Divine Command Morality, as interpreted by the former "leadership" of the Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles released summaries of its confidential files, which document how local church leaders for decades responded to accusations that priests were sexually molesting children - they moved suspected priests to new assignments without notifying parishioners.
(Or the cops).
Good job.
Is that how Christ would have handled the situation ?
This is, of course, nothing that we didn't know before, but every time that the Catholic Church is forced to officially reveal more evidence of their incompetence and malfeasance, (which went all the way up to Rome), I get outraged again by their COMPLETE and TOTAL lack of regard for the members of their faith, as well as gobsmacked by how willing the Catholic bureaucracy was to let Satan run the place.
(Or the cops).
Good job.
Is that how Christ would have handled the situation ?
This is, of course, nothing that we didn't know before, but every time that the Catholic Church is forced to officially reveal more evidence of their incompetence and malfeasance, (which went all the way up to Rome), I get outraged again by their COMPLETE and TOTAL lack of regard for the members of their faith, as well as gobsmacked by how willing the Catholic bureaucracy was to let Satan run the place.
posted by Oroborous at 11:03 AM
5 Comments:
At Cathoic rates, we can expect whoever is Pope to make an official apology about all this in about 400 years time.
Oroborous:
It is a Divine Commandment that priests be celibate, making the priesthood a place of refuge for homosexuals tired of explaining why they hadn't yet married.
And a place for heterosexual males to avoid.
But homosexuality is Divinely defined as immoral.
So one Divine Command ran head-on into another.
It is worth noting, BTW, that the reduction in vocations has directly coincided with the increased acceptance of gays in society.
Which makes it darn likely that Divine Command had created a priesthood always largely gay.
The irony is, well, divine.
Actually, priesthood celibacy isn't Divinely commanded, it's merely a Roman Catholic Church rule, adopted in the Middle Ages for internal political reasons.
From What Catholics Really Believe: Setting the Record Straight, by Karl Keating:
[E]ven some Catholics are surprised to learn that celibacy has not been a rule for all Catholic priests. In the Eastern Rites, married men can be ordained; this has been the custom from the first. Once ordained, though, an unmarried priest may not marry, and a married priest, if widowed, may not remarry. Marriage is possible only for priests in the Eastern Rites. [...]
In the West, of course, the rule has been different. In the early centuries priests and bishops could be married—the practices in the West and East were the same—but celibacy was soon preferred, and eventually it became mandatory. By the early Middle Ages, the rule of celibacy, in the Latin or Western Rite, was firmly in place. Note that this was a disciplinary rule, not a doctrine. [...]
In recent years we have seen a few married Latin Rite priests, some who were converts from Lutheranism and, as Lutheran ministers, were married, and more recently a growing number of converts from Episcopalianism. These are clearly exceptions to the rule. [...]
In the early years of the Church, because of the scarcity of single men who were eligible for ordination, men who were already married were accepted for the priesthood and episcopacy. As the supply of single, eligible men became greater, only single men were accepted for ordination in the West, in accordance with Paul's "wish [that] everyone . . . be as I am" (1 Cor. 7:7). The East kept to the old custom.
This contains a very detailed history of how and when the Roman Catholic Church came to have celibate priests, although it doesn't much address why they did it.
Oroborous:
You are right -- it isn't. But, considering the Church's position on the issue, that is a distinction without a difference.
The justification given is how Jesus is said to have lived: never married, no women among his disciples. So while there is no explicit Divine Command there, the Church has made a lot of hay out of the implications.
Further, if the Church is doing something in accordance with a Saint's wishes, how is that not tied up in Divine Command?
BTW -- thank you very much for the references.
Peter,
If you can pronounce on Darwinian evolution, we certainly should be allowed to pronounce on Catholic dogma. This blog is dedicated to the proposition that the amateur is often the equal of the "expert".
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