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For many centuries, all clergy in the Roman Catholic Church have been required to be celibate, despite the total absence of any scriptural basis for this policy. Indeed, there is a clear statement in the New Testament against it!
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%203&version=NIV
1 Timothy 3
1 Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. 2 Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full[a] respect. 5 (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)
Considering the repeated scandals involving supposedly celibate Catholic priests molesting children, it seems clear that church leaders should be REQUIRED to marry and be raising a family before they are ordained in the ministry. It is the fact that celibate men are so uncommon and that so few are willing to take up such a demanding lifestyle (now made even more unattractive by the stigma attached now to being a priest), that explains why the Roman Catholic Church commonly moved priests who were child abusers from one parish to another rather than terminate their ministries and allow them to be prosecuted by civil authorities; replacing those priests was simply impossible, and the Church needs priests to administer the sacraments.
The dishonesty of the Catholic Church about this matter is appalling. Allow me to debunk these myths on this Catholic run website:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0014.html
5 Arguments Against Priestly Celibacy and How to Refute Them
1. Allowing priests to marry would end pedophilia.
It is completely untrue that celibate priests are more likely to be pedophiles than any other group of men, married or not. Pedophilia affects only 0.3 percent of the population of Catholic clergy, and sexual abusers in general account for less than 2 percent of Catholic priests. These figures are comparable to rates among married men, as non-Catholic scholar Philip Jenkins points out in his book Pedophiles and Priests. Other Protestant denominations have admitted to having similar problems among their own married clergy, so clearly the problem is not with celibacy.
2. A married clergy would create a larger pool of healthy priestly candidates, solving the current priest shortage.
There are actually plenty of vocations today in faithful dioceses: Denver, Northern Virginia, and Lincoln, Nebraska, have great numbers of men entering the priesthood. If other dioceses, such as Milwaukee, want to answer the question of why they have so few vocations, the answer is simple: Challenge young men to a religious life that is demanding, countercultural, sacrificial, and loyal to the Holy Father and Catholic teaching. This is the surest way to guarantee a greater number of vocations.
3. Married priests relate better to issues concerning marriage and the family.
To put it bluntly, one doesn’t need to be an adulterer to counsel other adulterers. Priests understand the sacrificial nature and sanctity of marriage in a way that few others do. Who better to counsel a person in the ways of keeping the marital vow of fidelity than one who keeps the vow of celibacy?
4. It’s unnatural for men to be celibate.
This idea reduces men to animals, creatures who can’t live without their sexual urges being gratified. But humans are not animals. Humans make choices about the gratification of their appetites. We can control and channel our desires in a way that sets us apart from the rest of the animal world. And again, most sexual abusers are not celibate. It’s sexual license that breeds sexual abuse, not celibacy!
5. Celibacy in the Latin rite is unfair. Since the Eastern rite allows married priests and the Latin rite allows married priests who have converted from Episcopalianism and Lutheranism, why can’t all priests be married?
The discipline of celibacy among priests is one of the distinctive marks of the Roman Catholic tradition. Anyone who chooses to become a priest accepts the discipline. The Eastern rite, Lutheranism, and Episcopalianism, on the other hand, have a long tradition of married priests and the infrastructure and experience to handle it. However, Eastern rite priests and married priests who have converted from Lutheranism or Episcopalianism are NOT allowed to marry after their ordination or remarry after the death of their wife. In addition, the Eastern Church only chooses bishops from among their celibate, unmarried priests, clearly demonstrating that they see an inherent value in the nature of celibacy.
First, no one seriously argues that ending priestly celibacy would also end pedophilia, but it would make it a lot easier to get rid of any priests who abuse children. So the church made a strawman fallacy here! Also, the exact percentage of Protestant clergy that abuse children is not stated. Why not?
Second, challenging men to abandon hope of marriage hardly makes them eager to do so.
Third, if you have never flown a plane, but only drive army tanks, what business would you have instructing student pilots how to fly planes?
Fourth, YES, CELIBACY IS UNNATURAL! Humans are made to reproduce, and suppressing the sex drive, so essential to the survival of the human species, should be considered an offense to God, not a sign of holiness. Didn’t he give us all sex organs?
Fifth, unfairness is not the issue. Logic is. There is nothing logical about denying an entire profession the family life others have.
5 Arguments for Priestly Celibacy
1. Celibacy reaffirms marriage.
In a society that is completely saturated with sex, celibate priests are living proof that sexual urges can be controlled and channeled in a positive way. Far from denigrating the sexual act, celibacy acknowledges the goodness of sex within marriage by offering it up as a sacrifice to God. The sanctity of marriage is dishonored if it is treated merely as an outlet for sexual impulses. Rather, we as Christians are called to understand marriage as the inviolable commitment of a husband and wife to love and honor one another. A priest offers up a similar commitment of love to the Church, a bond that cannot be broken and that is treated with the same gravity and respect as in marriage.
2. Celibacy is scriptural.
Fundamentalists will tell you that celibacy has no basis in the Bible whatsoever, saying that Christians are called to “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). This mandate speaks to humanity in general, however, and overlooks numerous passages in the Bible that support the celibate life. In 1 Corinthians, for example, Paul actually seems to prefer the celibate life: “Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. . . . Those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. . . . The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided” (7:27-34). This is not to say that all men should be celibate, however; Paul explains that celibacy is a calling for some and not for others by saying, “Each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” (7:7).
Jesus Himself speaks of celibacy in Matthew 19:11-12: “Not all can accept this word, but only those to whom it is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.” Again, the emphasis is on the special nature of celibacy, one for which not all men are suited, but one that nevertheless gives glory to “the kingdom of God.”
Perhaps the best evidence for the scriptural support of celibacy is that Jesus Himself practiced it!
3. Celibacy is historical.
Most people assume that the celibate priesthood is a convention introduced by the Church fairly late in history. On the contrary, there is evidence that even the earliest Church fathers, such as St. Augustine, St. Cyril, and St. Jerome, fully supported the celibate priesthood. The Spanish Council of Elvira (between 295 and 302) and the First Council of Aries (314), a kind of general council of the West, both enacted legislation forbidding all bishops, priests, and deacons to have conjugal relations with their wives on penalty of exclusion from the clergy. Even the wording of these documents suggests that the councils were not introducing a new rule but rather maintaining a previously established tradition. In 385, Pope Siricius issued the first papal decree on the subject, saying that “clerical continence” was a tradition reaching as far back as apostolic times. While later councils and popes would pass similar edicts, the definitive promulgation of the celibate, unmarried priesthood came at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 under Pope Gregory VII. Far from being a law forced upon the medieval priesthood, it was the acceptance of celibacy by priests centuries earlier that eventually led to its universal promulgation in the twelfth century.
4. Celibacy emphasizes the unique role of the priest.
The priest is a representative of Christ, an alter Christus. In this respect, the priest understands his identity by following the example of Jesus, a man who lived His life in perfect chastity and dedication to God. As Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe of Grado explains, “[A priest’s] being and his acting must be like Christ’s: undivided” (The Relevance of Priestly Celibacy Today, 1993). As such, the sacramental priesthood is holy, something set apart from the rest of the world. Just as Christ sacrificed His life for His bride, the Church, so too must a priest offer up his life for the good of Christ’s people.
5. Celibacy allows the priest’s first priority to be the Church.
The image used to describe the role of the priest is one of marriage to the Church. Just as marriage is the total gift of self to another, the priesthood requires the total gift of self to the Church. A priest’s first duty is to his flock, while a husband’s first duty is to his wife. Obviously, these two roles will often conflict, as St. Paul noted and as many married priests will tell you. A celibate priest is able to give his undivided attention to his parishioners without the added responsibility of caring for his own family. They are able to pick up and go whenever necessary, whether this involves moving to a new parish or responding to a late-night crisis. Celibate priests are better able to respond to these frequent changes and demands on their time and attention.
Point No 1 is rancid bull$#it. There are too many examples of supposedly celibate priests violating their vows to take that argument seriously. And when you have a ruling class that limits itself to people that try to suppress their sex drive (which is by nature abnormal), it naturally results in all sort of absurdities, such as prohibitions of birth control, abortion, and denying women equal rights in the church.
The scriptural references to celibacy had nothing to do with with making an entire profession restricted to celibate men. Rather, it was about allowing men who have no interest in marriage to live without it. No one should be forced to marry.
It doesn’t matter how long a stupid idea has been practiced. If it is harmful, it must be ended!
The only unique role that should ever have been in the church was the Apostles who were among its founding members. Anyone beyond them should have been considered brothers and sisters in Christ.
And making an institution your first priority rather than the needs of your family and others makes one reluctant to abandon or criticize the institution when something goes horribly wrong within it.
Reading that web page made me all the more eager to see the Roman Catholic Church crash and burn like the Hindenburg!
Related Articles
- The Myth of Clerical Celibacy, Revisited (opentabernacle.wordpress.com)
- If Celibacy Can Be Ignored So Easily What Is Its Raison d’être? (archemdis.wordpress.com)
- Married German ordained as Catholic priest (thegreatone22.wordpress.com)
- Big Surprise: Straight Priests Abuse Nuns (hambydammit.wordpress.com)
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
Simply not true. Pedophilia is a real psychological disorder marked by both sexual interest in prepubescents AND a lack of interest in adults. But then, I guess there’s no convincing the Church of this fact since it still regards homosexuality as a choice.
Possibly. It’s is kind of daft… well, no… it’s barking mad to suggest that healthy adult heterosexual males will flock to a profession defined by lifelong abstinence from arguably the greatest natural pleasure available to them. If there are adequate incentives to become a priest, and you take away this huge disincentive, yes, it would probably make it more attractive.
Well, yes and no. The teachings of the church regarding marriage, sex, and birth control are medieval and thoroughly unscientific. It doesn’t matter who teaches them. They’ll still be awful. But it’s possible that married clergy would have the good sense to at least gloss over the most horrifying parts.
Incredibly unnatural. The benefits of regular sex are so well documented, and the negative effects of celibacy so profound that the Pope ought to apologize to its priests the same way it (finally) got around to apologizing to Galileo.
This one’s a non-starter. Who’s to say that God doesn’t want his priests to suffer? We’ve only got his word that he’s got our best interests at heart, and humanity doesn’t have such a great record when it trusts dictators who say they have our best interests at heart.
(Dale Husband: Well said! I was attacking the Catholic practice from a Biblical perspective [which is ironic, since I’m not even a theist, let alone a Christian] and you went straight for debunking it from a strictly secular perspective. Highly commendable!)
The Roman Catholic Church, its “mother,” the Orthodox Church and their bastard “daughters,” the Protestants, are the greatest mass murderers at least in the Western world. They slaughtered one another as “heretics” and persecuted the hapless Jews for centuries. Whenever they could take a break from murdering one another and raping one anothers’ womenfolk, they hunted Christians, who mostly hid in the mountains, burning any they caught.
Then the mad murdering Muzzies, whose religion/political system was founded by the Orthodox Church when it was THE established Church of the Roman Empire, four centuries before the big bust-up (Great Schism of 1054), shook off its Catholic control and went on a 1500 year rampage, which is cranking up again. Guess now that the atheistic quasi-religion of Communism has quieted down, the gap is being filled by the mad murdering Muzzies.
Not that all or even most atheists are Communists; only that Communists are atheists.
The issue of priestly celibacy arose due to the merging of Paganism with the majority of the “visible church.” Priestly celibacy is NOT doing without sexual intercourse. For centuries priests openly maintained concubines. They had sex with nuns. Popes begat children by both formal concubines and by nuns.
Celibacy is being unmarried, not doing without sex. The Romans and Greeks, whose culture the Romans largely adopted, prohibited polygamy, having more than one wife at a time. Men were free to have concubines and to have sexual relations with slave women. But only the children of a legal “1st-class” wife had a legal right to inherit from their father, which was the point: to prevent complexities of inheritance.
The Pagan temples before the rise of the Catholic Church did not allow their priests to have legal wives, only concubines and slave women. Their “virgins” (nuns) were not permitted to marry. They earned money for the temple by being sacred prostitutes. Their children were offered as sacrifices in three ways: 1) burning them on an altar to Molech/Saturn or other “gods” who craved human sacrifice; 2) consecrating them to be servants to the temples and future priests and nuns, temple slaves, and other retainers; and, 3) sale as slaves, concubines, or wives. This carried over into the Catholic Church as it blended with Paganism, but with the worst abuse, human sacrifice, prohibited.
Practices seeking to avoid procreation were inherited from the Christian element in the transformation of Paganism into the “Christian” Church. Fellatio, cunnilingus, analingus, anal penetration, homosexuality, bestiality, masturbation, and other perversions of the sexual aspect of life were forbidden with the severest penalty the Church could impose, excommunication, exile from the Church. One excommunicated, the civil government could impose penalties from fines, whippings, mutilation to death on those cast out from the Church.
Sex was returned to its original purpose, propagation of humankind. Marriage, including concubinage, was required for sexual expression. Fornication, sexual expression outside marriage, was forbidden but not heavily enforced. Fornication was forbidden mostly to women, for women produce children and children without recognized fathers were understood to be disruptive of society. Prostitution was “winked” at as long as it was fairly discreet, for “fallen” women had to have some way of earning a living. Many went into the nunneries.
Important words are missing:
“Prohibition of practices seeking to avoid procreation was inherited…”
Priest’s and Nuns are so unnatural it’s sillly to even think there is a justification of their celibacy. Would pedophilia drop if Priests were allowed to marry of course it would. To say 0.2 Preists are pedophiles is insane. If Pennsylvania has 100 Preists not even one of them is sick in the head. Men that are Pedophiles choose to become Priests for one reason they are mentally unable to have an adult as a partner they are sick mentally and Nuns while most likely in the profession for the right reasons are also obviously tortured by either social ackwardness or our socialtal view of being not attractive. I never met a Priest I didn’t Think was creepy nor a Nun that was attractive
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