Question for Catholics?

Question

First, please note that this is not meant to offend... i mean this very kind heartedly.

I was reading 1 Timothy Chapter 3 (grab your bible and look if you would like)

It talks about the qualifications set forth for Deacons and Bishops.

Verse 2: A bishop must then be blameless, THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitatlity, apt to teach.

It is to my understanding, that catholic bishops must be celibate the same way as priests. First, verify if this is so.

If this IS so... how do you feel about this verse, when the New Testament clearly states that he should be married? Was there a new law or something passed within the church to change it?

Answer 1

I appreciate your respect in the way you asked.

Bishops are priests who were promoted to a position of greater authority. It only follows, then, that a bishop would be celibate as well as a priest.

The celibacy issue does not stem from the bible. It comes from about the 4th Century when priests and especially bishops and Popes were leaving Church wealth and artifacts to their families, particularly their children and, therefore, removing them from the Church and putting it in private hands.

The Pope at the time saw this as a crisis and worried that if such practice continued, it could bankrupt the Church. He was most certainly concerned that they were taking wealth away from him.

So, he (maybe a council, I'm not sure) decided that priests would be celibate. The Church not only had no problem with long term mistresses and children born from them since neither could be recognized as legitimate and couldn't receive Church goods or wealth as inheritances.

The reason for celibacy has changed since then. I have a friend who is a priest who describes it with a story from mining country where there was an accident in the shafts and someone needed to go down into the mine and see if they could rescue some of the miners. There was a priest and a Protestant minister present. The priest volunteered for the dangerous job because, as he told the minister, "I have no family. Your wife and children need you." The minister agreed.

Indeed there are a few married Catholic priests in the world today, maybe 20. These are converts who were priests/ministers of the Protestant denominations, mostly Anglican/Episcopalian.

I think that celibacy should be a choice.

Answer 2

Currently, it is true that bishops, like priests, must be celibate. The pope, however, can be any Catholic man (married or not). It's just been a tradition to pick from among the bishops rather than the entire Catholic population at large.

The decision to request celibacy for priests is rooted in several issues. In some countries, it used to be true that the property of the parish belonged to the priest, so it was actually passed on to his eldest son, as was the custom back then. Now, that, of course, was a problem.

Another problem was that the demands of the priesthood grew with the growing population of Catholics such that it was very, very difficult for a priest to give the proper amount of care to the people of the Church AND his own wife and children. In smaller parishes where the population wasn't so much of a problem, there was a different issue with the parish being able to raise enough money to support the priest AND his wife and kids (obviously one guy is much cheaper than one guy and his wife or one guy and his wife and any number of kids).

So you see, the decision to request a vow of celibacy from all men entering the priesthood was a PRACTICAL matter, not a spiritual one. There are some married priests in the Roman Catholic church, typically priests who have converted from, say, Episcopalian churches, to Catholic ones -- I think there is one in Texas where the entire Episcopalian church became Catholic all at once and they retained their married priest as their pastor with the blessing of the Roman Catholic bishop there.

At any rate, the verse you cite in Timothy doesn't say that an unmarried man CANNOT be a bishop. Paul, who wrote this Epistle and was serving as a bishop for the church at the time he wrote it, was not married, so it's kind of silly to suggest that he was outlawing himself from being a bishop! The verse only states that if a bishop is married, he must be married to only one lady, multiple marriages being more commonplace in some cultures at the time that particular Epistle was written.

There may come a time when the Catholic priesthood will stop requesting the vow of celibacy from men. The current pope has indicated that now is not the time, but it's a possibility for the future. Again, it's a practical matter for Catholics, not a spiritual one. And having been a secretary for a protestant church in which all seven pastors were married, I can certainly understand why the vow of celibacy would be prudent. It's really, really, REALLY hard for married pastors and their families because being a pastor is a 24/7 job, moreso than even being a doctor or a police officer or a firefighter -- at least they have days off. When you work for the Lord, there are no days off!

Answer 3

This is the problem with literalism. The actual implication of the verse was that two or more wives would be too distracting from the bishop's pastoral duty. The Catholic position is an overreaction based on an obsession with "chastity", but the verse does not unambiguously state that no wife is a bad thing. (If the wife died, would he immediately have to quit or remarry? That's the literal reading.)

Compare the law of retaliation, "an eye for an eye". We consider it barbaric, but at the time, it was considered a huge improvement over the previous order, which was "all's fair". Cultural context makes a difference. I don't think the standard justification for the rule of celibacy holds water, but I also don't think a qualified person should be barred from ministry because they AREN'T married. There are pastoral advantages and disadvantages to both states.

Answer 4

Marriage is still out for negotiation like Purgatory ... no Pope has declaried an *Infallible* statement about it.

However, there was a change about 1000 when there was abuse in the church to preventing marriage ... then after the Medichies (around 1600) the Church did major reformation, and used the Monkes as modles to follow instead of religious who mengled in politics.

~~~~~~~
"Does Scripture require a celibate priesthood? The Roman Catholic Church has seen texts such as Matthew 19:12 (Jesus’ teaching on virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God) and 1 Corinthians 9:5 (Paul is not married at the time he writes this letter) as justifying its decision to ordain only men pledged to celibacy—unless they were married Protestant ministers who later became Catholics.

There are other New Testament texts that acknowledge a married priesthood, especially 1 Corinthians 9:5 (where Paul acknowledges that other apostles are married) and 1 Timothy 3:2 (where we read that bishops should be chosen from among men married only once). Jesus cured the Apostle Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:30 and Luke 4:38). ... ... ... Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on priestly celibacy in his 1967 encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus. "

Answer 5

Yes, it does say that.

Yes, Bishops are required to live celebate and chaste lives.

Yes, a tradition was put in place during the feudal era. Priests were having children who were laying claim to their father's title and the lands of the Church, without undergoing seminary training. The quickest way to prevent this theft-by-inheritance was to remove the inheritance claim entirely.

Whether or not this was valid, whether or not this should be undone now that it is no longer an issue, is a matter for others, as I'm no longer Christian.

Answer 6

This interpretation leads to obvious absurdities. For one, if "the husband of one wife" really meant that a bishop had to be married, then by the same logic "keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way" would mean that he had to have children. Childless husbands (or even fathers of only one child, since Paul uses the plural) would not qualify.

In fact, following this style of interpretation to its final absurdity, since Paul speaks of bishops meeting these requirements (not of their having met them, or of candidates for bishop meeting them), it would even follow that an ordained bishop whose wife or children died would become unqualified for ministry! Clearly such excessive literalism must be rejected.

The theory that Church leaders must be married also contradicts the obvious fact that Paul himself, an eminent Church leader, was single and happy to be so. Unless Paul was a hypocrite, he could hardly have imposed a requirement on bishops which he did not himself meet. Consider, too, the implications regarding Paul’s positive attitude toward celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7: the married have worldly anxieties and divided interests, yet only they are qualified to be bishops; whereas the unmarried have single-minded devotion to the Lord, yet are barred from ministry!

Answer 7

Here's a question for YOU, Miss Winnie Pooh:

According to that same scripture, why were LDS bishops allowed to have more than one wife between 1841 and 1904?

Edit: Since there may be some ambiguity on the matter, yes, Mormon bishops were allowed to practice polygamy. Brigham Young himself had three sons who were bishops and practiced polygamy. My great-grandfather was a bishop and had 4 wives. Heber J. Grant was a bishop once upon a time, and had already taken a second wife.

Answer 8

The church changed that a while back. I want to say during vadican 2 (I may be wrong it may have been a little before). Before priest and bishops could get married. The church has had plenty of married popes, bishops, and priests.
They changed this due to corruption of power.
Personally I think priests should be allowed to get married. Hoped this helped.

Answer 9

only people who choose and find the right person are to be married. God also tells us that being single is a call to Him. in the stress and job demands of the priests and bishops they would not be able to put their wives and family first - which God tells us in Scriptures that the husband is to treat their wives better then themselves - yet if they have a congregation to take care of - their committment is first to God and His role as the priest/ bishop and not his wife.

Answer 10

Priest, Bishops, the Pope, etc. have to be celibate. They cannot be married.
(in my opinion, maybe there would be more priests if they were allowed to marry--what boy is going to want to give up sex for the rest of his life?)