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Debate: Catholic priest celibacy
From Debatepedia
[Edit] Should Catholic priests still be required to take a vow of celibacy? |
[Edit] Background and contextCatholic Priests are not allowed to marry. The general premise put forward by the Catholic Church to justify this policy is that it forces priests to fully commit to God and their priesthood, without the distraction of a wife, kids, and family. Yet, many have begun to question this practice. Many simply argue that it is unnatural and harmful to suppress one's sexual urges and desire to find a life partner. There are many examples of Catholic priests falling in love, engaging in romantic affairs, and subsequently coming under scrutiny and derision for doing so. Many also argue that the sexual suppression resulting from celibacy creates the nefarious impulse to molest young boys in the Church. As such cases of sexual molestation have proven widespread in the Catholic Church, many believe that it is time for the Church to re-assess its celibacy policies. Other considerations surround whether celibacy is divine law and doctrine, or simply a Church discipline that can be un-done. As the number of Catholic priests dwindle, many also wonder whether celibacy is the cause, and if allowing priests to marry would increase vocations. |
[Edit] [ ![]() Church: Does celibacy hurt/help priests perform duties to the Church? | |
[Edit] ProI should have added too that the argument setting forth that domestic matters would interfere with our priests' pastoral duties is nonsensical. This is another illustration of the well-anchored perception that women being unable to have any other status than that of a servant needing direction. There are millions of women who raise families without a father, because of widowhood or separation, and most do very well. I am in this case, and people marvel at how well-behaved and enjoyable my daughter is, and I get.... $175/month in child support!!!! It is afflicting that women, now often well-educated and self-sufficient are still perceived as burdens vs. potential sources of support and well-being. What kind of spiritual availability can a depressed, alcoholic, or psychologically off-balance priest can offer his parishioners? Are there not hundreds of thousands of examples of pastors, orthodox and eastern catholic married priests with families that actually act as references to their community? Have you never met a pastor or orthodox priest whose father was a pastor or a priest because they had grown within not only a Christ-centered family but also a pastoral family? Please, break from the St Augustine's view of women! There are women who can be holy outside the convent, in laity! Of course roman catholic priests should be able to get married! But this will never happen in the Catholic Church as we know it. It is utterly SAD to see marriage reduced to having sex or not having sex, and that sex cannot be anything else than dirty and sinful, and that women cannot be anything else than temptresses obsessed with distracting men, and especially priests... The Church has found in the eloquence of St Augustine all that She needed to validate Her wealth and power building strategies in the Middle Ages as She was receiving large dowries from the aristocratic boys and girls who were sent to Her for priesthood or monastic life. The last situation that She wanted to face was to see this wealth disseminated to support the families of Her clerics. Instituting mandatory celibate combined with a vow of poverty was Her most efficient tactics to safely build Her wealth and associated power. The fundamental issue with priest celibacy is the peception of women and priests within the catholic church, which have not changed since medieval times. With St Augustine, women became portrayed as satanic temptresses vowed to use their sexual attributes to lead men to spiritual destruction, and hardly had any kind os spiritual ability. With him, sex was, for the first time ever, clarly and irectly associated with sin, in contradiction with the Bible's referring to achieving Oneness in love. The trouble is that St Augustine, while very smart and eloquent, was also what we would call today, a sex addict. In the face of his chirstian conversion, the burden of his past sexual "exploits" became such that, unable to take responsibility through forgiving himself, he transferred his guilt onto all women as a generalization of those he has sexually abused, because he knew that any woman could easily tempt him and he was too weak to resist. What is remarkable is that the Catholic Church established him as one of Her pillars, while his writings conveyed such hatred of women in blatant contradiction to Jesus' teachings of Love and Justice. No less remarkable is that the Catholic Church ended up, to serve Her materialistic needs, building Her Canon re: relationships with women on St Augustine's Confessions (of a sick man) rather than the Bible! and almost 1600 years later, the Church has not made a single move to reestablish women in a spiritually meaningful position (I am not talking about priesthood) but still maintain them is some kind of serving sub-status. It is therefore logical that the Church prohibits the marriage of priests, as She cannot fathom any positive role for the priest-on the contrary-vand it will remain so so long as She keeps portraying women according to St. Augustine's Confession rather than the Bible. The irony is that the Church's mandatory celibacy of priests ends upconveying Her profound disrespect for priests who are not even perceived as able to control their pulsions or see anything else than sex (=sin) in a woman, and makes it that the "Call" to vocation ends up targeting maybe highly spiritual men but also very dysfunctional psychologically. In the end in warding off sex and women with such extreme, the Church has ended up transforming the positive message of Christ into a negative doctrine centered on what She despises most- women and sex. The second irony (of a long list indeed) is having gone at such lengths to cling to her wealth and power, the Church today ends up having to liquidate part of Her treasure to indemnify victims of the sex abuse cases, opening the gates to some unscrupulous individuals who allege sexual abuse to make a quick and easy buck, ruining lives, and covering Herself with shame. Such a pathetic picture conveys deep pain and mounting resentment if not rage among faithful catholics like myself, as we feel betrayed by the Church, and ridiculed by Her as well as non Church members. Yet, in the face of this catastrophic situation, the Church hierarchy remains in denial and camps on the medieval positions that caused all this turmoil. Maybe the Catholic Church as we know it needs to collapse in order for authentic Christianity to return, for Christ to come back in our lives.
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[Edit] Con
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[Edit] [ ![]() Religious doctrine: Would allowing priests to marry comply with religious doctrine? | |
[Edit] ProAbsolutely! There is nothing in the Dogma that supports mandatory celibacy for priests. St Paul, who is most often quoted on this matter, in fact specifically offers the opposite of a prohibition: "I am saying that for your own good, NOT TO RESTRICT YOU, but etc...", in the form of a personal recommendation. In all humility (a cardinal value in catholicism) and authentic love, he respects his audience by leaving those called to priesthood free choice.
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[Edit] Con
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[Edit] "NOT TO RESTRICT YOU"there is a difference between "forbidding" and "recommending not to"! the very passage from St Paul that you mention clearly states "I am saying this for your own good, NOT TO RESTRICT YOU, but that you may live etc..."- which is specifically the OPPOSITE of a prohibition ("NOT TO")and a recommended OPTION that St Paul offers in full respect of individual choices and people. [Edit] [ ![]() Tradition: Is it wrong to maintain the tradition of Catholic priest celibacy? | |
[Edit] ProWhat is wrong is to impose a tradition that finds its roots in St Augustine's pathological perception of women as mere sexual objects without much spirituality because he could not assuage his guilt of having sexually used/abused (in those days women were kept sheltered in families until marriage-therefore sex out of wedlock was either rape or prostitution)a large number of women and abandoned his concubine of 7 years and their son. What is the credibility of a tradition established on St Augustine's Confessions rather than the Bible?
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[Edit] Con
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[Edit] [ ![]() Sexual abuse: Will allowing priests to marry lower sexual abuse in Church? | |
[Edit] Pro
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[Edit] ConProbably not- the issue of celibacy (along with the "vocation crisis") is not about sex or no sex. It is about an imposed discipline, with zero dogmatic foundation- based on the use by the Church of St Augustine's despicable view of women to serve the Church's central concern with preserving her wealth and power. Extensive statistical data gathered and analyzed by an independent source are needed before venturing in such correlation. I am a scientist, adn do not draw conclusions absent of statistically significant data. Sexual predation roots in the urge of asserting power, and as such is not an exclusive deviation of celibacy at all- you have sexual predators who are married!
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[Edit] [ ![]() Vocations: Would allowing priests to marry increase vocations? | |
[Edit] Pro
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[Edit] Con
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[Edit] [ ![]() Finances: Would allowing priests to marry help/hurt Church finances? | |
[Edit] Pro
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[Edit] Conreading the previous comment: here we are, at the crux of the problem! the Church would need to pay them more, which She has gone at great length to not do for almost 10 centuries through imposing celibacy. Not only that but the Church would also have to admit She erred in positioning St Augustine's "Confessions" at the cornerstone of her canon thereby labelling until today women as mere sexual objects and temptresses vowed to the felling virtuous spiritual men....
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Categories: Priests | Christianity | Religion | Catholicism | Marriage | Sex | Morality | Celibacy