Word: church
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Cozzens and others have argued that the Church should consider making celibacy a voluntary discipline for priests. Because it is a rule and not an unchangeable dogma, the celibacy requirement could be altered or rescinded by the Vatican if it chose to do so. Earlier this year, advocates of celibacy reform got a surprising boost from then-outgoing Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, who told a Catholic radio host that the celibacy question was "a perfectly legitimate discussion." He suggested that celibacy might not be a reasonable expectation in every locale. "I am not so sure it wouldn...
Donald Cozzens, professor at John Carroll University and author of Freeing Celibacy, has written that some priests do indeed feel freed from sexual longing and a desire for personal intimacy upon entering the Church. But "there remain other priests who believe deep down they are called to the priesthood but not to celibacy," he writes. "And for these men, the burden of mandated celibacy threatens their spiritual and emotional well-being." Weakland felt this challenge acutely, particularly once he rose to the rarified but also isolated position of archbishop. "I soon realized that a relationship with Jesus Christ, as intense...
Although both he and Cutie have insisted they do not want to be held up as poster boys for changing the Church's celibacy requirement, their stories have added new fuel to a long-simmering debate. The Catholic Church in the U.S. has a serious priest crisis - the number of men entering the priesthood has dropped by 60% over the past four decades and the current average age of active priests is 60. Many dioceses have been forced to close parishes or import foreign priests to deal with shortages. But advocates of celibacy reform say there is a better solution...
...first thousand years of the Christian church, priests, bishops, and even popes could - and often did - marry. At least 39 popes were married men, and two were the sons of previous popes. The ideal of celibacy existed, but as a teaching from the Apostle Paul, not a church doctrine. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul argued simply that single men had fewer distractions from their godly work: "He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous...
Over the centuries, the Church tried to split the difference, prohibiting marriage after ordination and encouraging married priests to abstain from sex with their wives after they had joined the priesthood. (The Eastern Orthodox CHurch continues to allow married men to be ordained as priests.) But it wasn't until the Second Lateran Council in 1139 that a firm church law allowing ordination only of unmarried men was adopted. Journalist and former priest James Carroll contends in Practicing Catholic that the reasons for this celibacy requirement were not purely theological. "Celibacy had been imposed on priests mainly for the most...