The New Pope

Parent Cafe
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<p>Funding father, i know that they are logistical, however, Catholicism is a sacramental faith, in that the priests really administer sacraments to the faithful (as well as being a recipient of a sacrament themselves - Holy Orders- I mean, it’s not just about getting a theology degree from a seminary and then going out & preaching) Baptism, Communion, Reconciliation, Funerals, Marriages, Last Rites; not only celebrating Mass & giving a homily every Sunday. Do Protestants have all those sacraments?</p>

<p>Also, I really just want to know practically how you go about it? I believe most Protestant churches have one house that the Pastor lives in with his family. Catholic parishes have plenty of rectory room & convent space typically, but would multiple priests & their families live there? Because I guess the goal allowing for married priests is that you increase the numbers of priests & would have several serve within one parish; like back in the day when there were many priests that lived in each rectory. So is that what will happen? Or does the parish assume an obligation to buy a house in the area for each priest & family?</p>

<p>I guess I just think that by implementing something that sounds easy to do…we really would be making changes that will dramatically impact how the priesthood functions & thence how the Catholic sacraments are administered to the faithful & that those things could become doctrinal issues.</p>

<p>And I still come back to the vow of obedience…that is doctrinal, when you receive Holy Orders you vow to serve God first & foremost and go where the Church needs you -(i think). It would be very hard to serve two masters so to speak…serve your God & minister to your parish & still worry who’s gonna get to the kids baseball game or pay for orthodontia or have you been neglecting your wife lately?</p>

<p>That’s what I mean…if Catholic priests are married…how does it impact their job description? And what if that impact starts to change the doctrine behind Holy Orders? Personally, I would not want to be married to a priest if he had to move wherever & whenever at the bishop’s demand or the Church’s needs & if we had to live communally with other priest families in the parish rectory/housing.</p>

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<p>I also wonder what would happen with the nuns? Would they, too, be allowed to marry? What role would they have? </p>

<p>Come ot think of it (and I hope I don’t sound too flippant)…what role do nuns serve today? I mean, I know they do many, many wonderful things…teach in the schools, administer to the sick, carry out community service, oversee the parish’s caretaking, etc. But, other faiths do this without nuns.</p>

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<p>Irishbird, Protestants do have all of the sacraments that you mentionned. As far as I can see, the priests don’t seem to have a problem ministering to their flock and also having a family life. If you asked them they’d probably say that their families give them inspiration to carry out their priestly duties.</p>

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<p>Perhaps I should brush up on doctrinal issues that separate the various Protestant denominations, but to the best of my knowledge all Protestants only subscribe to two (baptism and communion) as being sacraments (the rationale being that these are the only two that Jesus personaly participated in). While some of the others (e.g., marriage, funerals) are not viewed as “sacraments” they are officiated by the clergy and hence a Protestant minister is analogous to a Catholic priest in this regard.</p>

<p>You do raise an interesting logistical issue of the rectory and how it would be used/shared. Protestant churches are all over the map in terms of how the clergy is “housed”. It used to be that most churches would own at least one house for the pastor and possibly additional ones if there were assitant pastors involved. In my church, however, the pastors have expressed an interest in owning their own home so the church sold the houses that they owned and instead provide a housing allowance to the pastors. </p>

<p>The family of a Protestant pastor typically must deal with the same uprooting that one might expect in the Catholic church should priests be allowed to marry. It is very rare for a Protestant pastor (at least the ones that I’m familiar with) to settle down and stay in one church for enough time to raise a family. The amount of upheaval is somewhat a function of the particular denomination. I believe that in the Methodist church, for example, that the ministers are at the “mercy” of their hierarchy and are told when it’s time to move. Other denominations leave it up to the pastor, but again, it is not common for them to settle down and stay long enough to raise a family.</p>

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<p>we have housing allowances here too- I don’t see how being in the clergy with the possiblity of being sent to Timbuktu ( or South Bend Indiana) is that much different from being in the military or even working for a national company that wants to move you around.
My brother was in the military-he had a family- he was moved all over from Germany to Florida- to Texas- to Colorado…
His brother inlaw works for the WorldBank he has been assigned to Kajikstan for at least 3 years.
I think it could only help the church attract and retain those who heed the call if they permitted to marry-</p>

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<p>My foster mother is an Episcopalian priest and my brother is also an Episcopalian priest…they’re on opposite sides in the current contretemps in <em>that</em> church. My mom didn’t become a priest until after she divorced…and quit her job as a parole officer. However, my brother is married as a priest and does just fine. In fact, he just got his first parish of his own. I don’t see marriage as an impediment and in many ways I think it’s an aid.</p>

<p>Irishbird, my favorite sister in-law taught theology for a number of years at a Catholic girls high school in Denver. When a visiting bishop once asked the class how many sacraments there are, a student replied, “Seven for you, six for us.” [The sacrament of priesthood being denied to women.] The bishop was initially taken aback and then grew quite thoughtful. I suspect he never made cardinal.</p>

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<p>I don’t like the fact that they picked such a conservative blowhard who opposes birth control which ends up killing millions of people around the world in the form of AIDS. THey should have picked a latin american. After all, around 50% of Catholics live in Latin America</p>

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<p>I recently saw an interview with Bill Clinton who has adopted aids in Africa as a focus of his ex-presidency. This question was raised and he said that in fact the local Catholic church and the local nuns have been extraordinarily helpful in curbing the spread of aids and have not let views from Rome get in the way of their effort. Perhaps he was just being PC, but he had no negative words about the Catholic church in this regard.</p>

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<p>“have not let views from Rome get in the way of their effort”</p>

<p>that is my point</p>

<p>the vatican should be encouraging the efforts of these nurses and not sitting on their doctrinal perch of moral superiority</p>

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<p>Funding, funerals are not a catholic sacrament. The Annointing of the Sick is the last sacrament Catholics receive. </p>

<p>TheDad, congratulations to your brother on getting his own parish!</p>

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<p>

Of all the criticisms of the Catholic leadership, I think this one is truly fatuous. If the folks spreading AIDS won’t listen to the Pope when he says sex is for married people, why would they listen to him about condoms? Duh.</p>

<p>BTW, there is a rumor going around that secular liberals in the US have sent a team led by James Carville to the Vatican to demand a recount.</p>

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<p>As a Catholic, I am disappointed. </p>

<p>In history Popes married, priests married. Many believe the change was made do to inheritance of property. Married priest and popes was okay for centuries. What some priests and popes did is pretty terrible.</p>

<p>The chose of name is interesting… Much research Benedictine Popes…yikes</p>

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<p>There are those, other than Dan Brown, that wish Jesus himself would have been more “well-rounded” and married. </p>

<p>I personally don’t know: St. Peter was obviously married as was St Augustine and others.</p>

<p>In either case, the church is supposed to be about the kingdom of heaven–no part of this world, it is said. Yet, there are those–even those who go on and on about the fallacious separation of church and state–who would wish the church to be more political and respond politically to the cultural/political conundrums of our time according to the particular technologies and ideologies of the time; St Theresa has been criticized for this very reason by the likes of Christopher Hitchens amongst others, all of whom resent this distinction (between heaven and earth, or spirit and matter).</p>

<p>Many arduously believe in the constitution of the United States in all its articles and amendments as they are interpreted and defined by the courts; well, the constitution of the church is, for better or worse, the bible, and the New Testament in particular, and the courts are the curia etc, and amazingly there are those in the church who find the bible to be as sacred and sacrosanct to the church as those who find the same in the US constitution itself. Truly amazing!</p>

<p>There are, as has been said, treasures in heaven and on earth, although they rarely tend to be the same items. One is based on metaphysics and a love that transcends time and matter, and the other is restricted to the dynamics and strictures of matter and time. The mechanics of matter will never supercede the metaphysics of love and sacrifice in the church, and not just the Catholic Church; the same would apply to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism etc.</p>

<p>If you are an atheist, you will logically, and respectfully (it is hoped) disagree. </p>

<p>I pray that Pope Benedict XVI will follow his heart and not his, or anyone else’s, mind. Time will tell, but not even time will tell the whole story.</p>

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<p>citygirlsmom- thanks for the reminder about the ways in which the Popes and Priests conducted their personal lives in years past. Why is it that <em>some</em> things are ok to change from one century to the next…If doctrine is so timeless, I should be able to look back and see thousands of years of consistency. Such is not the case.</p>

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<p>His heart appears closed to new ideas, the church is a living breathing thing and needs to be vibrant</p>

<p><a href=“http://beta.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050419/pl_afp/vaticanpopeus[/url]”>http://beta.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050419/pl_afp/vaticanpopeus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>the New Pope is already involved…</p>

<p>And - Exactly momsdream…the claims made today that “tradition” must be maintained are just whooey, the church has been in constant flux for two thousand years, change is not foreign to the Roman Catholic Church. </p>

<p>I am reading a great book- The Reformation- thick tome, very balanced, but eye opening from all sides…</p>

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<p>Well, with a name like Benedict you don’t even have to ask to know that he is not the first American pope. No right-thinking American has ever named their kid (or themselves) Benedict since the treachery of Benedict Arnold. It’s still a perfectly good name in Europe, but in the US that name disappeared over 200 years ago.</p>

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<p>The Pope picks a name reflecting his beliefs and image- Pope John Paul II for instance, I am going to research the Benedict Popes…don’t even go to the website about the prophesies and this pope and the end of the world…to creepy for words, all the way around</p>

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<p>Where to begin.</p>

<p>This thread is a perfect example of people not reading what the Catholic Church says about itself, but rather what non-Catholics (or pseudo-Catholics who don’t believe much of it) represent about Catholicism, and holding it to be true. You have to go to the Catholic Church to find out what it holds as truth.</p>

<p>From this link: <a href=“http://www.catholic.com/library/Can_Dogma_Develop.asp[/url]”>http://www.catholic.com/library/Can_Dogma_Develop.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>"As these and many other cases demonstrate, doctrinal questions can remain in a not-yet-fully-defined state for years. The Church has never felt the need to define formally what there has been no particular pressure to define. This strikes many, particularly non-Catholics, as strange. Why weren’t things cleared up in, say, A.D. 100, so folks could know what’s what? Why didn’t Rome issue a laundry list of definitions in the early days and let it go at that? Why wasn’t an end-run made around all these troubles that plagued Christianity precisely because things were unclear? The remote reason is that God has had his own timetable and set of reasons (to which we aren’t privy) for keeping it. The same could be said about Old Testament prophets: Why didn’t they understand the fullness of the doctrine of the Trinity all at once? Or the identity of the Messiah? Or the fullness of Christian teaching? Partly because God had not revealed it all yet, and partly because their understanding of the implications of the doctrines they had needed to grow clearer over time. </p>

<p>“This need to discern more clearly what is contained in the deposit of faith given to the Church by the apostles points us to the related subjects of infallibility and inspiration. The pope and the bishops (when teaching in union with him) have the charism of infallibility when defining matters of faith or morals; but INFALLIBILITY WORKS ONLY NEGATIVELY [emphasis mine]. Through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, the pope and bishops are prevented from teaching what is untrue, but they are not forced or told by the Holy Spirit to teach what is true. To put it another way, the pope and the bishops are not inspired the way the authors of Scripture or the prophets were. To make a new definition, to clear up some dogmatic confusion, they first have to use human reason, operating on what is known to date, to be able to teach more precisely what is to be held as true. They cannot teach what they do not know, and they learn things the same way we do. They have no access to prophetic shortcuts—they must delve by study into the riches of the words God has already given us.”</p>

<p>The link has much more if anyone wants to read the entire page.</p>

<p>Next, there is a monumental difference between what we term “dogma” or “doctrine” and disciplines. Disciplines are practices, changeable, like not eating meat on Friday. Priests marrying or not is a discipline, a practice, and is obviously changeable. Priests married for centuries in the early church, and there are over 100 married priests in the USA today - converts to Catholicism who were allowed to bring their protestant ministerial vocation with them - all with the blessing of Pope JPII. Priests (although not bishops) in the Eastern Rite churches, also in communion with Rome, are allowed to marry. </p>

<p>An example of doctrine: JPII has said it is in the deposit of faith that only men are to be ordained as priests. This is an excellent example of the NEGATIVE protection of the deposit of faith. Even if he, personally, thought it unfair or that it would be a good idea for women to be ordained, as pope he has a responsibility to protect the deposit of faith. If he can find nothing in that to make this case, he can’t redefine doctrine just because he sees fit. This is an example of doctrine as opposed to merely a discipline.</p>

<p>I hate the term “conservative” or “liberal” Catholic. This is cross-terminology applied to Catholicism as Jews do to their various individual synagogues. For better or worse, the Catholic church has centralized government. A Jewish congregation can determine their level of orthodoxy; protestant faiths vary from Southern Baptist to Unitarianism. Catholics don’t have this luxury. You either buy into it or you don’t. It is not a democracy. God doesn’t operate by vote in the Catholic Church.</p>

<p>I’ve always been puzzled as to why unhappy Catholics stay in the church. Staying Catholic as an adult is not a command performance, and there are many Christian churches that welcome unhappy Catholics. I would only advise that those who decide to leave thoroughly investigate the history and teachings of the church before they leave. It is eye-opening, and for me it was a deal maker, not breaker.</p>

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<p>citygirlsmom & momsdream,</p>

<p>if you haven’t already read them, you may enjoy Gary Wills books, “Papal Sin” and “Why I am a Catholic.” They both deal with the issues you’ve raised in a very critical and affirmative way.</p>

<p>Also, GK Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” and “Everlasting Man.”</p>

<p>And, Peter Kreeft’s “Christianity for Modern Pagans” + “A Refutation of Moral Relativism.”</p>

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<p>there have been many thoughtful responses here. Thank you for them all…particularly docmom’s.</p>

<p>I guess my attitude re: married religious, (whether they be priests or nuns) is obviously influenced by my current exp. with priests via uncles, friends, co-workers who are priests. I just can’t imagine my uncle fulfilling his vocation as a priest and also being married. I know that Protestants do it, but I look at how religious live currently in the Catholic faith, (i.e. they live in community, therefore, no one owns their own home,; they wear religious clothes usually; they have use of a car, but they don’t own it; they make very little money and are not supposed to aquire a lot of personal possessions; they work as religious until they are no longer capable (not when they feel like retiring & now is a good time to settle near the grandkids) & then live out the rest of their lives in the old priest’s home or nun’s home, etc.) and I don’t know how they can reconcile the need to care for and provide for their spouse and children when they are not supposed to worry about accumulation of wealth & possessions.
Will the spouse and children move to the St. Francis Villa for retired & infirm priests when the priest retires?,
Who will buy the family’s clothing, food, pay for their possessions, medical care etc?
I mean the Catholic Church currently doesn’t even pay their lay teachers in elementary schools & high schools a living wage that allows them to adequately support a family, how will they pay for married religious & their dependents?
Unlike corporate companies that relocate workers, you won’t get compensated by promotions & pay raises by moving all over the place. </p>

<p>I guess I see it that a priest has made a decision to accept vows of obedience, and living a life with little material wealth or possessions, & in the case of order priests(i.e Augustinians, Jesuits, etc.) vows of POVERTY, where you REALLY don’t own much of anything (the case of my uncle); and yet if you marry & have a family, THEY all have to be willing to continually choose the same, for the priest to live up to his vows & commitment to serve God totally & fully. That would be very hard to expect of others who haven’t taken the same vows to God & Church.</p>

<p>In any event, there is much to be considered before something like married religious in the Catholic Church is implemented. And I wonder, will it really increase vocations dramatically? I mean does anyone know if there are tons of people lining up outside Protestant seminaries because there are so many who want to be pastors & ministers?</p>