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richardmgreen
Many years ago one of the Popes said that men needed to "approach their wives in holiness" etc.. Senator Earl Butz then retorted "he no playa da game, he no maka de rules." WWIII just about commenced after that.
But really, the clergy abuse from what I've heard existed all the time. I'm Jewish and I tend to have a big mouth about certain things but the Jews always had a hard time understanding the Catholic's insistance that the clergy not be married. Rabbis are encouraged to marry as early as possible to avoid all kinds of problems.
Many cite Jesus as the example of celibacy that the Church and its representatives are supposed to follow. However if Jesus was both a Jew and a Rabbi, then this immediately creates some historical difficulties. First and foremost, as a Jew and Rabbi, Jesus would have been expected to obey the Mishnaic Law requiring marriage before teaching. Furthermore, the Jewish orthodox rigorously condemned celibacy, for it was commonplace and expected for Rabbis to have children. Some Jewish writers of the time even considered celibacy on par with murder.
So this begs the question: Why is there no mention of this in the Bible? Many posit two possibilities: One, Jesus was a Jew who did all the above, but after the Nicean Ecumenical Councial around 400 AD, when Constantine oversaw the Bishops who voted Jesus equal to God, they subsequently edited out Biblical passages that may have been in contradiction to it. It is interesting to note that this vote wasn't unanimous, and most notably the Arian Christians were some of the most indignent and vocal critics of this change of the former Canon. Interestingly the Catholic Church recently commented after the furor over the "Davinci Code," that Jesus not being celibate wouldn't necessarily be incompatible with Catholicism.
The other obvious and only remaining alternative would have to be that Jesus wasn't Jewish--at least by birth--hence His celibacy would have been moot insofar as orthodox Judaism was concerned. I leave the reader to research and decide for him/herself. At least now, we live in an age where we can discuss such things rationally without fear of mortal consequences.
So is Catholic celibacy divinely inspired or is it merely a human construct, for whatever reasons, that has no particular spiritual significance? I seem to recall that either Catholicism's Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox permits its clergy to marry. So apparently they're not breaking any God-like laws, else Roman Catholicism would have been all over them on CNN.
So what constitutes an inerrant belief? Is there such a thing even for a Roman Catholic? The Church has had some rather curious beliefs in the past it insisted were inerrant: Does life truly begin at conception? Sure, the Church adamantly says "YES!" now, but at one time it was held that a child wasn't a living being until it took it's first breath, somewhat reminscent of God breathing the life/spirit/re--SPIR---ation into Adam, as the two words were somewhat synonomous at one time.
What's more Catholicism didn't always have the same Apostle's Creed, confession, communion, and some may be astonished to discover that just like the Hassidic Jews and Gnostic Christians who still do to this day, Christianity accepted reincarnation until 553 AD when it was dropped from the doctrine at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople.
The point is that whether all or some of those changes in Catholicism were divinely or merely materially conceived, such would have profound implications for the significance such decisions and subsequent beliefs ultimately have in regard to science, mysticism, politics, medicine and the judicial system.
CNFT