The Catholic Church in the West of Europe is facing extinction unless it allows priests to marry.The numbers joining the seminaries are dropping and there are already too few priests to go around.
While there is no doubt a massive spiritual calling to serve in the priesthood the human aspects cannot be ignored. Who would choose to serve the church at €13,000 per year with no chance of ever being with the person you love, raising a family or enjoying the family aspect to life?
The Hitler Youth Pope, Benedict, has ruled out any change to the celibacy requirement even though it was just made up well after the church was founded.
The first pope, St. Peter, as well as many subsequent popes, bishops, and priests during the church's first 270 years were in fact married men, and often fathers.
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I suspect that when Benedict moves on and the situation becomes desperate the church will reform but until then it will be no change. Heil!
2 comments:
The Catholic church certainly needs updating, and this is a central issue. Surely to spread the 'love' (excuse the pun) priests need to be content in what they do and, as you say, apart from the huge spiritual aspect people need to be financially comfortable to focus on their calling.
Hopefully this will happen, and a content clergy will infuse contentedness in a hopefully more 'liberal' congregation
The title of your post, 'Church faces extinction', is a tad sensationalist. The church has been around for 2000 years, and has about a billion members. It isn't going to go away anytime soon.
Certainly the church is suffering a shortage of priests in the western world, but the church is still very vibrant in South America and is experiencing huge growth in Africa. I suspect many of their priests will be 'imported' to serve in western churches.
The eastern rite of the Catholic Church does not mandate celibacy for priests, and neither did the early church. Many of the early popes not only had wives, but children also, as you have pointed out.
The Latin rite of the church has required priests to take a vow of celibacy ever since the Council of Elvira. However the practice must be understood as a canonial discipline, not church dogma. It is has scriptural foundation and is recommended by St Paul who says that 'married men have divided interests'(cf 1 Cor 7).
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