Priest Celibacy :: essays research papers

fundamentalist attacks on priestly virtue come in a number of different formsnot all(a) compatible with one another. There is almost no other subject about which so many different discombobulations exist. The first and most basic confusion is thinking of priestly celibacy as a dogma or doctrinea central and irreformable part of the faith, believed by Catholics to come from Jesus and the apostles. in that respectfore some Fundamentalists make a great deal of a biblical reference to Peters mother-in-law (Mark 130), apparently supposing that, if Catholics only knew that Peter had been get hitched with, they would be unable to regard him as the first pope. Again, Fundamentalist time lines of "Catholic inventions" (a popular literary form) assign "mandatory priestly celibacy" to this or that family in Church history, as if prior to this requirement the Church could not have been Catholic. These Fundamentalists are often surprised to learn that even today celibacy is not the rule for all Catholic priests. In fact, for Eastern Rite Catholics, married priests are the norm, just as they are for Orthodox and Oriental Christians. level(p) in the Eastern churches, though, there have always been some restrictions on marriage and ordination. Although married men may become priests, unmarried priests may not marry, and married priests, if widowed, may not remarry. Moreover, there is an ancient Eastern discipline of choosing bishops from the ranks of the celibate monks, so their bishops are all unmarried. The tradition in the Western or Latin-Rite Church has been for priests as well as bishops to take vows of celibacy, a rule that has been firmly in place since the early Middle Ages. Even today, though, exceptions are made. For example, there are married Latin-Rite priests who are converts from Lutheranism and Episcopalianism. As these variations and exceptions indicate, priestly celibacy is not an unchangeable dogma but a disciplinary rule. The fact th at Peter was married is no more contrary to the Catholic faith than the fact that the pastor of the nearest Maronite Catholic church is married. Is Marriage Mandatory?Another, quite different Fundamentalist confusion is the notion that celibacy is unbiblical, or even "unnatural." Every man, it is claimed, must obey the biblical injunction to "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 128) and capital of Minnesota commands that "each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband" (1 Cor. 72). It is even argued that celibacy somehow "causes," or at least correlates with higher incidence of, illicit sexual behavior or perversion.