It seems that his ‘sins’ involved visiting gay clubs and hooking up with multiple guys on Tinder.
Not a problem for a non-priest, but he is certainly not in a position to be all ‘holier than thou’ on religious matters.
Of course it’s plausible. What’s notable is that they felt the need to qualify it.
It leads to an only slightly tortured reading that “gay sex betweenadults is OK”.
From what I can tell, the need for priestly celibacy stems from the notion that a priest is “married to the Church”. So I suppose it’s appropriate for a priest to have sex with the Church.
(But only for the purpose of making baby Churches.)
On a podcast that I’m a big fan of, the host stated that Catholic priests and nuns were the SS with better branding. That is a statement I do not disagree with. Fuck the Catholic church and I would love to see it destroyed and all the stolen articles in it’s archives released to the world, where it belongs!
What stolen articles?
ISTR that celibacy was found to be advantageous to the Church’s mission for its priests (as opposed to monks, where it served a different purpose) was because the men were all out in the fields and the women were in the villages all day, and a clergy that was free to dally with the wives would not be effective. The local lord could tumble any maiden he liked to looks of, which was bad enough: and the priest were supposed to intercede between the nobility and the peasantry against that as well as in other ways, not engage in it themselves.
By the late 15th C. towns had more merchants and craftsmen, and anyway what better safeguard against adultery than the clergyman’s wife? If celibacy had a reason into the next few centuries, it was the vow of poverty. But now women don’t need a husband’s financial support. If they don’t mind the odd hours a priest has to put in (like any other professional these days), a woman may as well marry a priest. Or a man may marry a male or female priest. Why is this vestige still considered a virtue? Because sex is corrupting. Oh.
Thanks for sharing that… utter crap interesting theory… with us!
You obviously have a profound knowledge of medieval and church history.
If you’d put in the effort to refute anything I wrote, that would be in keeping with the spirit of this message board. I may not bring much in the way of credibility nor scholarship, but they don’t award Nobel Prizes for Asshole Snark either.
Perhaps it’s you who who should put some effort into doing a few minutes of basic research.
Celibacy of the clergy was an issue from the earliest days of Christianity, and was mandated from the 4th century, though there were ups and downs of observance through the centuries.
You could also do some basic reading about medieval history.
A constant theme in Christ’s ministry is that anyone who wants to come to him is welcome. How dare these people think it is okay to screen his believers based on their own biased perceptions! This is why dogmatic religions like the Roman Catholic Church are slowly dying. Can’t wait to attend the funeral.
Some basic research? I’ve been reading books for half a century, that go sub-rosa into the actual and practical dynamics of historical trends.
But you’re going to clout me with a quick Wikipedia cite. And the whole internet applauded.
There are two quite separate issues here. Conflating them is just recreational outrage.
One is the single-issue abortion right winger stance, which is includes a sizable chunk but still a minority of the Catholic laity (which are on par with the rest of the US, generally) and which only a few US bishops are proponents of. Although Catholic doctrine forbids abortion, in practice – like many another outdated Catholic doctrine – it is routinely silently ignored.
It is being used as a political weapon, nothing more or less, by arch-conservative US bishops. Which is a small subset of US bishops.
The other is the issue of clergy abuse. This has little to do with politics and everything to do with image. It is not in the slightest confined to the Catholic church, but is rife wherever male adults have institutional authority over children. Boy Scouts. Evangelical churches, boarding schools, youth sports teams. Etc. In every case, the institution covers it up to protect itself. There is nothing particularly Catholic about it, just male and institutional.
It may (or be) seem more egregious because of the high moral ground the Catholic Church has always staked out, but the mechanism is really more bureaucratic than anything else.
I agree with how repulsive both are, but I still try to adhere to a semblance of analysis.
I don’t know what you’re reading, but it’s not by actual historians.
Edited: Never mind. Why feed the dumpster fire?
This doesn’t even begin to make sense.
Wow. An actual sensible post in the Pit. Who woulda thought?
I forgot what forum I was in. I’ll try not to let it happen again.
No, there’s no defense of this man. He was, apparently, having sexual relationships with other adult men. That’s a fact.
But what defense is needed? That he’s a gay man who couldn’t live up to a vow? Okay, but that’s kind of between him and the Church, seems to me. Let those of us without sin cast the first stone, and all that.
But there’s a really disturbing aspect to this case.
The story that this priest was using a popular hookup app to meet men was broken by a conservative Catholic online publication, using data and surveillance techniques apparently available to anyone willing to pay.
In other words, this publication purchased a ton of data from Grindr (probably indirectly, through some kind of data broker), including dates and location data, compared it to known information about the priest in question (I won’t use his name, because what was done to him was just flat-out wrong), was able to identify him as a Grindr user, and outed him.
We’re all good with that? I mean, we all love to expose the hypocrisy of the Church and all that, but this kind of surveillance of an adult man, who seems to have been having sex with other adult men, well, nobody thinks that’s kind of a bridge too far?
It’s well known that churches of various denominations stole artifacts from indigenous people’s from around the world - sometimes keeping them, sometimes selling them for profit. The Catholic church is just one of these groups.
For example, on the west coast of Canada, two missionaries (one Anglican, one United Church) stole hundreds of artifacts and sold them to museums and collectors. One of their great grandsons tried to sell some of these stolen items for millions of dollars. Many of these items were family totems and crests and other items that had been passed down in families for generations. The church missionaries stole them.
This process occurred around the world, with many different church denominations. Greed. Money.