Why is celibacy just SO important to the modern Catholic church?

[PacificDogwod]

Why can a worldwide institution as HUGE as the Catholic not accept that sexual activity is a fairly basic human need? And that homosexuality is part of the rich tapestry of all human life? And that most of us will be somewhere on a continuum of human sexuality??
More for some than others, admittedly, but the vast majority of people will be sexually active at some point in their live (even if only with themselves).

On the back of all the reports on seminarists using Grindr I have been pondering: gay sex aside (and I really don't want to talk about the sexual abuse of minors or dependents ) within the church), why is there this ongoing insistence of abstinence/celibacy for Catholic priests??

To me this news story reads "Adult males use publicly available dating app" - I really don't see what 'the authorities' are meant to do about it.

It partly comes from a tradition of ascetism - living in a cave and foregoing all worldly goods a bit like John the Baptist or Jesus during those 40 days...

Last priest I met drove a BMW and had an iPhone. What happened that they're now allowed luxury cars and smart phones but conservatives lose their shit over the prospect of a wife?

I also read ages ago about the hoarding of property/money angle on the part of the church being a major reason which does make sense.

Do please excuse the grammar etc of my last post - I really should not post while distracted...

Because the church got sick of kids wanting money from them after their father died, so priests got stopped from getting married to keep the cash in the church.

Yeap, it was brought in for financial reasons in the middle ages.

The only benefit to this I have ever seen was when priests and nuns in El Salvador defended the people with their lives and it helped that they did not have families who could be threatened. But that was one short decade in over a thousand years.

There are hosts of reasons why a good few religions require people or at least priests to be celibate. I accept that makes it hard for many but hard things are not always bad for us.

Poverty, chastity and obedience are not morally wrong ideas. They are no worse and possibly better than excess of wealth, sex and doing what you want all the time; but we have become very entitled and self centred as a nation and think getting what you want and doing what you want all the time is some kind of human right so there are not lots of people rushing for a life of self denial (pity as that kind of life can make you happier than materialism actually).

What are the good reasons?
Discipline? Practicing self-denial?
Genuine question.

I think wrt sexuality there ought to NOT be a moral value judgement attached to chastity or sexual promiscuity or anything in the between with the usual proviso that only consenting adults should be involved etc etc.

I have a much bigger problem with accepting poverty as morally superior - really?!
And obedience?? Again, really? At all costs?

I dunno, I strict me that the imposition of either extreme of sexuality is actually morally dubious.
And I don't see the Church (and many other religious institutions of other faiths) sticking to the ideal of poverty, or obedience (to other rules than their own) or chastity (do I actually need to give example of that one).

Fundamental to the Catholic religion is a searing hatred for women. Everything is built on the idea that women are the source of all evil in the world.

Celibacy is partly to do with that hatred and partly to do with saving their millions and millions and millions of pounds in order to buy more statues and gold candlesticks while the poor people they care so much about die of starvation.

I am a very ex Catholic.

This is a bit conspiracy theory-y. But, as well as all the other reasons, I think they just hate women.
Obviously women priests aren't allowed. For much of history, nearly all positions of power and community influence have been held by men - rulers, MPs, doctors, lawyers etc (with the occasional female exception like a female monarch or something). But most of those men were married. While it isn't remotely equivalent to being an MP in your own right, MPs who loved and respected their clever wives must have had a broader view of life than men who weren't close to any women and weren't brought up to respect them.

Excluding women from even being priest's wives is just sealing up another potential chink of female influence.

I think a lot of priests would like to be married. Thing is, they have rather old-fashioned views about what wives do. They would not be able to afford to have a housewife and mother who didn't work, but I wonder if they could cope with a working, fully equal partner?

I don't go to mass any more, for a variety of reasons, so perhaps am out of touch.

karalime I went to a catholic school Whilst I am an atheist, several of my practising catholic peers said they completely ignore the church's teaching on contraception and sex before marriage.
Unfortunately this is no longer available digitally, but it was very interesting regarding the church and sex:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05qsll9

As pp said, for the first millenia of Christianity the church didn't try and influence the sex lives of it's followers in a big way at all.

Yes, there is clearly huge misogyny within the Church, but while not entirely unconnected, does not really explain why it was decided to stop priests from marrying. I buy the financial argument - no pesky (official) offspring that had to be supported or who could inherit. That makes more sense to me.

I think there are a lot of bosses who would love their employees to be "celibate". Single people don't need to hurry home to see spouse and/or children- they can, and do, spend more hours at work.

The Catholic Church is the only place "lucky" enough to be able to enforce this in the current day and age.

2016Blyton Sat 20-Aug-16 12:55:55

"Poverty, chastity and obedience are not morally wrong ideas. They are no worse and possibly better than excess of wealth, sex and doing what you want all the time; but we have become very entitled and self centred as a nation and think getting what you want and doing what you want all the time is some kind of human right so there are not lots of people rushing for a life of self denial (pity as that kind of life can make you happier than materialism actually)."

Sadly there is a very long tradition of Church leaders cracking down on sexuality of others whilst being seen to live a life of luxury. The Vatican is not exactly a cave in the desert. Senior clergy are pretty comfortable. Very hard to claim that they are setting an example of poverty and self denial to their flock.

If I was a celibate Catholic priest, I would be pretty hacked off that married Anglican ones were able to just pop over and join the Catholic priesthood because they didn't fancy having to share their own priesthood with women. And they don't have to suffer the celibacy consequences as a result.

As a Catholic it irritates me that we are forced to accept these misogynistic old dinosaurs, thereby making the Catholic Church an even more misogynistic institution than it is already. I won't attend Mass at churches with married priests because it still annoys me so much.

Also, it amazes me how easily they managed to get over the thorny issue of accepting transubstantiation as soon as a female vicar loomed on the horizon.

As a general rule though, I think that Catholic priests (all of them - not just the converts) should be able to marry and have families. However, there would have to be a way found to properly fund them and pay them decent salaries. As other people have already pointed out, the Parishes do that to quite a large extent at the moment, although I think there is some form of central funding.

Money and control, basically.

The church is phenonenally rich and a massive landowner. If every parish priest married and had kids then the property squabbles would have been immense.

St Paul, basically. He idealised the idea of celibacy as the triumph of spirituality over carnal desires. There is a quote along the lines of it is better to burn ( with sexual frustration) than to give in to it, but if you cannot bear it, then marry, which was tantamount to admitting spiritual failure, in his view. The worst, most misogynistic Catholic principles originate with St Paul.
Also, Jesus was celibate, & priests are supposed to emulate him.
All of this is a crock (v much ex Catholic here)

The idea of self-flagelation. The priest will have urges and thoughts and feel like a sinner. He will spend his life in a state of vulnerability and unworthyness, which is the right mindfulness to practice Catholicism. I once went to an Alpha course and some thought they were sinners because they did not eat fish on Friday. It

^
The church is phenonenally rich and a massive landowner. If every parish priest married and had kids then the property squabbles would have been immense^

This is what I always understood. Raised Catholic, this is what my Priest uncle told me, and he probably knows. Ironically, he converted to CoE and had 4 DC.

A lot of things religions do are to do with tradition. So we all need to know what the bible teaches and follow that. Surely the bible as the word of God is what is important.

So Jesus wasn't married but some of the apostles were. That shows there is no problem in getting married.

I always assumed it was to do with purity, a priest wouldn't have impure thoughts if the temptation was never given in to it would go away and he wouldn't be dirtied by a woman

Never thought of the money aspect of it though that makes sense given how wealthy and how the Catholic Church is continuously adding to their vast wealth

It's interesting how Christianity views sex and how different that is from Islam as they overlap in many ways but both firmly blame women for men not being able to control themselves