When a married Anglican priest converts to the Roman Catholicism, he starts as a lay person, who is then ordained as a deacon, and then is ordained as a priest. He is permited to continue to be married by papal dispensation. It is not that the rule of celibacy is not a rule, but rather that it is expedient for the church to turn a blind eye to it when there is enought to be gained. Keep in mind the context of entire congregations wanting to convert due to Anglican inclusion of ordained women and gays. Want the congregation? Accept the priest’s wife.
No clergy allowed within 20 feet of a child.
95% of Catholic institutional funds to be used for ending poverty and disease in the third world, as well as providing free birth control.
I can’t help but think of Inigo Montoya: “Give me back my childhood, you sonofabitch!”
There’s really nothing they can do to make amends for the scandals. But if they were serious about doing so, then I think they’d need to make some very fundamental structural changes. Their unwillingness to do so, because God said not to, leads me to write them off.
That’s the brunt of the problem. People who believe they are directed by god and who belive they represent god’s authority tend to justify whatever they want to justify.
This. Completely. Every barrel has a rotten apple or two, but the RCC has been passing those rotten apples around and insisting that they are completely sound. They’ve been covering up the misdeeds for so long, and so consistently, that it’s policy. And that’s what I find unforgiveable.
Also, this. The RCC has been blocking access to birth control and even birth control education, to the vast detriment of the whole population. It’s even been disseminating lies about effective birth control.
Or you could consider it a ritual re-enactment of the myth, as the Norse did to bring luck to the clan - “take your son, your only son - and go to your local Cathedral. Let him get rogered there by one of the priests, which I will point out to you (and then we’ll deny EVERYTHING)”
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And the Trump Chapel would be a sight to behold 
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Not sure how even the Donald could tart up the Vatican more than it already is, to be honest. The Italian Renaissance had the market pretty locked up on gaudy, even though they notably did lack pink neon tech. Imagine the could have beens…
Ah, is that how it works? Fascinating.
I’m kinda curious how long this takes, compared to how long it would take an unmarried Catholic man to go through those stages if he, out of the blue, realized a calling for the priesthood. But that’s something of a digression, back to the main point.
Which is that the Roman Catholic Church has been ordaining married Catholic lay persons as priests, in certain circumstances where it feels there’s a good cost/benefit ratio.
It’s a rule, but it’s not exactly ironclad. And the ability and willingness of Popes to carve out exceptions to the rule certainly dispenses with the notion that celibacy is somehow necessary, for either spiritual or practical reasons, for being a priest. But for men born Catholic, unlike those who had the foresight to be born outside the Church and seek Anglican priesthood before converting, the celibacy requirement remains in place: got to keep the rubes in line. No special dispensation for you, good Catholic.
There’s really no core of principle under all the corruption, is there?
Here is an article in the National Catholic Register that gives an overview of the process.
Wow, that’s impressive: a year, maybe a year and a half, of Saturday courses by teleconference. (Planning for designing the course began in late spring of 2010; the first class graduated this past May.)
Why do I suspect that your typical lay Catholic seeking ordination might have a more extensive program of study ahead of him?
I’m also wondering about this whole notion of bringing entire congregations into the Catholic Church at once. For at least a year, probably longer, the former Episcopal priest isn’t an Episcopal priest anymore because he’s converted to Roman Catholicism, but he isn’t a Catholic priest yet either. Seems like the congregation is missing something in the meantime.
Yes. The institution is and has been for centuries, a festering pool of corruption. It should sell all it possesses and give to the poor. I’m sure they can find a biblical cite to back them up.
Then if people still need a ‘Catholic’ church they can build a new 21st century one from the roots up.
Plan B.
Self-selecting for a disproportionate number of homosexuals, sure. If the statistics in the Wikipedia article are correct, more than 80% of priest sex abuse victims are male.
Self-selecting for pedophiles, I’m not convinced. The same link says that the proportion of priests accused of abuse is about the same as in the population in general. So if there are more pedophile priests, they’re acting on it less often than one would predict.
As for the OP, all I think the church should do is make sure it is cooperating fully with the law, and ensure that anyone involved with a coverup is punished appropriately - just as should happen with any big organization. People calling for a wholesale disbanding of the church and a complete about-face on its core principles are, I think, mostly just expressing their dislike of the church. (A dislike, BTW, that may be totally reasonable in its own right.) For comparison, whatever changes should be made at Penn State because of the abuse scandal there, it doesn’t make sense (to me) to argue that football should never again be played at the school, that anyone who watches a game is a fan of child rape, that the school should alter its very educational mission. Likewise with the Catholic church.
For a proper comparison, what if there had been a problem with child sex abuse for the entire time that football program had been in existence, and there had been a systematic coverup of this the entire time?
As this directly includes the current Pope and I have no doubt, over the years the entire Vatican hierarchy, I really don’t think the CC is capable of reform. And that is not to get into the other legion in number crimes against humanity. I’m not seeing anyone without sin in this.
Sometimes a building is so rotten you just have to knock it down.
Wouldn’t change much in my mind. Football in and of itself still wouldn’t be illegitimate (at least not for that reason), nor the idea of Penn State having a football program. People involved in the abuse and coverup should still be appropriately punished.
Besides, you’re saying there’s been child sex abuse and systematic coverups for the entire existence of the Catholic church, all ~2000 years of it? Well, I’m sure there has been - there’s been just about everything you can imagine in so huge and widespread an institution. But it’s been far from the defining characteristic of Catholicism, yes, even in the past couple decades as more allegations have come to light.
True. Hatred of women has pretty much held that spot since Day 1, beating the loving of land, power and all things shiny by a short head. There is absolutely nothing christian about the Catholic Church.
There have been plenty of bad popes in history. A bad pope (or even, as you believe, a bad entire Vatican hierarchy) does not make the church rotten to the core. Believe it or not most Catholic priests - the level of church hierarchy that the vast majority of Catholics interact with - perform their duties without molesting or covering up for anyone.
…But then you seem to believe that even their regular duties are rotten. Okay. Different topic.
The problem with that is that the Roman Catholic Church isn’t just any big organization. It isn’t Microsoft or Pepsico. It claims special moral standing, and in fact has no reason to exist as it is if it lacks that standing.
So if it isn’t going to act in a morally exemplary fashion, rather than just doing the minimum required by law, it really should disband.
This is critical, but to me the single best thing they can do is to introduce transparency by removing the seal of the confession. Once this seal is broken then any priest hearing a confession of any crime would be forced to report this to the state.