get how folks can render the Incarnation void like that. To deny that eternity entered time and history
 
Hisalone said:
Index: Married Popes Throughout History
Have There Been Any Married Popes?
St. Peter and St. Siricius
St. Felix III (II) and St. Hormisdas
St. Silverius
St. Agatho
Hadrian II
Boniface IX
Clement IV
Felix V
Bibliography and Research Help

marriage.about.com/od/historyofmarriage/ss/marriedpopes.htm
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Speaking, for the moment, only of Western Christendom, the candidates for orders are solemnly warned by the bishop at the beginning of the ceremony regarding the gravity of the obligation which they are incurring. He tells them:

You ought anxiously to consider again and again what sort of a burden this is which you are taking upon you of your own accord. Up to this you are free. You may still, if you choose, turn to the aims and desires of the world (licet vobis pro artitrio ad caecularia vota transire). But if you receive this order (of the subdiaconate) it will no longer be lawful to turn back from your purpose. You will be required to continue in the service of God, and with His assistance to observe chastity and to be bound for ever in the ministrations of the Altar, to serve who is to reign.

By stepping forward despite this warning, when invited to do so, and by co-operating in the rest of the ordination service, the candidate is understood to bind himself equivalently by a vow of chastity. He is henceforth unable to contract a valid marriage, and any serious transgression in the matter of this vow is not only a grievous sin in itself but incurs the additional guilt of sacrilege.
newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm
 
Hisalone said:
39 Popes Were Married! by FATHER JOHN SHUSTER, MARRIED ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST

johnshuster.com/thirtynine_popes.htm
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But if today’s Popes chose to take a vow of celibacy when they entered the priesthood, why does that upset you? If they choose to model oneself after Jesus Christ and the perfected saints in heaven while still here on earth, why do you insist they can’t make that choice? Does another man’s celibacy “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 19:12) diminish your own self-worth for having chosen differently? I really don’t understand why the personal choice of someone who decided to take a vow of celibacy, troubles you so deeply.
 
Hisalone said:
39 Popes Were Married! by FATHER JOHN SHUSTER, MARRIED ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST

johnshuster.com/thirtynine_popes.htm
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Celibacy is not intrinsic to the priesthood. The Catholic Church prefers to ordain Priests who are called to that life though. That is not unbiblical or more radical than Jesus because Jesus chose married men and called them to a celibate life.

The fact is that a married priesthood is prone to corruption and this happened. Dynasties formed as Father ordained son an Parish wealth maintained within a family. The lay movement that developed into Monastic life came to the rescue in that the Church began to realize that the best priests were coming from the monastaries. The celibat Christ centered life in monastaries was producing holy people. So, even though celibacy is not intrinsic to the prioesthood it is a part of the life that reformed the priesthood and the controversy surrounding it is not able to so far to offer a reason to believe that it doesn’t still serve it’s purpose.
 
Survey: Protestant majority disappearing in the USA
Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63% to 52%, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-07-20-survey-protestants_x.htm

Protestant churches struggle to fill pulpits
Protestant leaders in the past five years have been anxiously discussing shortages in their own ranks.

Reasons for shortages
Protestant church officials cite many factors for why people choose not to go into ministry, including more interest in high-paying professions, the cost of attending seminary, a failure by churches to recruit and a growing secular mindset in society.

Denominational leaders also say many ministers simply have burned out. Church dissension, combined with low pay and long hours, is “chewing up and spitting out wonderful people of God,” said a 1999 study in one denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The study found one-fifth of pastors in advanced stages of burnout; other denominations acknowledge similar problems.

Factory job losses there are making it harder for church members to afford pastors’ salaries or for pastors to find secular jobs that could supplement those salaries.
Many smaller churches now share pastors or rely on lay pastors or retirees. Lay pastors, depending on the denomination, get less training than seminarians and they often are restricted in where and how they can work.

Growing older
Several Protestant denominations report that their corps of pastors is not just decreasing but aging, with less than 10% age 35 or younger, compared with rates as high as 24% a generation ago. More than 30% of pastors in several denominations are above 55, higher than a generation ago, according to an Alban Institute report.

Seminaries that once attracted “the best and the brightest” now “take almost all who apply, whether or not they show high promise for ministry,” wrote Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary, which surveyed seminaries in 1998.

In many seminaries, the admission requirement became that “you had to have in range of a 98.6 temperature,” said R. Robert Cueni, president of Lexington Theological Seminary.
usatoday.com/news/religion/2004-04-21-clergy-gns_x.htm
 
Number of Catholics and Priests Rises
Pontifical Yearbook of 2007 Releases Data
The 2007 edition of the yearbook, presented to Benedict XVI today, stated that as of year-end 2005, the latest date for which data are available, there were 1.115 billion Catholics worldwide. showed an increase of 1.5% of Catholics compared with the 1.098 billion listed the previous year.

there are some areas where Catholic growth was greater than population growth.
There was an increase of 3.1% of Catholics in Africa, whose population has grown by slightly less than 2.5%, the communiqué said. “The Asian and American continents have also registered a higher increase in Catholics than in population growth, 2.71% against 1.18% for Asia, and 1.2% against 0.9% for America,” continued the Vatican statement. There was a slight increase of Catholics in Europe.

The Pontifical Yearbook revealed that the number of diocesan and religious priests rose to 406,411 from 405,891

The percentage increases were much higher in Asia and Africa, 3.8% and 3.55%, respectively, it noted. This is in contrast to "Europe and America with a percentage decrease of about a half point,

Africa and Asia proportionately had more priests, the Vatican statement noted: “Africa and Asia together provided 19.58% to the world’s overall number in 2004; in 2005 their contribution had risen to 20.28%.”

The Americas maintained a percentage of around 29.8%, while Oceania stayed stable, at slightly over 1% of the world’s priests, according to the communiqué
jknirp.com/numcat.htm

How come I get the feeling I know what is coming next?
 
Hisalone said:
But Christ didnt find it to be better.
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Well, Paul did. So apparently, Paul thought he could improve on Christ too.

Moreover, Christ said that whomever can accept it, let him.

Further moreover, celibacy is not a doctrine, but a discipline, and taken on willingly by those who respond to the priesthood.

Further, further moreover, mandatory priestly celibacy is a discipline only in the Latin church. The norm for Eastern Catholic churches is to permit married men to be ordained priests.
 
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