Calibacy For Priests - Vatican Secretary Of State

[Aloysius]

argh arfink, that's exactly what I was hoping to avoid by staying on topic!   I find little constructive in the posting of such pictures and videos to gather around and complain about... and it does not at all serve good liturgical senses to throw around every liturgical grievance you can find, especially when it often just serves to alienate people who have found meaningful moments in their spiritual lives in spite of some bad liturgical practices.  and despite serving no purpose in general, it serves the topic of this thread even less IMO.

[Era Might]

There are two ways to analyze / experience the church. Well, more than two ways, but two principal ways: as a sociological phenomenon, and as an ideological construction. For one who sees the church as the last bastion of civilization and the defender of certain forms of Western civilization, then a married priesthood would appear one way. For one who sees the church as an evolving phenomenon that has been shaped and reshaped throughout the centuries by various arrangements of ideologies, cultures, forms, disciplines, etc., then it will appear another way.

 

It's kind of impossible to really have conversations between perspectives on things, because they are two ways of being in the world. The church today tries to navigate between them, with mixed results. There have been more drastic tensions in the history of the church than the possibility of allowing married priests. There were times people were literally hacking each other to pieces based on religious issues.

[Apotheoun]

argh arfink, that's exactly what I was hoping to avoid by staying on topic!   I find little constructive in the posting of such pictures and videos to gather around and complain about... and it does not at all serve good liturgical senses to throw around every liturgical grievance you can find, especially when it often just serves to alienate people who have found meaningful moments in their spiritual lives in spite of some bad liturgical practices.  and despite serving no purpose in general, it serves the topic of this thread even less IMO.

The videos show one thing, that the Roman Church has enough liturgical problems already, i.e., problems that the present pope is not even trying to deal with, that it doesn't need to create new problems for itself. Maybe it would be better to fix what is broken rather than break something else.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

I sometimes wonder what the Roman Catholic liturgy will look like in thirty years time (not that I will be around by then), because based upon the changes I have seen over the last twenty-five years I dread the thought of what may be the new liturgical norm in A.D. 2043.

[Era Might]

The celibacy of the priesthood is one of the few issues I am very conservative on. I tend to understand the human experience from the vantage point of the psychoanalytic tradition. In other words, I believe that our libidinal and aggressive energies are the driving force of our human existence. I read the idea of "civilization" in light of Sigmund Freud and Norbert Elias, in such that it is a sublimation (or repression) of our sex and aggressive drives. Therefore, I think that priests should have a highly sublimated libido. In a world with overwhelming violence and licentiousness, we need a class of people who are the shepherds who have overcome these Id energies. It is not that I think sexuality is inherently bad like St. Augustine. Sexuality is wonderful and beautiful and the world would be ghastly sterile without it. It is the force of life itself! Yet, I think we need priests to show us what highly sublimated libidinal energy looks like. We need the Holy Matrimony model of love and we need the celibate model of love. If we remove the celibacy requirement for priests, than the celibate ideal will die a slow and painful death and we will lose the dialectic.

 

Interesting thoughts. I look at it a little more practically, though I agree that the question of civilization is central. How we live and experience the world cannot be static. The idea of an unchanging church is an historical fiction. The church adapts to shifts in civilization, and it has also helped created them in various ways. Forms of civilization can be good and worth holding on to, but change can also be good (and necessary), to avoid becoming a self-referential parody or a ghetto (something Pope Francis has spoken about vis a vis the mission of the church).

[Apotheoun]

Era your posts make me realize that the Western Church has given up on the idea of actually converting both individuals and society at large to the Christian faith, that is, to the faith as passed on from generation to generation beginning with Christ and the Apostles. In contrast my Orthodox friends see the modern world as in need of Orthodox faith and tradition, that is, they see the need to change the world to fit the Orthodox phronema, and not the other way around. 

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Era Might]

Era your posts make me realize that the Western Church has given up on the idea of actually converting both individuals and society at large to the Christian faith, i.e., to the faith as passed on from generation to generation beginning with Christ and the Apostles. In contrast my Orthodox friends see the modern world as in need of Orthodox faith and tradition, that is, they see the need to change the world to fit the Orthodox phronema, and not the other way around. 

 

Yes, the Orthodox world always fancied itself the inheritor of the Roman empire and the successor to imperial universalism. The church-as-empire was played out many centuries ago, to great destruction in the East and in the West. The Western church certainly has let go of that imperial model, though it lives on in certain circles.

[Apotheoun]

Yes, the Orthodox world always fancied itself the inheritor of the Roman empire and the successor to imperial universalism. The church-as-empire was played out many centuries ago, to great destruction in the East and in the West. The Western church certainly has let go of that imperial model, though it lives on in certain circles.

I am beginning to wonder if in the future of the Western world is not going to be dominated by either the Muslim religion or by Eastern Orthodoxy. Personally I would prefer Orthodoxy to be dominant, but I fear it may be Islam that wins the day (only because it would involve an even greater swing of the pendulum from the hedonism presently afflicting the West).

 

 

Postscript: By the way, for Orthodox Christians it has nothing to do with the Roman Empire; instead, their views are shaped by scripture, which they see as one of many aspects of Holy Tradition, and having the mind of Christ - as St. Paul said in his epistles.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

The Western church certainly has let go of that imperial model, though it lives on in certain circles.

I think the Western Church should just re-embrace its own Tradition, but it is unlikely to do that. Perhaps my Orthodox friends are right that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are just two sides of the same coin.

[Era Might]

I am beginning to wonder if in the future of the Western world is not going to be dominated by either the Muslim religion or by Eastern Orthodoxy. Personally I would prefer Orthodoxy to be dominant, but I fear it may be Islam that wins the day (only because it would involve an even greater swing of the pendulum from the hedonism presently afflicting the West).

 

The history of Western civilization is one long history of shifting centers of domination. First the Persians and Greeks, then the Romans and Greeks, then the pagan Roman empire fell apart in the West but clung on in the Byzantine East. The Eastern Roman empire fell apart from the rise of Muslim and Latin Christian civilization. Latin and Muslim civilizations fought over Eastern lands. Etc. Etc. until modern conceptions of secularity (which have certain foundations in Christianity) emerged. If you hinge your faith on religious dominance in the world, good luck, but history shows that to be a fruitless enterprise.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Era Might

[Apotheoun]

The history of Western civilization is one long history of shifting centers of domination. First the Persians and Greeks, then the Romans and Greeks, then the pagan Roman empire fell apart in the West but clung on in the Byzantine East. The Eastern Roman empire fell apart from the rise of Muslim and Latin Christian civilization. Latin and Muslim civilizations fought over Eastern lands. Etc. Etc. until modern conceptions of secularity (which have certain foundations in Christianity) emerged. If you hinge your faith on religious dominance in the world, good luck, but history shows that to be a fruitless enterprise.

Well, I hope that Orthodoxy dominates next, because it actually goes all the way back to the Apostles.

[Aloysius]

this is why I sometimes prefer the non-Chalcedonian Oriental Orthodox to the Eastern Orthodox, much more resistant to such imperial fantasies having themselves been persecuted under the Chalcedonian Christian empires.

[Era Might]

Well, I hope that Orthodoxy dominates next, because it actually goes all the way back to the Apostles.

 

I'm sure the Apostles were thrilled with Byzantine Empire.

[Apotheoun]

I'm sure the Apostles were thrilled with Byzantine Empire.

I'm sure the Apostles would be thrilled with the United States. But who really cares about the Byzantine Empire or the United States. Holy Orthodoxy is the mystery of God lived here and now.

[Aloysius]

I don't think there's any realistic or feasible situation under which either Islam or Orthodoxy will dominate Western Civilization any time soon.  your overexagerated projections are fanciful at best.