|
Post by Harris on Aug 2, 2009 11:21:25 GMT
Does anyone else have any thoguht on this debate about whether celibacy goes back to the Apostles? This is a very interesting point and one well worth discussion. All we can really say for certain is that most Jewish men at that time were married by their late teens. Young girls (maybe as young as 12 or 13) were betrothed to men (this was like the courtship period) and sometime later, (usually 1 – 2 years maximum) the couple would have been married. It was the duty of Jewish men at the time to start a family and it has been suggested by the Torah of this period that each man bore two sons before the age of 40. If a Jewish girl became pregnant during this courtship period of betrothal (the pre marriage state whilst you are promised to a Jewish man), the punishment by Jewish law for the girl was death by stoning. This was the situation in which Mary found herself circa 0AD. However, the scriptures inform us that Saint Joseph was a righteous man and he took Mary under his wing, so to speak. If the apostles were celibate, they really would have been the exception, rather than the rule, and they would all have to have been recruited very early in their lives either before or during the betrothal period and definitely before they were married. For a young Jewish man to decide to leave home during a period in his life when he was in a situation where he was betrothed to a Jewish girl would have raised many social problems for the families involved in the relationship. Marriage was not only about love, but it was a social and business commitment at this time between families. However, I would be willing to accept that if someone of great charisma were to arrive in a small Judean village (for instance a man with what appears to be divine powers) it is perfectly believable that a Jewish man would risk the ostracization of his community to go and serve what he considered the greater good. I'd be interested to see quotes from the new testament you refer to that hint towards the celibacy of the 12. I'm not aware of any, but I'm always open to new readings of passages.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Aug 4, 2009 10:45:02 GMT
If Ezigbotutu thinks Christianity is misogynistic, he should see what the Neoplatonists and Manichaeans were saying. The fact that some pagan religions practiced and still practice celibacy (indeed, monasticism) is perfectly well known to any educated Christian and has often been cited as reflecting the natural yearning of humanity to seek the divine Wisdom even though the price may be hard. Ezigbotutu seems to think that any form of sexual self-restraint is self-evidently ridiculous and demented (if his quotations are meant to make some other point, he has not explained it); in fact since sexuality has implications which are not confined to the individual but touch on many others (sexual partners, children, etc - this was even more so the case before the development of modern medication and chemical contraception) just about any society will seek to regulate and restrain it, and there are many ways of life which demand a total dedication which it is difficult to reconcile with family obligations. In relation to Harris's point - First, those who argue that celibacy goes back to the Apostles do not maintain that the Apostles were all virgins but that they practiced continence after their calling. The Gospel makes specific reference to St. Peter's mother-in-law and one of te Apostolic Letters in the New Testament refers to the daughters of Philip. Secondly, there is some evidence that some Jews practiced celibacy as a form of religious commitment. The Essenes mentioned by Philo and Josephus are believed to have been celibate (possibly only the hard core of the sect did so, living surrounded by less zealous followers like an early mediaeval monastic village). The Book of Jeremiah specifically states that God told the prophet that he was not to take a wife. The fact that present-day Orthodox Jews do not practice celibacy does not mean that this was true of first-century Judaism; Orthodox Jews do not cultivate apocalyptic beliefs and we know first-century JEws did so from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Celibacy is a form of radical witness - remember that in antiquity people relied on their children for support int heir old age, and to have no children was seen as the most terrible misfortune possible. To embrace celibacy is to bear witness as a ctiizen of the coming Kingdom.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 4, 2009 13:16:46 GMT
I might point out that there are some Catholic commentators who claim celibacy is of apostolic origin and the Orthodox practice a departure therefrom (there are of course clear scriptural references to it, and it was a widespread practice in the Eastern Church from very early on - the claim sometimes put forward that it was invented to preserve the Church's property in the middle ages is a gross exaggeration). I tend to be sceptical of this view, because the view that clerical celibacy is a disciplinary rather than doctrinal matter has been dominant for so long it would be a bit odd to overturn it now, and because it implies that the Orthodox and Eastern Rites should abandon their current discipline, whcih is not going to happen. (The second is of course linked to the first - only certainty that it was apostolic and doctrinal could justify overturning such a weight of precedent and adopting a policy with such far-reaching implications.) Does anyone else have any thoguht on this debate about whether celibacy goes back to the Apostles? A book entitled Clerical Celibacy in East and West by Father Roman Cholij created quite a stir when it was released in the early 1990s. Father Cholij is a priest of the Ukrainian Catholic Exarchate of Britain (i.e. the diocese of Ukrainian Eastern-rite Catholics in Britain). The book, a development of Father Cholij's doctoral thesis in canon law, argues for the apostolic origin of priestly celibacy. An updated and condensed version of it may be found on the Vatican website: www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_01011993_chisto_en.html In describing the divergence between Eastern-rite and Western (Roman Rite) Catholics, I should say the rule in the west tends to be for Eastern Catholic priests to be celibate.
|
|
|
Post by Harris on Aug 5, 2009 10:58:43 GMT
In relation to Harris's point - First, those who argue that celibacy goes back to the Apostles do not maintain that the Apostles were all virgins but that they practiced continence after their calling. The Gospel makes specific reference to St. Peter's mother-in-law and one of te Apostolic Letters in the New Testament refers to the daughters of Philip. But is there compelling evidence to suggest the 12 were celibate after the followed Jesus and helped him with his ministry? There was no requirement for celibacy for church leaders in the first or second centuries. Paul specifically confirmed that the apostles had a wife in 1 Corinthians 9:4-6 as does Polycrates of Ephesus. In 1 Corinthians, Paul does recommend celibacy, but also recommends marriage for those who are not suited for celibacy. Since the Apostle Philip had at least three daughters, he could not have practiced celibacy in that period of his life. The question is, when did he have his daughters? Before or after he joined Jesus' Minstery? Its a similar situation for Peter (Matthew 8:14) and Judas (Acts 1:20). All three synoptic Gospels agree that Peter, the rock on which Jesus founded his church, was married, with a mother-in-law that Jesus cured of a fever. Paul exclaims in his anguished first letter to the Corinthians, "Have I no right to take a Christian wife about with me, like the rest of the apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?" "Cephas," meaning "rock," is the Aramaic equivalent of Peter, whose inheritors the popes profess to be. If he was married, why not they? The Roman Hippolytus notes that in the third century, celibacy was not required for the clergy in "Refutation of All Heresies", Book IX, Chapter VII. It appears that around the time of Origen and Tertullian the celibacy subject bacame an issue for the western church and before this time, there was no real issue with it. Secondly, there is some evidence that some Jews practiced celibacy as a form of religious commitment. The Essenes mentioned by Philo and Josephus are believed to have been celibate (possibly only the hard core of the sect did so, living surrounded by less zealous followers like an early mediaeval monastic village). The Book of Jeremiah specifically states that God told the prophet that he was not to take a wife. The fact that present-day Orthodox Jews do not practice celibacy does not mean that this was true of first-century Judaism; Orthodox Jews do not cultivate apocalyptic beliefs and we know first-century JEws did so from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Essenes seemed to have practiced a form of celibacy in expectation for the coming of the Messiah. From what we can gather from Scripture, John the Baptist appears to have been celibate, along with two of the greatest Hebrew prophets, Elijah and Jeremiah. That is true, however some early Christian sects (such as some of the Gnostic groups, but NOT all) practiced absolute sexual licence. Once again the question seems to be "Were the apostles celibate after the time of their apostolic call by Jesus"? Following this, the question then arises: "If priestly celibacy dates from the Apostles, why is it that only in the fourth century do we begin to see actual Church law enforcing celibacy"?Thus, does it follow that if the apostles were sex free after they joined Jesus, any claim for Biblical authority for enjoining celibacy would mean that the church was in error until 1074 when it was decreed and enforced?
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 5, 2009 11:31:45 GMT
All this is very interesting, but has little bearing on Ireland's suggested loss of vocations. Protestant and Jewish groups are not over brimming with vocations to the ministry and rabbinate in the west either - and celibacy isn't an issue here.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 5, 2009 12:09:21 GMT
In fairness, Pytagorean monasticism, Essene asceticism and Orthodox canon law have little to do with the vocations crisis in Ireland right now.
First and formost, the decrease in vocations reflects a decrease in religious practice among the middle aged and younger generations. That is the root. And there seems to be no strategy to deal with it.
|
|
|
Post by Harris on Aug 5, 2009 15:31:54 GMT
All this is very interesting, but has little bearing on Ireland's suggested loss of vocations. Protestant and Jewish groups are not over brimming with vocations to the ministry and rabbinate in the west either - and celibacy isn't an issue here. Thats a good point about the other groups alaisdir. There is no doubt religion as a whole is experencing Vocation problems at the moment. Islam appears to be the only one of the major religions that appears to be growing at a rapid rate. I do feel, however, the priestly celibacy issue is one of the factors affecting vocations within the catholic church at present. It would be interesting to see the results of a secret poll undertaken on Catholic priests to obtain their views on the issue.
|
|
|
Post by Harris on Aug 5, 2009 15:36:30 GMT
In fairness, Pytagorean monasticism, Essene asceticism and Orthodox canon law have little to do with the vocations crisis in Ireland right now. First and formost, the decrease in vocations reflects a decrease in religious practice among the middle aged and younger generations. That is the root. And there seems to be no strategy to deal with it. I agree totally. I brought up the Celibacy issue as being a possible reason for a lack of vocations in the present time within the church. I think the delving into the history was prompted by hibernicus and I engaging in a discussion regarding the History of Celibacy in the early church with specific regard to the apostles rather than what happening at present in the church. The topics are somewhat related if not directly so.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 7, 2009 11:31:01 GMT
All this is very interesting, but has little bearing on Ireland's suggested loss of vocations. Protestant and Jewish groups are not over brimming with vocations to the ministry and rabbinate in the west either - and celibacy isn't an issue here. Thats a good point about the other groups alaisdir. There is no doubt religion as a whole is experencing Vocation problems at the moment. Islam appears to be the only one of the major religions that appears to be growing at a rapid rate. I think the problem is uneven on a global scale. The Vatican will release figures which show that vocations and priestly ordinations are on the rise - and they will be correct. The problem with these statistics is that they relate mainly to the developing world and to former communist block countries. The social circumstances in these countries are probably not terribly different from those in Ireland in the boom days. The problem exists in the developed world. In relation to Christianity, Orthodoxy seems to be holding its own generally speaking. The fall of various communist regimes gave those churches a tremendous boost and there was a monastic revival all over the former communist world. Eastern European immigrants generally rally around their churches and travel great distances to attend Holy Week liturgies - in Ireland no less than elsewhere (the last couple of censuses indicate that Orthodoxy is the fastest growing religious persuasion in Ireland at present, something you won't hear guys like Justin Barrett or Gerry McGeough saying too openly). However, this in an atmosphere of short term immigration and it will be interesting to see whether this is the case when generation of Irish-born and educated Orthodox come of age. I note that no Orthodox school has been opened here yet. I think this is reflective of elsewhere in the west, so I don't know how long this phenomonon will last. Fundamentalist Protestantism is also growing rapidly. This is much talked about in the US, but I have come across the trend in Northern Europe too (for example, Hibernicus is better informed than I am on this, but I think the divergence between the DUP and TUV has such fundamentalism as one of its factors). I think this type of church has to be, as Michael McDowell once said of the PDs, 'radical or redundant'. The problem is that at some point, such a church will either become mainstream or remain radical. I suspect that there is a high turn over - that they bring in a lot of young fired up enthusiasts first, but that as adherents get older, they may be more comfortable in less radical, more mainstream Protestantism. The picture in the Catholic Church is uneven. For example, the Archdiocese of Paris, a number of Australian dioceses and a few US dioceses are doing ok for vocations at present and the question begs what do they have that Catholic Ireland doesn't. I think that the Irish Church has a perennial attitude that we are there to teach, rather than to learn from, other churches. Also within Catholicism, traditionalist groups are doing well, but it is a limited number. Ireland has not been to the forefront of supplying vocations to traditionalist institutes. I think the issue an important one, though I am opposed to it, I believe it needs to be discussed openly and thoroughly. Where I differ, is that I think it is separate from the vocations issue. I think the question is where it is right to require celibacy of (almost) all Catholic priests in general as a matter of principle rather than if we should allow married priests to solve the current vocations problem. I have outlined the Orthodox situation, which is what I think the Church would go for, but I think it is laden with problems - for example, I don't think having a priestly caste within Catholicism is a good thing, and the Orthodox married clergy is dominated by priestly families (this has happened anyway in many rural Irish dioceses where one still has sets of brothers or uncle-nephew teams forming power blocks). The Orthodox priest's wife is expected almost to be a priest's daughter. However, I know the same process happens in Judaism and I have heard anectdotal evidence of it happening all across the Protestant Churches. For example, when Scott Hahn contemplated leaving the Presbyterian ministry to become a Catholic (and unlike his Lutheran or Anglican counterparts, becoming a Catholic priest was not an issue - ditto for a few other married Presbyterian ministers who became Catholic at the same time), his wife Kimberly burst into tears and told him she was the daughter, grand-daughter and sister of Presbyterian ministers and until now, the wife of a Presbyterian minister. What I believe is that in an open discussion all the possible pitfalls in an end to celibacy should come up. I would have no doubt that most middle-aged Catholic priests in Ireland would opt for an end to celibacy and that this would comprise of a majority of active priests in Ireland at present. Many of them have been open about it too - Pádraig Standún of the Tuam Archdiocese has written novels in which it is a central theme; Jackie Robinson of Ossory told an RTE interviewer on primetime television that he would like to see an end to priestly celibacy and that if it ended he would be looking for a wife; Brendan Hoban of Killala indicated he would be happier in a non-celibate priesthood. But these guys have something in common, which they share with the majority of active priests in Ireland. They studied and were ordained in the immediate aftermath of the 2nd Vatican Council. Many contemporary seminarians abroad, in the US and France for example, were told it was only a matter of time before celibacy went (we're talking 1970 here). I don't believe this was said as openly in Irish seminaries at the time, but I do think it was generally believed that this would be the case. Maybe not Paul VI, but certainly the next pope... The next pope, effectively, was John Paul II, who wouldn't do it...and he lasted over 26 years to be succeeded by an even more conservative Benedict XVI....basically some dreams weren't realised here. I feel sorry for guys who were ordained believing they would soon have the opportunity to marry - they were conned by seminary lecturers behaving irresponsibly. We are all familiar with the process of laicisation of priests, but there is another process of annullment of Holy Orders, which works the same as annullment of marriage - it is a declaration that a man was not validly ordained to the priesthood. The traditional ground for this were duress (as in marriage) or if at the time, the man lacked the intellectual capacity to make a free decision to become a priest (that he was an imbecile or had psychiatric problems preventing him giving committments). Well, some men ordained in the 1970s had their ordinations annulled on the grounds that they were falsely led to believe they would soon have the right to marry. Over all, this kind of thinking, I believe, had a bad effect on priestly morale. Whereas I don't believe celibacy leads to sexual abuse of either children or adults (this happens, and it doesn't get as much publicity as the other, but it is a problem too), I can be persuaded that the co-incidence of the expectations of priests in the west in the 1970s with the rapidly increasing tolerance of sexual promiscuity in western culture, helped drive the offence rate of paedophile priests through the roof in the 1970s, which studies have shown is by far the worst decade for these type of offences among Catholic clergy.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Aug 7, 2009 16:23:18 GMT
The point about the historical discussion is that one of the features in the vocations crisis is a loss of understanding of the rationale for celibacy - it's a crisis of faith. We've gone from the assumption that it must be right because the Pope says it (because, so the view was, that means God says it) to an assumption that whatever the Pope says only goes because the Pope says it as an arbitrary act of will, and all that is necessary for change is that the Pope should say something different. Thye're both I think forms of positivism. The more religious wing of the DUP were upset at the Paisley turnaround because they saw things in black and white terms and saw Paisley's religious and political intransigence as part of the same basic outlook. Allister himself is a Free Presbyterian (his family were among the church's earliest members) but I don't know if TUV supoporters are more religious than DUP. I think the church organisation has stepped back from involvement in the DUP; some go along out of loyalty to Paisley and some simply stay at home. I think the latter will win out; fundamentalists often tend to withdraw from what they see as a corrupt world and try to create a little enclave of their own. With the DUP and FP part of what has happened is a generational thing. Paisley's first church members/leaders were working-class or rural and simply took their political and religious beliefs for granted (don't forget Paisley started out preaching to shipyard workers in East Belfast) and were not terribly articulate. Younger fundamentalists who have had more formal education and found themselves in situations where they had to defend their faith against those holding other views tend to gravitate to Robinson because Robinson's wing were interested in articulacy in a way that Paisley's old guard were not. Allister was part of the Robinson circle originally. I think fundamentalism in NI is declining over time. Steve Bruce's line is that fundamentalists may grow but their growth is matched by shrinkage of the mainline denominations, and that their recruitment comes from people who are reacting against the mainline's secularisation; he argues that the fundamentalist position presupposes a certain attachment to Christianty to begin with. In America evangelicalism seems to become more shallow and intellectually unsophisticated; it has the pulling power but evangelicals who become seriously interested in theology tend to go Catholic, Orthodox or Calvinist. It's like scissors-stone-paper; pure fundamentalism has great force in attracting converts but difficulty in keeping those who are in any way sophisticated because it's so simplistic; the mainline (including Catholicism) is more sophisticated but worse at attracting people, because it has lost to a great extent the fierce commitment that attracts unsophisticated people who are trying to make sense of their lives. (I might add that many people were attracted to pre-vatican II Catholicism not despite its authoritarianism but because of it, because it offered certainty. I think this had good as well as bad features, but at present we are all too aware of the bad and we must work through that and come to terms with it before the good can be revived.) One of Peter Hitchens' pet nightmares (and many of his nightmares are mares' nests IMHO - I just throw this one out as an idea) is that the chaos and anomie of much of modern British society suggest a potential audience for a new John Wesley, preaching a religious revival based on individual moral reform, but that the Christian churches look very unlikely to produce such a figure - so what if the newWesley were to be a Muslim? I think this is unlikely because so much of Islam is culture-specific, but it's worth bearing in mind. I used to be puzzled by how anyone could believe it, but the more Ilearn about it the more I see the force of its appeal (though I don't believe it).
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Aug 7, 2009 16:46:22 GMT
Incidentally, Michael Harding the novelist and IRISH TIMES columnist (who served as a priest, I think in Clogher, for a few years in the early 80s) is a good example of someone who went through seminary in the belief that everything was going to change and who decided after a couple of years of John Paul II that he had joined under false pretences.
I seem to remember a reference in his column to having a girlfriend while at seminary (though I may have misread this) and for the last 20 years he has denounced clerical life as misogynistic and spiritually barren with such intensity that it surprises me that he should ever have wanted to be a priest at all.
|
|
|
Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 9, 2009 16:32:40 GMT
Incidentally, Michael Harding the novelist and IRISH TIMES columnist (who served as a priest, I think in Clogher, for a few years in the early 80s) is a good example of someone who went through seminary in the belief that everything was going to change and who decided after a couple of years of John Paul II that he had joined under false pretences. I seem to remember a reference in his column to having a girlfriend while at seminary (though I may have misread this) and for the last 20 years he has denounced clerical life as misogynistic and spiritually barren with such intensity that it surprises me that he should ever have wanted to be a priest at all. I will skip any posts by the contributor who has no interest in either debating or discussing anything here [ now deleted - moderator]. The former Father Michael Harding was a priest of the Kilmore diocese, briefly - who wrote a very racy novella entitled 'Priest' while he was still in the active ministry - it was only in the late 1980s that he actually left the priesthood. Sounds as if he may have been carried along by the 'Spirit of Vatican II' rollercoaster until he realised it was going nowhere - and he got off, feeling very bitter. You may have misread the case of Michael Harding, but there would have been nothing unusual about a seminarian having a girlfriend at the time he was in Maynooth.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 10, 2009 10:50:36 GMT
Looks like Michael Harding is another guy on the 'ignorance of Catholic Doctrine' list and another reason why Ireland is losing vocations.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 11, 2009 9:52:27 GMT
One would ask what was in the air in Irish seminaries - religious and diocesan - which gave us: Pádraig Standún, Pat O'Brien, Brendan Hoban, Kevin Hegarty, John O'Donoghue (RIP), Michael Harding, Pat Buckley, Iggy O'Donovan OSA, Brian D'Arcy CP and other besides. These are men of a similar age from various parts of Ireland who have all gone on similar trajectories. Slightly older, you have Joe Dunn (RIP), Peter Lemass (RIP), Jackie Robinson, Colm Kilcoyne. You don't have many younger priests in that age bracket - even if Fathers Éamonn Conway and Eugene Duffy in Mary Immaculate are pushing out the edges. The episode involving Rev Olan Rynne of the Galway diocese was a glitch about which the less said the better.
Of the priests I mentioned, only Pat Buckley and Iggy O'Donovan were ever publicly disciplined, if Kevin Hegarty lost his editorship of Intercom it was not a canonical disciplining as such (priests often forget lay people who are depending on an income lose jobs all the time without turning it into a national issue). Michael Harding and John O'Donoghue both left the active ministry of their own accord.
It is also true that though I think Father David O'Hanlon picked some unnecessary fights and allowed some of the media to use him to stoke up trouble, I do believe him to be an asset to the Meath diocese. But when I think of the venom of the old fogies -the Galway Augustinian Dick Lyng is cited in the Ecumenism thread - and I recall major opposition by priests to Bishop Smith's ordination of David O'Hanlon before he enjoyed his 15 minutes of infamy.
After the response to Fr O'Hanlon's letter in the Irish Times regarding Mary Robinson's visit to John Paul II, a team of 10 older priests who in Fr O'Hanlon's words had once been seen as the up-and-coming generation was about more than presidential attire. It was a dog in a manger approach - as if a younger orthodox priest pricked the collective sensibilities of an older heterodox set.
I think this particular public confrontation between the Spirit-of-Vatican-Two club and a representive of Neo-Orthodoxy briefly lifted the blinds on the dramas playing privately in seminaries all over the west from the mid-1960s on and that this is critical to understanding the question of the vocations slump in Ireland in recent decades.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 11, 2009 12:29:46 GMT
I could think of a couple more older generation people - both Austin Flannery OP and Enda McDonagh come to mind.
The bulk of the diocesan clergy mentioned above sat at the feet of Enda McDonagh in Maynooth.
|
|