Bishop Edward Daly Calls for Married Priests

[Anonymous]

As a Catholic convert from the Episcopal. Church, MHO is that the celibacy rule has real value. A priest is an icon of Christ. His life is serving God and his congregation. It is not a "job" that you leave at night to go home to your wife and kids like a lawyer or doctor does. I think respect for priests among the faithful would be undermined if the clergy were not limited to those who are willing to make the extraordinary sacrifice of living without a spouse or children in order to serve God with undivided attention. Obviously that's not the only way to serve God, but I think it makes the priest more effective practically and symbolically. I don't know that I have articulated this well. It is the same with nuns. It is not a vocation for all, or fir many, but their vows enable them to fulfill their mission.

[Anonymous]

A priest is not an icon of anything.
A priest is a person from planet earth
Do not let any religion tell you otherwise

Respect among the faithful for the clergy is gone. The clergy did it themselves

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A priest is not an icon of anything.
A priest is a person from planet earth
Do not let any religion tell you otherwise

Respect among the faithful for the clergy is gone. The clergy did it themselves

My brother is a priest. He was ordained a priest in May, and a deacon in the previous May.

My husband is an adult convert to the faith. He loves to tease my brother about his new "powers," but as faithful Catholics, those abilities--to consecrate the host, to forgive sins, to baptize, to exorcise--they are as real as your ability to love or think. They are gifts from God, not from my brother, who is, indeed, very human.

My brother, and his fellow seminarians, took vows of chastity and obedience willingly, in the same way married Catholics promise fidelity to their spouses. All jokes aside, most humans view marriage as a wonderful thing: lifelong love, faithfulness. Priests' "bride" is the Church, and they see their commitment with be same kind of joy as a groom seeing his bride walking down the aisle.

Husbands "forsake all others" for their wives; priests "forsake all others" for the Church. The mutual love of spouses is a blessing; the life of service as a priest is a blessing. Good priests embrace their celibacy as a blessing--even when it is a cross. Crosses are blessings, whatever form they take, whatever our vocation.

Mainstream culture does not value self-sacrifice, suffering, or chaste love, so it does not understand the beauty in these virtues.

And there are no private sins. So the sins of some faithless priests have created new crosses for their innocent brothers. And yet, young men like my brother still answer the call to a priestly vocation. Thank God.

[Anonymous]

The Orthodox churches have a two-track system, where a priest can be married before he is ordained (but he cannot remarry), or can remain celibate for life.

Most Catholics (in America at least) are cafeteria Catholics anyway, the RadTrads feel free to ignore Rome's directives after Vatican II anyway. The Church did damage unto itself with the kiddie diddlers.

[Anonymous]

About time.