On Celibacy!

Hi

On Celibacy!

The eminent Canadian scholar Murray, writing in one of Canada largest newspaper The Globe and Mail in 2009 as an invited columnist to write on the papacy and celibacy, wrote: 

For many of the general public, fed up with scandal and the predatory sexual activity of men whose libidos seem unnaturally repressed, the solution is to abolish mandatory celibacy and permit priests to marry. For the Vatican, the incontrovertible justification for celibacy is the weight of history: Priests have always been celibate; surely, then, it is divinely ordained. But this view of celibacy is not as straightforward as the Catholic hierarchy would have us believe.

For example, married men ordained to the priesthood in one of the Orthodox churches, or within the Anglican communion, can and do transfer into the Catholic fold, administering the same sacraments as their Catholic counterparts but going home to wives, children and marital beds.

These married priests are not a recent innovation, grudgingly adopted by a church facing a critical shortage of priests. Rather, they are part of a long tradition of married men who formed the backbone of the priesthood for more than 1,200 years. You see, celibacy was only forced upon the priesthood in 1148, after 100 years of discord and resistance.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-churchs-short-memory/article1344139/ 

Jacqueline Murray is a professor of history at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Specialist in Medieval ecclesiastical history, Medieval Europe and History of sexuality to name but a few.

On the issues of Urban II (1088-99) shows just how barbaric the church was willing to go if priests resisted force celibacy, which had been going on since the Synod of Elvira in 306 CE. Murray added: Resistance to clerical celibacy continued, culminating in 1095 in the astonishing spectacle of Pope Urban II ordering that the wives of priests be seized and sold into slavery, and their children turned out of their homes and abandoned as beggars or worse. [ibid]  

Not forgetting that Pope Urban II was also the innovator of raising taxes in 1095 he collected an annual tax, called the callagium, allowing clergy to have a mistress. Clergy were fine as long as they didn’t marry the women with whom they lived. [Berry, Carmen Renee (1973), The Unauthorized Guide to Sex and Church, p. 82, W. Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee]

Pope Urban II, was the instigator in the Holy Crusades. Like many of his predecessors, and those of his successors to the See of Rome. He had blood on his hands! As 10s of thousands of innocent men, women and children, were slaughtered in his name and that of his god!

§

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them

for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12 ESV

In May 1442, John Haynes was charged by his parish priest, John Dunn, with unlawfully marrying a woman to whom he was related. Haynes, responding angrily, accused Dunn himself of sexual impropriety and asked a pointed question: “Why cannot laymen have wives in peace, just as the priests have theirs?” Haynes’ unorthodox analogy must have struck a nerve, because when he was brought before the bishop of Hereford a few weeks later, his punishment was unusually humiliating. He was sentenced to be flogged around his parish church the following Sunday, wearing the linen rags of a penitent and carrying a candle. He then had to approach the pulpit during high mass, confess that “he had spoken the words out of evil will,” and publicly seek forgiveness from Dunn.

[Herefordshire Record Office (HRO), HD4/1/88, f. 50. Charge of defamation:] or see Chapter 1 of the thesis https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598143.pdf  retrieved 01/10/2020

In many ways, the altercation between Johannes Heynys/John Haynes and Johannem Dun/John Dunn was typical of their time: English church courts frequently dealt with charges of defamation, and many of these cases involved allegations of sexual misbehavior.  What is remarkable about this case, however, is Haynes’ casual allusion to priests’ wives, because it suggests both that many priests might have ignored the ecclesiastical mandate of celibacy, and that all priests were vulnerable to accusations of sexual misbehavior. 

Almost a hundred years later Henry VIII, king of England abolished Catholicism with the Act of Supremacy in 1534, making him head of the Church in England.

What do you say on any part or all of this Post?

Keep safe!

Cofion

 

 

Jero Jones

Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/