Australian Catholic Church
claims priests’ vow of celibacy may be linked to child abuse.
26
Italian women in loving relationships with Catholic priests urge Pope Francis
to relax the celibacy rule.
No doubt about it, the papal view of celibacy has caused misery for many people
over hundreds of years. But is it scriptural? Does God really demand that
priests (and nuns) forego the natural joys of marriage and parenthood? A simple
view of the Bible and early Christian teaching will answer these
questions:
Doctrine from devils?
According to the New Jerusalem Bible: “The Spirit has explicitly said
that during the last times some will desert the faith and pay
attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines that come from devils, seduced by the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are
branded as though with a red-hot iron: they forbid marriage
and prohibit foods which God created to be accepted with thanksgiving
by all who believe and who know the truth.” (1Timothy 4:1-3)
Doctrine from Jesus?
Even Pope Paul VI, a pontiff
not generally noted for liberal thinking, admitted in his encyclical Sacerdotalis
Caelibatus (Priestly Celibacy, 1967) that “the New Testament which
preserves the teaching of Christ and the Apostles….does not openly demand
celibacy of sacred ministers…..Jesus Himself did not make it a prerequisite in
His choice of the Twelve, nor did the Apostles for those who presided over the
first Christian communities.” – The Papal Encyclicals 1958-1981 (Falls
Church, Va.; 1981), p.204.
Considering that Simon
Peter** was married (Mark 1:29-31) as were the rest of the apostles along with
Jesus’ fleshly brothers and first century ‘bishops’ (1Corinthians 9:5; 1
Timothy 3:2), then the Catholic church has no real basis for insisting that
priests should be celibate, a doctrine that must surely be partly responsible
for the shocking incidence of child abuse by various clergy.
Doctrine from Paul?
Obviously, Christian teaching
has never endorsed celibacy except when freely espoused by its adherents. The
apostle Paul, while outlining the benefits of singleness, also advised it was
“better to marry than to burn.” (1 Corinthians 7:9) The ultimate authority, of
course, was Jesus Christ who described singleness as a ‘gift’ for which “not
all men can make room.” (Matthew 19:11)
“Celibacy was commonly
practiced before the Christian era by Buddhist priests and monks, and even
earlier by the higher orders of the Babylonian priesthood” – The Two
Babylons by A. Hislop. P.219
*See also:
**Peter was also known as Cephas – (John 1:42)
No comments:
Post a Comment