What happens when a Catholic Church defies this order? Does the legislature send the police to the parish to shut them down? Toss the pastor in prison?

NOTA. In the unlikely event that a law like this one passed constitutional muster at all, the only practical effect would be that a parish created in violation of the statute would be disregarded as a corporate entity, which could come in handy for any plaintiff lawyer looking to sue the Vatican over the misdeeds of an individual priest.

As a school teacher reading this article for the first time today, I am without words other than the profanity expressed above.

Are they coming for our guns this Wednesday or next?

The state does not control the church and the church does not control the state. The influence is applied from one to the other through the citizen. The citizen is not the all important check currently but it keeps a balance. As with most of the poli…..

Elisa on March 10, 2009 at 12:16 AM

I love the Catholics, but this priest thing not be able to be married is one thing I just can’t cope with.
No where does it say, in the bible, that one should be celibate.
I don’t know it if encourages “wrong” actions, I suspect it does in some way.
Popes were married, Popes had children, but now it isn’t right?
But then I can hardly understand why women can’t have leadership roles in most churches…just because Paul had a problem.
But the strangest thing of all is why a Politician would even think of identifying a specific church and make laws against them…that really makes no sense. It shows they have no idea of how their constituents really live.

The primary thing that makes a Baptist church part of the Southern Baptist convention is their voluntary contribution to the Southern Baptist convention’s cooperative giving programs.

tom on March 9, 2009 at 4:07 PM

I guess you missed reading my whole post, not unusual when someone is so invested in making his point, you ignore the real arguments.
First, you admit that most churches are part of a hierarchy…you may call a pastor, but that pastor is placed on a call list by whom? Your “master” organization, whether it is a synod, or university, or “convention”.
Second, to be a Christian church, you must mission…if not then you are not following Christ.
So in a mission, you support other churches, financially, and spiritually, and with your expertise…you become a mother church. If that doesn’t happen, you don’t set up or support mission churches, then why are you there?
You can bark all you want, but you must sit down and look at your Southern Baptist roots, if a Southern Baptist minister started doing terrible things, the Southern Baptists would step in and force him out…or remove the charter, get it the charter. Your church couldn’t be a Southern Baptist…try using that name in a commercial without their consent.
Name me your Southern Baptist church that is independent and not in any way related to the “system”.
You’re welcome for the education…

One thing I love about being Catholic is how all of the right people hate us.

Notice how they’ve not gone after all religious institutions – then they would have to include Judaism and Islam – two groups they don’t want to tangle with.

I see this as an attempt to dictate policy within the church, not doctrine. If you dictate where the money goes, you are subverting the doctrine. And if you bankrupt and/or cause them to divert funding from programs the church, as they fund the legal fights against all these attacks, you’ve also won.

The Catholics are first because of the recent demonization of the church by the MSM – cause we’re all pedophiles, ya’ know.

I say we “hang together”.

People, if you want to know what the motivation of the gay left is and what they intend to do, it’s all right here. Make your decisions accordingly.

and I love making the sign of the cross. :) I think I do it a dozen times a day. (trying my best to “pray unceasingly”) Like you said, this is from the catacomb days of the Church, an ancient Christian practice.

For those reading here who never read this around 200 AD Tertullian wrote:

“We Christians wear out our foreheads with the sign of the cross” and

“In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our forehead with the sign of the cross.”

The point of my post on celibacy was to show that it was an ancient practice,
that there are good reasons for it both in the 1st century and now,
that it is a good thing, not a bad thing and it helps the Church,
and that it doesn’t cause homosexuality, pedophilia or sex with adolescent boys (these things are found in very small percentages in the Catholic clergy, as well as in Protestant clergy, rabbis, teachers, coaches, etc.

It is not “mandated for all,” and it is a gift and vocation only for some. Those who are called by God to be Western/Roman Catholic priests. It is voluntary for a man to become a priest. They are not forced to and it is not necessary to their salvation. So they become celibates voluntarily and God gives them the graces they need, if they rely on Him.

1 Tim 4:1-6 is talking about the sects and cults in that day who had strange beliefs. Paul was warning Christians about in the future falling into heresy. The Gnostics heresies especially. They believed that everything physical was evil and only the spirit was good. This lead to 2 extremes that they would practice. Some of them thought that all sex was evil, even in marriage. Others were extremely promiscuous because they believed that anything they did with their bodies didn’t count. They also did not believe in the resurrection of the body. There were many Christian teachings that they changed and rejected and they were called heretics because of it.

There were also sects that thought that meat was evil and forbade eating it ever. Obviously that is not the same thing as periodic fasting from meat. Catholics are not forbidden to ever eat meat. lol And we are not taught meat is evil. (the fasting disciplines in the Eastern Catholic Churches are different and align with the fasts in the Eastern Orthodox Churches.) If the Church didn’t have disciplines on fasting in order to shepherd the flock for their own wellbeing, how many Catholics would fast? Probably as many as the small number of Protestants who fast. Jesus fasted and the Bible says it is a good thing. Hand in hand with prayer. And we gain a powerful spiritual benefit from it.

The Church doesn’t “forbid marriage,” as that passage warns against. That scripture passage does not apply to the Catholic Church. Because a man becomes a priest voluntarily.

It is not “mandatory” for all Catholics. Obviously you know the faithful are all allowed to marry. Marriage is a sacrament in the Catholic Church and considered a sacred vocation. And it is only a discipline for the priests in the Western Church. The priests of the various Eastern Catholic Churches, fully Catholic, can be married.

Jesus was fully man and fully God. There are a lot of things that Jesus did as a man, that God doesn’t do. Sex in marriage is not sinful and it would not have been if Jesus married. He had reasons why He chose not to. Some we can speculate on and others are far above our abilities to understand right now. But I’m sure we can all agree it was a good decision on His part. Knowing human nature the way we do and what men would do to Jesus’ physical descendents, either making them God or killing them.

God bless you, tom, and good night.

The relevant passage against a requirement for celibacy would be 1 Tim 4:1-6, where a warning is given against those “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats.”

tom on March 9, 2009 at 7:47 PM

A priest may marry in the Eastern Rite, and in the Latin Rite may marry if he leaves the priesthood. There is no forbidding. One of my brothers-in-law has an ex-priest as his father. And the phrase is not “commanding to abstain from meats” but instead abstaining from foods God created to be received with thanksgiving. The Tradition of abstainance from meat one day a week during Lent is there to remind us of how Jesus fed the multitude, as well as to remind us of our obligation to the poor. These acts are not the doings of demons in the last days as Timothy would put it.

In fact, not abstaining is not a sin, and in fact the Church states that one must NOT do so if it would result in damage to one’s health.

We do many things under Tradition to remind ourselves of what Jesus went through for us. The Stations of the Cross, Mass, the Sacraments — all these things are rooted in Jesus’ acts during his life. None of them are forbidden by the Bible — they stand next to the Bible as visible discriminators of God’s People from any other. Every Sign of the Cross takes us back into the Catacombs to remember the day when being a Christian meant the possibility of death (as, in some parts of the world, it still does — imagine an ex-Muslim making the Sign of the Cross and you get the idea).

Elisa on March 9, 2009 at 11:26 PM

Thank you. I disagree quite strongly with some Catholic doctrine and practices, but just reading about 1098 is making my heart pump ice water. This is the kind of horror that begins with ‘oversight’ and ends with reeducation camps, torture, and a hundred different kinds of tyranny.