By Edgar Davie
Salem-News
February 13, 2010
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february132010/catholic_part3.php
UNITED STATES -- St. Bernard of Clairvaux correctly prophesied in 1135 AD, "Take from the Church an honorable marriage bed, and do you not fill it with concubineage, incest, homosexuality, and every kind of uncleanness?"
An examination of ancient changes in Church teaching during the second and third centuries reveals similar changes in Jesus' original teachings also began to appear in some areas as Christianity quickly spread throughout the Roman world.
Many brilliant scholars and philosophers from pagan religions became fascinated with the resurrected Christ and converted, becoming influential Christian teachers who believed priests should not despoil themselves with sex. These converts are known as Patristic Fathers, and while they were good and pious men, they also brought with them non-Christian philosophies that would forever affect the relationships of men and women, and marriage.
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| Disallowing communion for priests that had commited sex crimes was considered as far back as 306 A.D. |
Little did they understand that Christianity initially expanded via House-churches, with priests supported by their wives as teachers (1Corinthians 16:19)
Defeating paganism and gaining pagan converts were important goals for the growing Christian Church. This is where the story of mandatory celibacy really begins. It is a story of change shrouded in the midst of a time before 350 AD, when pseudo-Christian writings were considered to be a legitimate source of Christian scripture, and popes were unchallengeable when claiming to speak ad hoc for Christ.
For this reason Christianity's first tradition of married priests was quite different from what the Church teaches today. The first 14 popes were married men, but to understand later changes denying clerical marriage we must again return to the beginning.
The Myth Of Apostolic Continence
By 135 AD, Rome had decimated Jerusalem and its great Jewish Temple, causing both Jews and Christians to flee into the Roman world where Gnostic-Christian beliefs had already begun to appear. New pseudo-Christian writings claimed Gnosis (New, secret, knowledge) of Jesus and His apostles, knowledge not contained in the Deposit of Faith that ended in the previous century.
For example, writings such as the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and stories upon which the Da Vinci Code is based are Gnostic. Gnostic attempts to promote the superiority of celibacy and explain away the apostles' wives that St. Paul spoke of (1Corinthians 9-5), when he complained that he too should marry "just like the other apostles and Jesus' brothers", a myth was created, a myth that had no basis in Christianity. This legend was first introduced in apocryphal writings proposing that the apostles had abandoned sex with their wives in order to imitate Jesus.
Before 200 AD, these writings supported the new teachings of Patristic Fathers such as St. Justin, St. Clement of Alexandria, and Anti-Pope Hippolytus. All were celibate pagans before converting.
But priests continued to marry until things began to change the following century, when Popes would come to see an advantage in supporting this new celibacy movement, believing it would somehow diminish the esteem of celibate pagan priests who remained highly revered across the Roman Empire. These new apocryphal Gnostic stories suggesting Jesus' apostles embraced the 'discipline' of marital continence then became a powerful influence for change.
In 306 AD, the first recorded attempt by a local Church Council to mandate celibacy for priests occurred in the far western reaches of Christianity, in Elvira, Spain - three hundred years after Jesus. Failing in that attempt, these Spanish Gnostic-Christians continued to promote their celibacy movement 19 years later at Constantine's great Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, but failed once more.
They were defeated when bishops agreed that "Too heavy a yoke ought not to be laid upon the clergy; that marriage and married intercourse are of themselves honorable and undefiled." The issue was settled, priests could freely choose either marriage or celibacy.
But the celibacy movement did not die. Only 40 years later, ca. 366 AD, two popes, Damasus and Siricius, would again cite these apocryphal stories of apostles ceasing marital intercourse. Pope Damasus, the son of a priest, then introduced for the first time in Catholic history a new term, the Rule of Continence.
According to this new rule, priests were required to cease carnal intercourse with their wives, but no vow was sought as it is today – it was demanded.
Damasus' successor Siricius, a married bishop who abandoned his wife and children to assume the papacy, continued to institute this new rule. Tragically, these popes failed to recognize that denial of sex by either spouse violates the Sacrament of Matrimony as taught by St. Paul (1Corinthians 7:3-6). Today, all married Catholics know they must accept intercourse for a valid marriage to exist.
Fortunately, Rome did not exercise authority over all dioceses across the Empire in those days, and other areas continued to allow priestly marriage throughout the medieval period.
The Medieval Papacy
For more than 700 years after Constantine, Roman Emperors and later European monarchs controlled papal elections and personally appointed bishops and abbots who served at their discretion, not the Pope's. Monasteries and dioceses brought great wealth to these secular lords through Simony, although little accrued to Rome.
During all that time bishops and priests were married and Churches became Sacramental filling stations owned by mercenary clerics who willed them to family heirs, who then often bought and sold these valuable offices.
The Church had a strong need to curb priestly heirs' power and corruption, and this problem was solved when Popes submitted to the Emperor's secular authority, with agreement that Cardinals alone would elect future popes. Finally, after a 700-year struggle, and desiring to eliminate future loss of wealth and control over married clerics, mandatory celibacy laws preventing future heirs were finally instituted. Again, no vow was sought as it is today, it was demanded.
Failed Vatican efforts to end priestly marriage had continued sporadically until 1139 AD, and Pope Innocent II's desire to seize clerical wealth and property. Then, asserting that apostolic continence was the first priestly tradition, Innocent II reached back 700 years to Popes Damasus' and Siricius' use of Gnostic-Christian legend in support of his new effort to subdue the priesthood.
Previously, three councils in the 11th century had failed to end priestly marriage by selling wives and children of priests into slavery, with proceeds accruing to the Vatican treasury.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux correctly prophesied in 1135 AD, "Take from the Church an honorable marriage bed, and do you not fill it with concubineage, incest, homosexuality, and every kind of uncleanness?" But Pope Gregory VII stated, "The Church cannot escape from the laity unless priests first escape the clutches of their wives."
Doctrine vs. Discipline
To justify modern papal demands for priestly celibacy, the Church today denies celibacy is a Church doctrine, claiming it is merely an ancient discipline freely initiated by the apostles. This defense arose only after Vatican Council I in 1870, when the Church infallibly declared that "some new doctrine" may not be added to the Deposit of Faith.
Prior to that time the law was taught as a doctrine because all Church teachings that are claimed to be from the apostles are doctrines. But, in order to retain control over the priesthood, the Church now denies the law of mandatory celibacy is a Church doctrine that changes Christ's Sacramental doctrine of priestly matrimony, thus denying the Sacramental grace of matrimony originally given to them by Jesus. This new terminology was necessary in order to obscure the reality that mandatory celibacy actually alters Jesus' teaching.
At this point it is important for Catholics to understand the Church's definition of 'heretic': "One who, having accepted the faith of Christ, corrupts its Doctrine." Today Christ's original doctrine, allowing priests to marry and propagate, has been changed. All popes from Innocent II until Benedictine XVI have knowingly supported this law and are therefore partakers of heresy. Today St. Peter could not become a priest, because he was married.
The 'discipline' of apostolic continence is historically false. There is absolutely no evidence from the Deposit of Faith, none. Church authorities today can produce no legitimate evidence of its truth. It is myth disguised as doctrine. It is a doctrinal impediment that intentionally alters Christ's infallible teaching, it denies a Sacramental grace from God, a sanctifying grace given to Christians by the Son of God, and thus voids all Church claims of infallible teaching authority.
Consequences For Today
Our problem today is not new and the Church knows it. From the earliest days of Christianity, celibate priests have been a cause for concern by men such as St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp. Before the New Testament was written, a Christian book of instruction, the Didache, stated "Thou shalt not seduce young boys."
In 306 AD, the Council of Elvira, Spain, declared, "To defilers of boys, communion is not to be given even at death."
In 1049,- St. Peter Damian's Book of Gomorrah recorded a debauched and failing priesthood similar to today's and pleaded with Pope Leo IX to excommunicate priests guilty of "Incestuous relations with their spiritual children." Other councils issued similar anathemas for abuse of women, and securing abortions, and absolving themselves of mortal sin.
These sins of the flesh are repeatedly forgiven today, but commit matrimony only once and a priest is out. Think of Miami, FL priest, Fr. Alberto Cutie.
Former Benedictine Monk and retired psychologist, Richard Sipe, is a therapist who taught at two seminaries and during a period of 30 years treated over 1,500 sexually dysfunctional priests and their victims; all were referred to him by Church authorities for treatment. He and his colleagues provide the following estimates of priestly formation today. His credentials are impeccable. (http://richardsipe.com).
Only ten percent of all priests and bishops successfully abstain from sex during their priesthood. Ninety percent engage in sex, 50 percent continuously and 40 percent periodically. Of those, 30-50 percent are homosexually oriented and their sexual activity is comparable to heterosexual priests and bishops. Similar studies from Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, and the Philippines produced similar numbers.
In areas of South America and Africa more than half of all priests have wives/mistresses. A major problem that goes unreported by the media is priestly sex abuse of women and young girls. Female abuse statistics are comparable to male pedophilia abuse. This is the sad state of our priesthood today.
Summation
Mandatory celibacy is Gnostic. Is it now time for another Reformation, a Catholic Reformation?
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