Why do catholic priest are not allowed to get married?

Answer 1

because some old pope hated women so he made it a law that religious people in the service of the church could not be married.

Answer 2

There are several reasons.

First, at one time, priests were married and the priest of a town had quite a bit of political power. With political power came privlidge. Priests would encourage their sons to become priests so that power and privlidge would remain in hte family. Not a good reason for becoming a priest. Men were becoming priests for the wrong reason. You see that today in many big wealthy churches. The present pastor is the son of the former pastor.

Second, Paul suggested that a man who is married is concerned about the needs of his wife and God. If possible, it is better for a man to remain unmarried and be soley devoted to God.

Thirdly, Biblical evidence shows us that Jesus was never married. This allowed Him to go wherever He needed to and do what was necessary to spread the Good News. Because He was never married or had children, He was ready to die on hte cross for us.

The life of a priest is very busy. he is expected to be the head of every ministry and to be a counselor to hundreds of people. The realtionship between a priest and a wife would have to take second place to the needs of the parish.

This being said, there are a little more than 100 married Catholic priests in the USA. They are married ministers from different denominations that have converted to Catholicism and are now Catholic priests.

A married man can become a deacon in the Catholic church. A deacon has many of the responsibilities in the church, but he cannot celebrate Mass, or administer the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation, or Annointing of the Sick. A deacon can baptise and marry people. Often a deacon will give the sermon at Mass.

Answer 3

it's not that Catholic priests are not "allowed" to be married, it is a discipline within the ROMAN Catholic Church, that men who become priests take a vow to God of remaining celibate. Still there are and always have been Roman Catholic married priests. They might come from the Orthodox Church, or from the Anglican church where married priests are normal. Note specially that never in the history of the Christian church (ie Catholic or Orthodox) has it been allowed that already ordained priests then get married. What has been allowed is for married men to become priests. And more specifically this "unmarried priesthood" is found within the Latin Church, the one based in Rome, and not so much within any of the other 22 rites and Catholic communities that ally themselves with Rome.

Answer 4

This idea of a celibate clergy came from the Jews, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul.

The Jews. The Talmud argues that a person whose “soul is bound up with the Torah and is constantly occupied with it” may remain celibate (Maimonides, Laws of Marriage 15.3). For example, Yahweh ordered the prophet Jeremiah not to marry (Jeremiah 16:1-4). Moreover, the Essenes was a group that was active in Jesus’ time that practiced celibacy and thought by most scholars to be the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

John the Baptist and Jesus are both believed to have been celibate for their entire lives. Some scholars believe that the example of the Essenes influenced either or both Jesus and John the Baptist in their celibacy.

The Apostle Paul is explicit about his celibacy (see 1 Cor. 7). There is also evidence in the gospel of Matthew for the practice of celibacy among at least some early Christians, in the famous passage about becoming “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12).

The concept took many twists and turns over the years and will probably take a few more before Christ returns in glory.

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

It is not a Divine law;
But u can find some epitre (i don't know the english term) in the Holy Bible, from Paul notably, recommanding not to get married; it is not bad, but preferable if u want to choose God's way.
Actually, Jesus is a model, no one can be him but some try to make their ways according to him.

If u follow God as a priest, u must believe in the only one Love, that u must give into God. U cannot be dependant from anything but God.

So catholic priest are not allowed to get married, but now u have the choice to be priest or not. (yes a_catholic_monk, i mean Roman Catholic Church).

Answer 6

Because they believed that being a priest means devoting yourself to the church. They are not allowed to marry because they believe that they are already "married" to the church.

Answer 7

I am roman catholic and i think it wrong and i also think women would make good priest

Answer 8

Forbidding to marry is a man-made law, inspired by demons. It is not a Bible teaching of Jehovah.

1Timothy 4:1-3 ..some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances, teachings of demons..forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from certain foods..

Answer 9

I believe that they've made an oath of celibacy. Marriage without sex would not consummate the marriage. They've made a 'marriage' to God instead. Makes them more pious and concentrate on serving God and patrons of the church instead of a wife and kids.

Answer 10

The belief that religious figures should be celibate began long before the birth of Christianity. Ancient Druid priests were thought to have been celibate and Aztec temple priests were expected to remain sexually abstinent. Other pre-Christian sects mandated that the people chosen for their sacrificial offerings must be pure, meaning that they had never engaged in sex.

Jesus lived a chaste life and never married and at one point in the Bible is referred to as a eunuch (Matthew 19:12), though most scholars believe that this was intended metaphorically. The implication was that Jesus lived a celibate life like a eunuch. Many of his disciples were also chaste and celibate. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, recommends celibacy for women: "To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion." (1 Cor. 7:8-9) But the early Christian church had no hard and fast rule against clergy marrying and having children. Peter, a Galilee fisherman, whom the Catholic Church considers the first Pope, was married. Some Popes were the sons of Popes.

The first written mandate requiring priests to be chaste came in AD 304. Canon 33 of the Council of Elvira stated that all"bishops, presbyters, and deacons and all other clerics" were to"abstain completely from their wives and not to have children." A short time later, in 325, the Council of Nicea, convened by Constantine, rejected a ban on priests marrying requested by Spanish clerics.

The practice of priestly celibacy began to spread in the Western Church in the early Middle Ages. In the early 11th century Pope Benedict VIII responded to the decline in priestly morality by issuing a rule prohibiting the children of priests from inheriting property. A few decades later Pope Gregory VII issued a decree against clerical marriages.

The Church was a thousand years old before it definitively took a stand in favor of celibacy in the twelfth century at the Second Lateran Council held in 1139, when a rule was approved forbidding priests to marry. In 1563, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the tradition of celibacy.

Several explanations have been offered for the decision of the Church to adopt celibacy. Barry University's Ed Sunshine told Knight-Ridder that the policy was initiated to distinguish the clergy as a special group:"A celibate clergy became the paradigm of separation from the sinful world." A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest and author of Sex, Priests and Power: The Anatomy of Crisis (1995), told Knight-Ridder that the"question at the time was who is the final power -- the king or the church. If [the church] could control a person's sex life, it could control their money, their employment, their benefice." Garry Wills suggested in Under God that the ban on marriage was adopted to lift the status of priests at a time when their authority was being challenged by nobles and others.

Protestants early on took exception to celibacy, arguing that it promoted masturbation, homosexuality and illicit fornication. Martin Luther singled out masturbation as one of the gravest offenses likely to be committed by those who were celibate."Nature never lets up," Luther warned,"we are all driven to the secret sin. To say it crudely but honestly, if it doesn't go into a woman, it goes into your shirt." American Protestants in the 17th century, fearful of radical religious sects like the Shakers that celebrated celibacy, came out foursquare against the practice.

The Roman Catholic Church's position today is derived from the Council of Trent. Celibacy is considered an important part of the priesthood, a sign of a priest's commitment to God and service. Today, though, there are some exceptions to the rule of unmarried clergy. Anglican ministers who were already married when they joined the Catholic Church are allowed to remain married if they choose to join the priesthood.

The Catholic Church distinguishes between dogma and regulations. The male-only priesthood is Catholic dogma, irreversible by papal decree. The ban on marriage is considered a regulation. As Knight-Ridder put it,"That means the pope could change it overnight if he wished."

The first modern scholar to make a comprehensive study of church celibacy was Henry Charles Lea over a century ago. Lea, a Protestant critical of the Catholic Church, closed his long book with the following statement:
- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/696#sthash.ZhDKOHvu.dpuf