Celibacy is the state of abstaining from
marriage and sexual relations. This is not a popular lifestyle for most people.
Human beings are physically designed to procreate. But all humans are
physically and psychologically unique. Humans also believe they might continue
to exist after death. This is also true with non-Christians. Those who choose
the single life may be more self-sufficient, too busy, self-absorbed or
otherwise uninterested in mating. Others may simply feel inadequate. Many
simply have not yet found the right partner.
There were periods when people did reject
marriage and flock to religious life for lots of reasons. Women who were
escaping “arranged marriages, brutality or starvation took refuge in Convents.
Men who were not interested in Women might join a Monastery. But there were
also Men who were interested in other Men and that was the unintended
consequence of the Celibacy Rule.
Homosexuality had been practiced in Ancient
Greece and Rome, but was condemned by the Church. The old Pagan gods had no
problem with sin and they encouraged and celebrated all animal instincts. Their
main concern was avoiding starvation and death, so they prayed to the gods to
deliver crops and win wars.
The Pagans fully understood free will, but were
not concerned with how they treated others. Christianity did stress how we treat
others and attracted the Pagans to join. They also realized that sin had its
own consequences and Christianity offered a way to avoid these consequences.
Pagans were blown away by the miracles performed by the Apostles and the
courage displayed by the martyrs.
But when Christianity was merged with
governing, rulers used it to solidify their power with the “divine right of
kings” and discourage civil disobedience and rebellion with force. The Church
became vulnerable to gnostic heresies that went overboard on repressing
physical needs to enhance spirituality. http://www.godscholar.com/christian-heresies/
The
Roman Catholic Church made the celibacy rule for Priests in 1139 AD. The Church
wanted to “raise the bar” to attract Saints to religious life based on the many
examples of these Saints they had researched and studied.
The
Church had been established by Apostles and Disciples who were married and
unmarried. The Early Christian Leaders who were married, like Peter, traveled
left their wives at home as did soldiers, merchants and others. But as the
Church developed from 325 BC, it became rooted in land with churches and later
monasteries. There was some travel for some, but Priests were assigned to
Parishes.
The
Church in the middle-ages leading up to 1139 AD was beset by internal and
external politics. The selection of Bishops, Cardinals and Popes was up for
grabs by the Rulers. This period from 325 AD to 1139 AD saw wars, invasions,
slaughter, drought, plagues, poverty and migration with life expectancy at 40.
Life
went on in the Parishes and Church Members prayed and were aware that life was
short and heaven was promised to be better.
Nonetheless, these were people with free will, instincts, emotions and
hormones. To keep them from sin, they were warned about Hell. Many listened,
but not always.
But
when Christianity was recognized in 306 AD, everything got a lot more
complicated. The Emperor Constantine assumed the task of establishing
Christianity until his death in 337 AD. The Church became a bureaucracy that
was funded by the government.
In
325 AD, Emperor Constantine called the Bishops to Nicaea to codify the Nicaean
Creed. In 382 AD the Catholic Church
finally agreed on which writings should go into the Bible at the Council of
Rome in 382 AD during the time of Pope Damasus, who encouraged St. Jerome to
translate the Scriptures into Latin since Latin was the common language of all
educated people.
Monastic life began
with hermits who lived alone to pray and write. These were the prophets of the
Old Testament and the saints of the New Testament. As the Church
bureaucratized, these contemplatives moved to monasteries.
St. Augustine 354 –
430 AD Bishop of Hippo, wrote extensively to explain the Christian faith.
In 530 AD, St.
Benedict wrote the book on monasteries and published it as a blueprint for
monastics to follow.
In 910 AD Religious
Orders began to report to the Pope rather than their local Bishops. Having read
the writings of St. Augustine and St. Benedict, St Francis of Assisi petitioned
the Pope. The Franciscan Order was established in 1209 AD. More petitions
followed: Dominican 1216 AD, Augustinian 1244 AD,
Jesuit 1534 AD.
In 325 AD the Pope
became a “Royal” with the financial backing of the Emperor Constantine. The
Pope was on an equal footing with Kings and Emperors. The Church acquired land,
wealth and often assumed governing responsibilities. Pope Julius II (1443 – 1513) led his army to
defend Italy from the French and from Venetian expansion. The qualifications
for Pope had expanded. The merger of church and government created
“Prince-Bishops” ruling states in central Europe.
The “Devine Right of
Kings” had its roots in the Old Testament and the Royals liked that. The Bible was full of references of God’s
intervention in winning wars and selecting Kings like David. The Church’s job
was to support the Royal’s claim to rule. But if a King wanted to invade
another land and take it over, that was ok, because that was recorded in the
Bible as well. So, all of this was seen
as “God’s Will”.
The Roman Empire fell
in 476 AD and Kings began to appear in England, France, Germany, etc. The
Church became a political football for the Rulers who filled the voids of
central Europe.
On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned
the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the
title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the earlier ancient Western Roman Empire in 476. The title continued in the Carolingian family until 888 and from 896 to 899, after which it was
contested by the rulers of Italy in a series of civil wars until the death of
the last Italian claimant, Berengar
I, in 924. The title
was revived again in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor,
fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne. The Holy Roman Empire was reestablished in 962
and dissolved in 1806. In the end, it had become a cultural, symbolic empire,
much like the British Empire is today with separate governments in Canada and
Australia.
The history of the
Roman Catholic Church from 1139 AD to present has been a struggle to deal with
power and relevance. Both of these require that they find a balance that
recognizes the current realities of human existence.
The Protestant
Reformation in the 1500s was the result of the rejection of Martin Luther’s
grievances by the Pope, the invention of the printing press and the schisms in
the Church of England after Henry VIII’s break with Rome.
Today the Church is
dealing with declining attendance in Europe due to World Wars I and II and
declining attendance in the US due to its declining relevance since the 1960s.
The American Communist Party published its 25 goals in 1920 that included the
decline of morality and religion and its replacement with socialist policies
leading to the establishment of a Communist Republic in the US. The US
government has implemented this plan and we will have to dismantle it by
shrinking governments’ footprint.
The number of Catholic
Priests in the US doubled in the 1950s and peaked at 59,192 in 1970, but
dropped to 37,192 by 2015.
This shortage has been
off-set somewhat by the addition of Lay Deacons in Parishes, but attrition in
the Priesthood and the Seminary drop-out rate fail to make up the difference.
The Catholic Church
was very visible in the 1940s and 1950s on television and in movies, Catholic
schools and hospitals were dominant. But this ended in the 1960s and 1970s.
The War on
Christianity was launched in the US in the 1960s and this has had its
effects. Many Priests and most Nuns quit
after the 1962 Vatican Council and they continue to leave as government
replaces churches.
The number of Nuns in
the US declined 73% from 181,421 in 1966 to 49,833 in 2014. They used to run
the best Parish grade schools, Catholic high schools and hospitals when
education and healthcare were affordable.
Conservative Catholics
were happy with Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) and Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2016,
but Pope Francis (2013) is a UN oriented socialist dud, who doesn’t understand
science, economics, human nature or history.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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