hungry_student

It was mentioned in a debate on infidelguy.com. The essence of the passage is a prophecy about how priests should not be required to be celibate because it would lead to sexual perversions. The speaker proceded to point to recent priest scandals in the catholic churches as evidence of this prophecy.

Does anyone know where it's found? (New Testament epistles are my closest guess at this point).

-Matt

Lolabrigida

Hi! Is it I Timothy 4:1-4?

mrmoderate

Those passages of 1 Timothy certainly seem to fill the bill. Paul also taught that if an unmarried person desires to be married that they should marry to keep from being burned up with passion.

When it was declared that priests would be required to be celebate there were several in the Catholic Church who opposed this order on the basis that it would lead to perversions.

Vorkosigan

Catholic Church's Celibacy of the Clergy from the Catholic Encyl. Actually, the Church appears to draw on a number of different verses.

flintknapper

Wasn't the celibacy rule imposed by the Catholic Church done simply for reasons of economy? If the church was required to support the priest, they would also be required to support the priests wife and children. And you know how many children those Catholics have.

hungry_student

Thanks, lola. While I agree that celibacy is overkill, I do think it's intentions are altruistic if they are to keep the priests focused on God, and not the world.

However, as we've clearly seen, that is not the case. Instead of having sexw ith a wife, they turn to molesting boys. I think if the priests were very serious about upholding a life of celibacy, they should either become castrated or become monks, or something. If not, they should just get married.

Legion

Referring to "they" suggests that you think that all priests do this or at least that it is common amongst them; fortunately, it is not. That does not change the tragicness of it when it does happen, but according to the last study I saw, at least of the Catholic cases, molestation incidents were perpetuated by a tiny fraction of priests, with the vast majority of the cases being perpetuated by a fraction of the offenders--repeat offenders who had no business being allowed to remain in the priesthood and given opportunities to strike again.

hungry_student

I neglected to mention the supposedly high levels of homosexuality in the catholic priesthood. I believe it was Newsweek magazine where I read a 33% statistic of priests being gay. Not having the magazine with me, I did a quick google church, and found this site giving various accounts:

http://www.trosch.org/ant/gay_priests.html

Be sure to read the article about Donald Cozzen at the bottom.

Now none of this really matters if you don't consider homosexuality a sin, or at least a sexual perversion. But, granted that you do, then it can support claims of a higher number of priests being adversely affected by celibacy.