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Thursday, March 15, 2007

CELIBACY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN IN THE CHURCH!

Celibacy - denying yourself sexual gratification in order to meet the requirements of a higher spiritual calling. Fantastic achievement, for a human being!

Unfortunately, separating the priests from the laity is becoming more difficult these days. I've often asked myself why a person should confess his or her sins to another who is just as Earth-bound as him- or her-self!

I mean, if my kid and a priest's kid get into a spat, will the priest act more like a parent or less like a priest? Well, let's hear the Spiritual Authorities out on this:

[ Last Updated: Tuesday, 13 March 2007, 13:33 GMT

Celibacy 'obligatory' for priests

Pope Benedict XVI has confirmed that celibacy "remains obligatory" for Roman Catholic priests.

He also restated the ban on Communion for divorced Catholics who remarry, and on abortion, euthanasia and gay unions which he said were "not negotiable".

The papal declaration reflects the conclusions of a synod - an assembly of bishops - held at the Vatican in 2005.

Draft legislation is before Italy's parliament that would give legal status to unmarried couples including gays.

"These values are not negotiable," the Pope wrote, listing "respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death [and] the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman".

"Priestly celibacy lived with maturity, joy and dedication is an immense blessing for the Church and for society itself," he wrote.

Catholics who divorce and remarry are barred from taking communion, unless they "commit to living their relationship... as friends, as brother and sister".

Celibacy controversy

Last year, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, head of the Vatican office in charge of priests, said the Church might one day have to review the issue of celibacy.

He said celibacy was not a prescribed doctrine, but self-imposed discipline.

Roughly 150,000 men worldwide have left the priesthood to marry. The Church considers them outcasts.

But in the Middle Ages there was no formal ban on marriage for the clergy.

In fact many Popes had wives, including the 9th-Century Pope Hadrian II. ]


SOURCE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6445313.stm

Posted by Okonkwo O. Awa at 9:21:00 PM

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

We all have to distinguish between the Christ call to celibacy for SOME PEOPLE (MARK 10:21 :: Then Jesus beholding him loved him and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven and come and follow me) and Christ's call to act in His Name and Person (priesthood) (Luke 22:19 :: do this in memory of me). Now, what the Catholic church says, simply, is that only to those whom Christ has told to "sell everything...and come follow me" will the Priesthood be reserved...very simple. Not that there is any obstacle as such between marriage and the Priesthood. The Church wants priests "after the Heart of Christ" . The history of the Church is full of such priests...the most popular contemporary being John Paul II....

Friday, March 16, 2007 10:14:00 PM

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Greenville, Rhode Island bakery owned by the Cavanagh family, which uses the plant to produce church communion bread from just water and bread. That business is known to produce about 850 million sacramental wafers annually and to supply 80% of the Holy Communion bread used in American, Australian, Canadian, and British churches. The only middlemen in the supply chain are nuns living in convents! Now they want to expand to West Africa with their Christian sacramental ware for Pentecostal, Catholic, 'New Wave', and Orthodox church offerings. I make reference to the so-called New Wave churches - my term for those churches that broke away from the orthodoxy of the Protestant fold, just as the latter roke off from the Catholic church by virtue of the exploits of Martin Luther centuries ago. Many new-wave and other church goers in the generally undeveloped West African subregion of Africa pay more to religious organizations in monthly tithes and offerings than they do to their government in personal income and value added taxes. Now, that last fact is quite interesting because it is an admission that a bakery in Rhode Island has seen a huge market in the center of Black Africa for small white perfectly laminated and non-crumbly holy wheat bread, reportedly costing "less than a penny" apiece, for the use of both the bible-reading and the bible-believing religious organizations. However, the picture from the Cavanagh's factory floor speaks volumes, in my own opinion, about the need for the company to watch its business ethics and to treat all customers equally irrespective of location, creed, or other discriminatory demographic information or criteria. So, I just hope and pray that the wafers falling off the conveyor belt and by the way side are not destined for West Africa and that the actual wafers delivered will be wheat bread and water, and not just glutamate-free bread and 'pure' water, if you get my point, even if so requested by some shady, greedy, and unethical businessmen over in West Africa. Posted by Okonkwo O. Awa on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

In the summer of 2007, Pope Benedict XVI (BXVI) encouraged The Church to reach out to young people using new technologies, as he himself learned to send out cellphone text messages to the faithful. So in obedience, a tech savvy evangelizing Catholic priest got some help from a Web designer in order to write all the daily books of prayers into a low-cost computer software application downloadable onto the iPhone. Rev. Paolo Padrini's iTunes prayer book was officially approved by The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications in December 2008. Of course, all proceeds from the electronic prayer book venture will go to charity. Speaking of charitable behavior, The Holy See has seen it fit after 400 years to honor Galileo Galilei in 2009 as the "patron" of the non-mutual exclusivity of the faith versus reason dichotomy. That is very appropriate in this age of new technology, even though The Church still smarts from its error of judgment in calling the famous astronomer a heretic after he publicly embarrassed The Church by reporting that his scientific observations in Astronomy with his unique telescope had led him inexorably to believe that the Earth actually revolved around the sun, in direct opposition to the teaching of The Church at the time that Planet Earth was the center of the universe. In seeking to paint the Church in a new light of worldly knowledge by distancing itself from a past of imbibing pure dogma, The Vatican may have ventured to cross the final frontier and boundary between Science and Christianity by acknowledging recently that there could be life on planets other than the Earth! Posted by O. O. Awa on Wednesday, December 24, 2008.
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