FEMALE PRIESTS & PRIEST MARRIAGE

[reality101]

I pose to you all 2 questions today:

1) Should women be allowed to serve the priesthood?

My personel thought is no for one personel experience.
I went to the Holy Thursday mass at the Basillica of St.Peter and Paul in Phily, Note in the Roman Catholic church the Holy thursday Mass is one of the most highly sacred in the liturgical year. During the Eucarist, the most sacred part of any mass, a woman stood up and started chanting and yelling that woman should be priests. She was not alone she was part of a organization for that cause. it doesnt make sense to me how you can want o be a priest to worship God but can have such disrespec as to interupt the most sacred part of a mass on a sacred day. It seemds like its more self obsorbed in motive than anything

and the second question:
2) Should priests be allowed to marry?

I also believe the answer to this is no. A priest is supposed to be entirly devoted to the priesthood, to God, and to the people he serves. Having a relationship would cause a conflict in interest cause a man is supposed to be devoed entirly to his wife and family and as i said these could easily come into conflict.

[McCulloch]

1) Should women be allowed to serve the priesthood?

I believe that those opposed to a church's stated fundamental doctrine should associate themselves with a different church.

2) Should priests be allowed to marry?

Some Roman Catholic priests are married. If a married Anglican priest converts to Catholicism, he is allowed to become a Roman Catholic priest and remain married. Some of the Eastern Rite Roman Catholic priests are also allowed to be married. So the question should be, "Should Latin Rite Roman Catholic priests be allowed to be married, as St. Peter was?"

[graphicsguy]

I pose to you all 2 questions today:

1) Should women be allowed to serve the priesthood?

I agree with McCulloh - associate with a different church.

Of course, that may be difficult if you don't agree with other doctrines. That seems to imply that you don't agree with any doctrine if you have to fight your own to become a female priest. However, many revolutions have happened over the centuries. I'm certain it could happen some day.

2) Should priests be allowed to marry?

I really think priests SHOULD marry so they can relate to some of the general daily struggles of us lowly commoners. Plus, I do tend to believe that vows of chastity can be harmful.

[reality101]

I pose to you all 2 questions today:

1) Should women be allowed to serve the priesthood?

I agree with McCulloh - associate with a different church.

Of course, that may be difficult if you don't agree with other doctrines. That seems to imply that you don't agree with any doctrine if you have to fight your own to become a female priest. However, many revolutions have happened over the centuries. I'm certain it could happen some day.

2) Should priests be allowed to marry?

I really think priests SHOULD marry so they can relate to some of the general daily struggles of us lowly commoners. Plus, I do tend to believe that vows of chastity can be harmful.

when you say the vowsof chastity can be harmfull,
how so?

[graphicsguy]

when you say the vowsof chastity can be harmfull,
how so?

It is a personal belief and I have nothing but personal opinions and experience to base it on.

It is partially based on the seemingly endless cases of priests molesting children. Of course, non-priests molest children too, I just don't think the vows chastity helped the situation.

Secondly, I basically took a vow of chastity for religious reasons during my teenage years. There are arguments to say that chastity should be encouraged during these formative years and that it's a good thing. However, in my case it caused a number of emotional issues that I was incapable of dealing with.

[micatala]

I pose to you all 2 questions today:

1) Should women be allowed to serve the priesthood?

My personel thought is no for one personel experience.
I went to the Holy Thursday mass at the Basillica of St.Peter and Paul in Phily, Note in the Roman Catholic church the Holy thursday Mass is one of the most highly sacred in the liturgical year. During the Eucarist, the most sacred part of any mass, a woman stood up and started chanting and yelling that woman should be priests. She was not alone she was part of a organization for that cause. it doesnt make sense to me how you can want o be a priest to worship God but can have such disrespec as to interupt the most sacred part of a mass on a sacred day. It seemds like its more self obsorbed in motive than anything

WHile I personally don't see the harm in women being priests, I am OK with McCulloch's solution.

I would point out the I disagree with reality101's reasoning, however.

Reality seems to be saying that because a proponent of women priests behaved in appropriately, therefore we should not allow women priests. If we followed this practice in general, a great many injustices would be perpetrated.

Certainly, for example, one can point to proponents of women's suffrage, abolition of slavery, voting rights, fighting Nazism, religious freedom, etc., etc., who behaved in inappropriate, even illegal or extremely violent ways. Would it have been appropriate for those who opposed these causes to say, "well, John Brown he was a terrorist, and Harriet Tubman broke the law, so we can't be having any abolition of slavery here."

and the second question:
2) Should priests be allowed to marry?

I also believe the answer to this is no. A priest is supposed to be entirly devoted to the priesthood, to God, and to the people he serves. Having a relationship would cause a conflict in interest cause a man is supposed to be devoed entirly to his wife and family and as i said these could easily come into conflict.

Again, I would have no objection, and I think it is certainly making it harder for the Catholics to recruit priests. However, it is a denominational issue, and no longer being in the denomination, I have no really strong opinion.

[reality101]

when you say the vowsof chastity can be harmfull,
how so?

It is a personal belief and I have nothing but personal opinions and experience to base it on.

It is partially based on the seemingly endless cases of priests molesting children. Of course, non-priests molest children too, I just don't think the vows chastity helped the situation.

Secondly, I basically took a vow of chastity for religious reasons during my teenage years. There are arguments to say that chastity should be encouraged during these formative years and that it's a good thing. However, in my case it caused a number of emotional issues that I was incapable of dealing with.

but priest molesting children isnt cause by chastity cause even if chastity wasnt a vow you still wouldnt be allowed do screww little boys that is simply issues among priets andmany priests are gay and become priests so that they dont sin by acting on those urges , also chastity is a vow because it is said that having sex should be an act of love between a man and a women and MUST BE OPEN to the creation of life, without that it is sinful

[reality101]

I pose to you all 2 questions today:

1) Should women be allowed to serve the priesthood?

My personel thought is no for one personel experience.
I went to the Holy Thursday mass at the Basillica of St.Peter and Paul in Phily, Note in the Roman Catholic church the Holy thursday Mass is one of the most highly sacred in the liturgical year. During the Eucarist, the most sacred part of any mass, a woman stood up and started chanting and yelling that woman should be priests. She was not alone she was part of a organization for that cause. it doesnt make sense to me how you can want o be a priest to worship God but can have such disrespec as to interupt the most sacred part of a mass on a sacred day. It seemds like its more self obsorbed in motive than anything

WHile I personally don't see the harm in women being priests, I am OK with McCulloch's solution.

I would point out the I disagree with reality101's reasoning, however.

Reality seems to be saying that because a proponent of women priests behaved in appropriately, therefore we should not allow women priests. If we followed this practice in general, a great many injustices would be perpetrated.

Certainly, for example, one can point to proponents of women's suffrage, abolition of slavery, voting rights, fighting Nazism, religious freedom, etc., etc., who behaved in inappropriate, even illegal or extremely violent ways. Would it have been appropriate for those who opposed these causes to say, "well, John Brown he was a terrorist, and Harriet Tubman broke the law, so we can't be having any abolition of slavery here."

and the second question:
2) Should priests be allowed to marry?

I also believe the answer to this is no. A priest is supposed to be entirly devoted to the priesthood, to God, and to the people he serves. Having a relationship would cause a conflict in interest cause a man is supposed to be devoed entirly to his wife and family and as i said these could easily come into conflict.

Again, I would have no objection, and I think it is certainly making it harder for the Catholics to recruit priests. However, it is a denominational issue, and no longer being in the denomination, I have no really strong opinion.

well i personelly believe in slavery ... haha nah just kidding

bet seriously it is not only that one thing it is also the fact that God hand pick all men to be priests and i think that should be followed in tradition

[Alamanach]

but priest molesting children isnt cause by chastity cause even if chastity wasnt a vow you still wouldnt be allowed do screww little boys that is simply issues among priets andmany priests are gay and become priests so that they dont sin by acting on those urges , also chastity is a vow because it is said that having sex should be an act of love between a man and a women and MUST BE OPEN to the creation of life, without that it is sinful

Chastity wouldn't cause pederasty, but an institution like the priesthood might end up with a higher percentage of men who are inclined to that kind of thing; the chastity vow wouldn't scare them away, while it is going to dissuade men with normal sex drives.

As for marriage, the church permitted priests to marry for the first thousand years of its existence. From one of my favorite books:

The Age of Faith
by Will Durant, pages 541 - 542

In the ninth and tenth centuries the marriage of priests was customary in England, Gaul, and north Italy. Pope Hadrian II (867-72) himself had been a married man; and Bishop Ratherius of Verona (tenth century) reported that practically all priests in his diocese were married. By the beginning of the eleventh century celibacy in the secular clergy was exceptional. It would be a mistake to consider clerical marriage immoral; though often contrary to the canons and ideals of the Church, it was quite in accord with the customs and moral judgments of the times...

The Church had long since opposed clerical marriage on the ground that a married priest, consciously or not, would put his loyalty to his wife and children above his devotion to the Church (Note he said Church, not God! --Alamanach); that for their sake he would be tempted to accumulate money or property; that he would try to transmit his see or benefice to one of his offspring; that an hereditary ecclesiastical caste might in this way develop in Europe as in India; and that the combined economic power of such a propertied priesthood would be too great for the papacy to control... Several councils had demanded celibacy of the clergy; one-- at Pavia in 1018-- had decreed a status of perpetual slavery, and disbarment from inheritance, for all children of priests. But clerical marriage continued.

It took another two hundred years of persistent efforts by the papacy to finally choke it off. But note that the motives behind it were pretty much just political.

A much shorter quote from a different book I think settles both of your questions (Women priests? Married priests?) in one stroke:

1st Timothy 3:2
by Paul of Tarsus

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach...

[McCulloch]

This thread raises an interesting question. In our countries, discrimination based on gender, marital status and color is against the law. Yet churches are allowed to hire or not hire based on gender and marital status. Why not race or ethnicity? What other laws should churches be exempt from?