As a student of history, I feel that we are seeing either:
(1) the ned of traditional catholicism, or
(2) the birth of a newly-revived brand of catholicism
I say this because I see John Paul II as a transitional figure…he represents the old-authoritarian church. he seems to stubbornly ignore what’s been happening to the church, and seems to want to turn back the clock to,maybe, 1920 or so.
In the USA, the RC church is in crisis-there are not enough vocations to keep the churches open, and many young men have been turned off by the prospect of the priesthood without marriage. I have also noted that the bedrock of the traditional church (those people ages 30-65 who do all of the volunteering, youth ministries, etc., are falling off)-in many cases, they have been frustrated with doing battle with many an ageing parish priest.
So what will happen? Is the stage set for a young, energetic church who will renew the faith? Or is the US RC church bound to go the way of the church in countries like France, Germany, Austria-lots of empty churches and non=practicing catholics?
As for JPII-he is so feeble that i really think he should retire…I can see no great purpose for him to continue…the guy can hardly talk.
That’s a false dichotomy. It’s entirely possible (and likely, in my opinion) for Catholicism to keep plodding the same path indefinitely. Endings and new beginnings aren’t the only possibilities.
And think about one thing: JPII has appointed about 90% of the current College of Cardinals. Given that, you can assume that they mostly agree with his policies. They aren’t going to pick a dynamic young iconoclast to lead the Church into the rest of the 21st Century. Not gonna happen…
“Take this bread, and eat, for it is my bodily-odily”?
I don’t see it as a great change, just minor tweeking.
The new head guy will be appointed by a group of people who have nearly all been appointed to their positions by the current head guy. And dollars to donuts they’ll choose one of their own number, to boot. This is not a recipe for radical change.
mmmmmm…donuts.
Look, the vocations crisis isn’t unsolvable. There are a good few married Catholic priests in America, generally converts from the Episcopalian or Lutheran churches. They were not required to remain celebate when they became Catholic priests, and by all accounts they have run their parishes well.
This may pave the way for a broader married clergy in the future.
In addition, vocational study in the developing world is at an all-time high. At one time, priests studied in Europe and America and then ministered abroad. It may sood come to pass that priests study abroad and then minister in Europe and America.
Can we wait for the OP to provide actual figures, facts and citations to back up his allegations before we continue?
What I see ahead for Catholicism in the 21st Century is neither “the end,” “a dramatic change,” or “more of the same.” Rather, it will, as it has any number of times in the past, refocus on the essentials of Catholic piety, practice, and theology. To the outside world this may seem to entail significant change, but to the devout Catholics themselves it will seem like a revived rededication to what they’ve been practicing all along.
Three historical examples: Trent, the reforms of Pius X, and Vatican II. (Note that two were heralded by Ecumenical Councils, and one was not.) In each case an overfocus on “peripherals” was decried and a calling back to what was deemed the historical focus of Catholicism was promoted, with significant changes in liturgy, church law, and personal practice accompanying that “calling back.”
The issue of clerical celibacy is a good example of a “peripheral” – Vatican II and subsequent efforts spearheaded by Paul VI and John Paul II revived the diaconate, a mode whereby married men who felt a call to the ordained ministry could follow up on that within the traditional structure. I would venture to guess that there were less than 100 vocational deacons worldwide prior to Vatican II. But now most dioceses have them, and they are the mainstay of the parishes in dioceses with a priest shortage.
Most people do not realize that priestly celibacy is not a theological requirement, but merely a “Law of the Church,” which the Pope could abolish tomorrow if he felt called to do so. It has a number of historical justifications, but they are purely practical, not based on doctrinal grounds.
The impact of John Paul’s “Theology of the Body” has scarcely been noted beyond the most scholarly and pious of Catholics, and I suspect that this massive teaching document will have a major impact in reshaping Catholic theological thought, and later, practice, during the new century.
Tom~ may have a lot more to say on this, but that’s my outsider’s perspective.
That’s part of it. Another part is that anuone who would consider making sweeping changes within the Catholic Church runs into political realities quickly: Most of the money coming in is from older, more conservative parishioners who would resist these changes with their checkbooks. “What? Abortion, the Pill and married clergy are A-OK now? And I had to bust my hump all my life without these Protestant-sounding ‘reforms’? Hmm, maybe Mel Gibson’s dad is onto something!” Basically, the people who would benefit from these reforms have either already left the church or make no financial impact upon it. Big, sudden reform is a lose-lose situation from the Vatican’s POV.
Ned Flanders, the Pope? What a horrible fate. Everyone know that he is the Devil, from that epsiode where Homer sold his soul for a donut. You know, I think that Homer would make a good savior. At the end of that episode, he was stuck as a giant donut. Having him as a savior would be a bigger change than another old man as a leader, and it would make every donut break a communion with god.
I can just hear him:
“For this tasty bavarian cream is my body. Hmm, the body of me.”
What justifications are these? Was celibacy intended to solve a problem, and, if so, what was the problem? (And was the problerm solved?)
I have no cite for this, but my recollection is that money leaving the church is a bad thing. When a priest got married, he would pass the money down to his kids. But again, no cite, I could be wrong.
Actually, in the U.S., only the abortion issue would generate the response you have proposed. There is substantial evidence that (generalized) Catholics in the U.S. and Europe are routinely ignoring the proclamations regarding contraception, already, and I doubt that a married clergy would bother all that many people. There is no great thrust from the pews to demand that celibacy be made optional, but there is no great opposition to it, either.
(That could change when it became clear that the parishoners would have to come up with more money to support the family of a priest, of course.)
The impetus for making celibacy might, indeed, come from the Third World, where many societies have no tradition of a celibate religious leadership and the practice of the priest cohabiting with a woman and raising a family are liable be seen as a possible/probable scandal as those priests move into the ranks of the hierachy.
On the other hand, while European and North American Catholics might be reluctantly open to the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood, those same Third World societies are unlikely to provide any support for that idea for many years to come.
Making predictions can be fun, but it is a parlor game with no winners (or recognized outcome). In 1958, the Church picked a nice, pious, quiet old man to be a caretaker for a few years until a couple of dynamos were ready to step into his shoes. That “old man” invoked an ecumenical council that formalized a lot of changes. (Of course, the changes were all well under way before the council, a point that is typically missed by people who only get their religious news from the popular media. No theological “change” that came out of the Second Vatican Council had been debated for fewer than 35 years within the Church–and most of the “changes” had been tried or discussed at local levels for over 60 years, some for as many as 100.) In the 1970s, idiots such as Malachi Martin made lots of money publishing “predictions” that the Church was so left-leaning, that the next pope was going to make some sort of “deal with the devil” in an accommodationist compact with the Soviet Bloc. So the next pope turned out to be someone who had spent most of his adult life living in the Soviet Bloc who was even more adamant in standing up to them than Pius XII had been.
The current Curia is dominated by the old guard such as Cardinals Ratzinger and Szoka. The College of Cardinals is filled with Third World members selected by a man who is extremely conservative in terms of personal morality and old-time obedience to the church, but who is quite liberal in terms of social morality. So how will the college vote? Do they pick a known right-winger with “inside” knowledge of “how things work”? Do they pick a charismatic outsider who may bring cultural baggage that makes others uncomforatble? (Remember, the cultural traditions arising from Europe and North America differ from the cultural traditions arising in South America that differ from those arising in Africa that differ from those arising in Asia. Not only are the local traditions different (although they tend appear to be smoothed over by the call to universality within the church), but the ways in which the universal culture of the church is shaped at the local level is affected by the local cultures.
Among culturally disjointed views that tend to have adherents that allow for some geographical grouping are attitudes toward sexuality (both within marriage or outside it, homosexuality, contraception, etc.), authority, and responses to social issues. (The hierarchy have been selected for their fairly consistent agreement with the Vatican, but we find that the views among the populace–and even clergy–are not so uniform.)
Another consideration (that may or may not actually be considered by the college) is that following Vatican II, there was a fair amount of re-examination of the church as Saving Remnant, in which there was discussion that numbers was not the game we should be playing. Rather, we should pick our core beliefs (as Poly noted) and focus on them, letting those who could not or would not follow find their own paths outside the church in the hope that after some period of time the qualities of the reformed church would entice more people to enter (or return). I have no idea whether that sort of thought still lingers in the minds of the current hierarchy. (I tend to think it does not, but in this parlor game, it is always well to be prepared to be surprised.)
Celibacy has been encouraged throughout the history of the Church, beginning with several of Paul’s statements. There were locations, by the third century where it was required of bishops, priests, and deacons, at least locally.
Many of the earliest church fathers stated that men who were priests should avoid marriage so that they would be free to minister to their people without worrying about the needs of their family. Whether the “distracting” element of a family was higher in their thoughts or whether they felt that sex (even in marriage) was somehow demeaning to the priesthood probably differed from one author to the next.
Tertullian in the second half of the 2d century speaks favorably of those in the ministry who have chosen to give up marriage.
St. Epiphanius in the same period claims (a little unclearly) that no one is allowed to be in the clergy who is married.
Origen (185 - 254) implies that celibacy is the norm without explicity saying that.
Eusebius (291 - 342) and St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315 - 386) each talked about how the clergy were expected to be celibate (without claiming, as Epiphanius did) that it was the rule.
On the other hand, Clement of Alexandria (died 215), after praising chastity highly, very clearly says that as long as a priest is faithful in his marriage, he is a worthy priest.
And Socrates (not that Socrates) who wrote a history of the church extending from 306 to 439 said that neither priests nor even bishops were required to be celibate in the Eastern church, provided that their marriage occurred before they took orders.
The first formal declaration that priests must be celibate came from a council (a regional meeting of bishops, in this case) in Elvira, Spain around 300. Apparently, a motion was made to make this a universal rule of the church at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, (325), but that motion was defeated.
Throughout the next several centuries, the western church leaned more and more toward mandatory celibacy while the eastern church did not.
By the ninth century, celibacy was mandatory in most of western Europe (although it was not wholeheartedly practiced).
From the ninth through the eleventh centuries, the breakup of Charlemagne’s empire resulted in a smaller scale replay of the fall of Rome, with most legal institutions (including the Church) suffering a certain amount of fraying at the edges. During this period, despite the calls for celibacy by several Church leaders, it was ignored by many of the clergy.
Gregorean Reforms: The 200 years following the death of Charlemagne saw civil chaos carried over into increasing corruption within the RCC, with the local nobility taking over churches and church lands and declaring that the power to appoint bishops was theirs. As a result, people who wanted to increase their own power through the power inherent in the church organization began to barter with the local lords for positions within the church and people within the church began selling the services of the church (the sin of simony). At the same time, this passing of church property between persons led to further abuses regarding inheritance by the wives and children of priests who then treated the properties of the church as their own private possessions. Hildebrand (his birth name), as a young man, had been schooled in a Benedictine abbey connected to the abbey of Cluny where they were attempting a spiritual reform of the church–one abbey and church at a time. Once he had been educated, he became the chaplain to John Gratian, later Pope Gregory VI. Working for John Gratian it became apparent that Hildbrand had both a deep spirituality and a genius for organization. When Gregory VI was forced into exile by various political machinations, Hildebrand went with him. When Gregory VI died, his successor looked up Hildebrand and invited him to serve in his staff. Over the next 20 years, or so, Hildebrand used his administrative powers to order numerous reforms within the church, speaking through the voices of several successive popes (all of whom kept him on their staffs). One of the reforms was that the pope would be chosen by the collected cardinals of the church, and not appointed by the Emperor. In 1073, when Pope Alexander II died, the cardinals chose Hildebrand to be pope, and he chose the name Gregory VII. (He actually protested his own election, but, fortunately, gave in to the college of cardinals.) Once in power, he decreed the following reforms to the clergy:[ul]
[li]That clerics who had obtained any grade or office of sacred orders by payment should cease to minister in the Church.[/li][li]That no one who had purchased any church should retain it, and that no one for the future should be permitted to buy or sell ecclesiastical rights.[/li][li]That all who were guilty of incontinence (i.e., of marrying or maintaining concubines) should cease to exercise their sacred ministry.[/li][li]That the people should reject the ministrations of clerics who failed to obey these injunctions.[/ul][/li]He then went on to organize a number of other reforms regarding the practices of the bishops.
Without in any way denying the harshness of the eleventh and twelfth century rules (or trying to deny the corruption that occurred, in many cases, among the local married clergy or the church hierarchy), it is still possible to point out that the concept of celibacy was far older than those events and that the practice of celibacy was not “created” to cement power within the church.
Hijack alert!
Oh, yeah, Malachi Martin. He wrote a few novels filled with Masonic conspiracies and actual demonic ceremonies in the Vatican itself, and the coming communist takeover or whatever of the RCC. It could have been fun stuff, but the guy is just a really bad writer. The title Windswept House comes to mind. I don’t know if I remember that right. It sounds like it should have been a romance novel with Fabio on the cover, doesn’t it?
Brian Moore worked a similar vein in Catholics. I always thought Moore, although a decent writer, was very jealous of Graham Greene’s status as “the” Catholic writer.
Hi, Jack! How are you doing? It’s been so long since I was you! You are looking great.
He also wrote at least two books (and numerous magazine articles) that he published as non-fiction. He didn’t get any closer to factual accuracy in them.
Say what? 
Say what?