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2/25/2018 10:41 am  #21


Re: What do you think about priestly celibacy?

seigneur wrote:

Greg wrote:

seigneur wrote:

The verses do not require bishops to marry, but they do not require celibacy either. They give permission to be married. Roman Catholic requirement of celibacy takes the permission way. That's how the Roman Catholic tradition is incompatible with the verses.

First of all, I do not often level the criticism of "fundamentalism"--indeed, I do not think I ever have ever in the past--but that is what your reading of these verses is. The context of Paul's advice is clearly one of limitation and restriction. His use of the number "one" indicates that his point is to say: not more than one. There is simply no basis for reading him as making the far stronger claim that you need him to make, if you are to bring his comments into tension with the Church's discipline: that in every context, a bishop or deacon is permitted to marry. Sorry.

Sorry, but you are the fundamentalist here. The cited verses do not, by any stretch of the imagination, entail the requirement not to marry ...

I did not say that they do, and I am totally baffled that you think I did, especially in light of our foregoing discussion.

seigneur wrote:

And while you manage to talk at length, you also manage to say nothing resembling an answer to the OP.

These are the questions: Do you think the practice [of priestly celibacy] should continue? Do you see it ever becoming optional?

I answered the first question in my first post in the thread: yes, I think it should continue. I didn't answer the second question. The answer is I don't know. It is an implication of what I have been saying that the Church can change its discipline on the matter; indeed the discipline has been different in the past. So it could become 'optional'. I don't foresee it becoming so anytime soon, but history is a fickle thing, so I am agnostic as to what it could look like in centuries to come.

The question of whether the practice could or should continue obviously depends on the nature of and grounds for the practice. The whole reason we have been talking about scripture is because your pontificating on whether the Church should continue the practice and whether it could change was predicated on the thought that there is a tension between the practice and scripture. That thought, as has been shown, hinged on a misunderstanding of the nature of and grounds for Church's requirement, some misinterpretation of scripture, and some lapses in logic.

seigneur wrote:

The questions assume that there is such a thing as priestly celibacy - compulsory, not optional - in Roman Catholicism. Is this a mistaken assumption? What are the real facts on ground, in your opinion?

I don't understand. Are you asking whether priests in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church are required to be celibate? Are you trying to imply that I have denied that?

seigneur wrote:

As far as I know, Roman Catholicism is the only (major) denomination requiring priestly celibacy. A simple and obvious answer to why no other (major) denomination requires it is that it's not a scriptural requirement.

But Roman Catholicism does not hold that priestly celibacy is a scriptural requirement, so this answer does not on its own explain the difference between Roman Catholicism and other rites and denominations on this point.

 

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