Author Topic: SSPX, priestly celibacy (Read 3567 times)

Cletus · « **Reply #1 on:** March 31, 2008, 04:18:58 PM »

So just how much "stuff" DOES the Society of St Pius X "invent"?

Did they invent ALL those citations from the Fathers and Saints and the Supreme Pontiff? Did they invent ANY of them?

I recall a passage in a biography of St Bridget of Sweden. The author was quoting from one of her visions in which the Blessed Virgin said that those who argued against the law of priestly celibacy would be damned to Hell and have their lips torn with hooks and their ribs crushed with rocks. The author primly claimed that St Bridget was in error here, since the priestly celibate law is only an ecclesiastical law, subject to revision and nullification. I remember thinking: But neither the Blessed Mother nor Saint Bridget ever said that the priestly celibacy law was not subject to revision or nullification. One or the other said that those who argued against the priestly celibacy law would be damned to hell and have their lips torn with hooks and their ribs crushed with rocks.

Kephapaulos · « **Reply #2 on:** March 31, 2008, 06:15:38 PM »

It seems either the priest was mistaken simply or indeed, it is Catholic teaching that married men must leave their wives if they join any of the major orders. Well, I would imagine dispensation could be given in the cases of married Eastern rite priests, but since apostolic times, married clergy were to remain continent and practice chastity. The Roman church later on enforced that no priest could ever be married as the norm for itself though.

Kephapaulos · « **Reply #3 on:** March 31, 2008, 06:18:09 PM »

I mention dispensations since the article said something about a dispensation given by popes to the Easterners.

Kephapaulos · « **Reply #4 on:** March 31, 2008, 06:19:43 PM »

EDIT: The first word dispensations is supposed to be in the singular.

Cletus · « **Reply #5 on:** March 31, 2008, 08:02:32 PM »

There is no question of the SSPX's "trying to justify" a "pro-celibacy position."

It is grotesque to put the matter that way.

This normal discipline of the Church, this sign of fidelity to Christ and His terms of Kingdom perfection, needs no justification.

And can it be said honestly that this article is a COMPILATION of false information because there is some special pleading and even error in the presentation of the main point about the diaconate, which in the Western Church almost always meant only the last stop before the priesthood?

If someone wants to make the case that the SSPX was not taking into account the history and customs of the Eastern Church, that's a different story.

Dulcamara · « **Reply #6 on:** March 31, 2008, 09:04:09 PM »

It looks very much like an attack on priestly celibacy, whether or not that was the intention.

Kephapaulos · « **Reply #7 on:** March 31, 2008, 09:06:31 PM »

Dulca, are you referring to the fact that deacons are allowed to be married and not live apart from their wives?

Kephapaulos · « **Reply #8 on:** March 31, 2008, 09:07:29 PM »

EDIT: Dulca, are you also referring to the Eastern rite priests and deacons who are married and living with their wives?

Kephapaulos · « **Reply #9 on:** March 31, 2008, 10:17:02 PM »

I'm not even certain though if the author of the article Ivan Gobry is a priest. I'm think he is simply a layman. Either way, he would be of the SSPX position.

Dulcamara · « **Reply #10 on:** April 01, 2008, 10:08:43 AM »

No, I meant the whole post. What would be the point of even raising this issue, which in it's tone can be scandalous and lead people to be against priestly celibacy? None of us here are deacons, so any obscure legal technicalities of the issue are not really important to us. Instead it sounds like a cross between flinging mud at the SSPX, and an attack on priestly celibacy. (Regardless of what the actual intent of the post was.)

Basically, it seemed like an imprudent thing to post. Not everybody realizes why priestly celibacy is so good and necessary. But just talk to some "pastors' kids" and you'll get the picture pretty quickly.

But this post is kind of like posting on some obscure situation in which murder or choosing death might be justifiable. There are those who realize that those are extreme and unusual cases... and then there are the other 80% of us, who, because human nature is what it is, will take the exception to the rule, and try to make it the rule.

This is why, I think, in the Bible, Our Lord told His apostles from time to time, that "many other things there are" He needed to teach them, but "they could not hear them" yet. There are things that some people can hear and take properly, but which the majority will be scandalized by, or led astray by hearing it, however true or right it may be as it is spoken, or in it's original context.

All I'm saying is this: prudence.

Dulcamara · « **Reply #11 on:** April 01, 2008, 10:18:06 AM »

Quote from: Kephapaulos

I'm not even certain though if the author of the article Ivan Gobry is a priest. I'm think he is simply a layman. Either way, he would be of the SSPX position.

Actually, this piece of information is VERY important. If he is not a priest, then he is not even in the SSPX, because the SSPX is a priestly society. And being a layman who attends their Masses doesn't mean that the person speaks for the SSPX.

I am reminded of this movie about St. Thomas Moore, where one of his servants says, "we're all on your side, you know that", and St. Thomas says, "what side is that" and the servant says (in so many words) "Oh, come on now... we know what you think!" And St. Thomas sharply rebukes him, saying, "None of you knows what I think, and if you guess at what I think and spread it about, you do me no good service!"

Unless you are one of the four Bishops of the SSPX, then you really cannot speak of what the SSPX thinks "infallibly" because you are not at it's head deciding what it thinks and teaching it. Even their priests can say something that they THINK, and it may absolutely not be the position of the SSPX. There is an important difference. Just as one churchman can say what he thinks, and that does not mean it is the teaching of the Church.

It seems like a trifling detail, but we all have to remember: even the members of an organization may speak something which that organization does not approve of. And we do an organization an injustice when we take what one of it's members say, and without confirmation, spout it off as being what the whole group believes.

One day, I think, the Catholics of the world may shed their blood for (dangerous) indifference on this very point. Just picture the media quoting some lunatic who calls himself Catholic, who wants to go out and kill Jєωs or something, and saying that's what WE all think!

It would be a very ironic error indeed for us, then, to go around doing this same unjust thing to others, that one day we may be imprisoned or even die for.

Cletus · « **Reply #12 on:** April 01, 2008, 01:10:05 PM »

The SSPX doesn't put out too many magazines. If it appeared in one and then in another, translated, I think that that implies approval on the part of the SSPX, or a significant portion of the leadership of the SSPX. So I don't think that the original poster can be faulted for speaking in broad terms of the SSPX's being responsible for that article or for pointing out errors in the article or for implying that articles in THE ANGELUS are not often masterpieces of theological precision and scholarly expertise.

The problem is saying the the SSPX had a "pro-celibacy position" that it is "trying to justify."

Unless we say that Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy Apostle Paul, John the Divine, the Fathers of the Church, countless Saints, and the Universal Church have a "pro-celibacy position."

Pravoslavni · « **Reply #13 on:** April 01, 2008, 01:20:29 PM »

Quote from: Cletus

There is no question of the SSPX's "trying to justify" a "pro-celibacy position."

It is grotesque to put the matter that way.

This normal discipline of the Church, this sign of fidelity to Christ and His terms of Kingdom perfection, needs no justification.

And can it be said honestly that this article is a COMPILATION of false information because there is some special pleading and even error in the presentation of the main point about the diaconate, which in the Western Church almost always meant only the last stop before the priesthood?

If someone wants to make the case that the SSPX was not taking into account the history and customs of the Eastern Church, that's a different story.

MANDATORY clerical celibacy is a "normal discipline" only for the Latin Church. The "normal discipline" for the Eastern Catholic Churches permits the ordaination of married men to the deaconate and priesthood. See Pope Pius XI:

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11CATHO.HTM

AD CATHOLICI SACERDOTII:

(#47) "We do not wish that what We said in commendation of clerical celibacy should be interpreted as though it were Our mind in any way to blame, or, as it were, disapprove the different discipline legitimately prevailing in the Oriental Church."

I believe that the author certainly did not do his homework regarding the history of married clerics in the East. For the SSPX to allow such a misinformed heavily biased article to appear on their OFFICAL sites caused me to question their integrity.

Cletus · « **Reply #14 on:** April 01, 2008, 04:30:34 PM »

The Eastern rites are statistically negligible. They are negligible in many ways. Canonized Saints. Great religious orders (after the Dark Ages). Missionary activity.

In some ways the Eastern rites were just an embarrassing afterthought for Roman Pontiffs.

The normal Traditional discipline of the Catholic Church of Rome is mandatory celibacy for deacons and priests.

It's weird and off-kilter to speak of the SSPX as having a "pro-celibacy position" that it "tries to justify."

Catholics of Eastern rites who want to grouse about vagaries of Westerners would do better to research that odd Western protectiveness towards the heretical Theodoret and the blasphemous Theodore and the impious Ibas.

"All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient."

St Bridget of Sweden was not the only prestigious Western Catholic to speak about priestly celibacy in a way that throws the contrary Eastern "discipline" in a very dark shadow.