Father Alberto Cutie's scandal doesn't change the debate about clerical celibacy. - Slate Magazine
How unusual. Slate runs a column that doesn't do a bad job at defending celibacy for the Catholic priesthood.
Personally, however, I believe the rules should be changed to something close to that within the Eastern Orthodox church.
5 comments:
Steve,
While you are talking about Popery - I thought that this new Journal may be of interest to you: http://msbahnisch.wordpress.com/
And on the subject of clerical celibacy the Lutheran position can be seen at http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/concord/web/augs-023.html
Hey, I thought I had read recently that the Lutherans are going Episcopalian with respect to gay clergy. (Mind you, I have no idea about how the Lutherans are governed. Are there conservative branches and liberal branches that don't have much to do with each other?)
As for Mark Bahnisch's new journal: I don't mean to be unkind, and no doubt many would take this as a poor reflection on me, but to paraphrase a famous German, when I hear "spirituality" I want to reach for my (imaginary) revolver. When it's spirituality talk by a liberal sociologist, a bazooka seems more apt.
While I have had a lifelong interest in religion, have read (relatively) widely on the subject, and do not dismiss the emotional support that it can provide, I just have never understood what "spirituality" means, and continue to have very, very little interest in reading about it.
Certainly in the modern world, it seems to have become shorthand for the type of emotional reaction and reasoning particularly embraced by liberals, but pretty empty of intellectual restraint or overlay.
Of course, I know that conservative Popes and saints can talk about the importance of "spirituality" too, but it really seems to me to be the wishy-washiest aspect of religion.
(I wish I could explain this better. But the topic of "religion without spirituality" is not a common one to find anyone writing about.)
By the way, of course I am at least pleased that there are liberals who are leery of Peter Kennedy too.
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