A Priest, A Nun, and Their Son

[Cre8d4Youth]

Ok, before I get ambushed I want to clarify my stance on this. I appreciate and respect the celibacy of unmarried priests. As a married father of four that is heavily involved in youth ministry I can attest caring for a family and working with youth is totally time consuming. I cannot physically give myself totally to one or the other. Which is frustrating. I can only imagine the problem would be exponentially more problematic for a married priest. But I don't suppose to say they could not overcome and still be effective.

I think it would be nice to allow priests to marry, but I'm not about to try and "lobby" the Catholic church to aquiesce to my wishes. I'm not going to try and convince others that my way holds more wisdom than that of the Church. I know what I know, and I know that historically priests were allowed to marry, once, period.

"That's all I have to day about that."

[JamesTheYounger]

I think that the point is that men must be made worthy of the priesthood not the other way around. And anyway there is no empirical evidence to support the idea that giving priests the ability to marry would increase the number of priests. . According to pureloveclub.com the number of seminarians in America has increased from 22000 to 35000 in the last 2 decades and in africa there has been an increase of 238.5% and in Asia 124.01% in the last 20 years.If you look at the eastern rite churches they dont have such great numbers of priests
I personally am more attracted to a celibate priesthood than to one that permits marriage.

[Dust's Sister]

In my opinion I don't think nun's should be able to marry, neither should priests. That's the sacrifice people are willing to give, and if you are not willing to sacfrifice that, then your not called to be a nun or priest.

Unless of course you've changed religions, but here's another question, since we're allowed married converts to be priests, then have we allowed married nuns? I've never heard of that.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Snarf' date='Oct 14 2005, 06:19 PM']Actually Dan, there were married priests until the 11th Century.  Celibacy vows did exist, but they were strictly optional.
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The first explicitly documented instance of legislated obligatory celibacy in the Church that I'm aware of is a bit older than that. Namely the councils of Ancyra and Neocaesarea between 314-325. And there are even more ancient Armenian canons that speak of obligatory clerical celibacy. There are also indications from patristic authors of this phenomenon, the concensus of which, according to my knowledge, seems to indicate that this was a practice believed in these early centuries to be of apostolic origin.

While certainly the discipline in the church of Rome in the last thousand years has a different landscape than in the patristic era, but there have been "official" disciplines of celibacy for certain offices in certain churches throughout history, and this yet remains the case. The Roman church has a unique charism which involves a predominantly celibate clergy, but the Catholic Church as a whole has never been without married priests, just as it has never been without celibate priests. It is a practice instituted by Christ and persisting through the entire history of the Church from the apostolic age onward.

It is unfortunate that people today tend to see celibacy as a negative rather than a positive, as something that should not be, rather than a gift.

Quotations:

[i]If a priest marries, let him be removed from his order; but if he commit fornication or adultery, let him be altogether cast out [i.e. of communion] and put to penance.[/i] - Neocaesarea, Canon 1, c. 315 AD

[i]The law of continence is the same for the ministers of the altar, for the bishops and for the priests; when they were (still) lay people or lectors, they could freely take a wife and beget children. But once they have reached the ranks mentioned above, what had been permitted is no longer so[/i]. - Pope Leo the Great, c.458AD

[i]But people might say: if it is permitted and good to marry, why should priests not be authorized to take wives? In other words, why should ordained men not be permitted to be united [to wives]?[/i] - Ambrosiaster, ~366AD (btw, he frames this question in order to expose it as heterodox)

An even earlier source, the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus of Rome, who died around 235AD, speaks of a controversy in which Pope Callistus is accused of strange innovations in church discipline with his laxity towards clerical celibacy. This implictly affirms the normality of clerical celibacy in the early third century, at least in the church of that region; and I'm being conservative in that conclusion.

[Winchester]

A priest, a nun and their son walk into a bar...