Pope Francis Raises Idea of ‘Solutions’ to Clergy Celibacy

[JimBowie1958]

[

There are a lot of ideological shit-for-brains that will question it for the attention and purchasing power of idiots like you, but no one seriously questions this any more.

Even Wikipedia for fucks sake agrees; Jesus lived and there is no serious scholarship that doubts it.

What you are reading is merely stupid bullshit for idiots.

You mean after 2000 years of burning people at the stake for not believing in Jesus, we are finally getting people to ask the silly questions like, "If Jesus existed, why are the only accounts of him written by people who never met him personally, and plagarized off of each other.

The Gospels were written by people who met Him, dude. The modernists once dated the gospels as written in the fourth century, and each time they find older manuscripts they have to back the date up, again and again. That is because their arguments are fundamentally flawed to start with.

Most Christian and other scholars now place the gospels at around 60 to 90 AD and well plausibly written by the men named as having written them.

Someone coming back from the Dead, that's actually kind of a big deal. So how come no one else but the Christians talk about it?

Well, YOU are talking about it, genius.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Lol, yes, Jesus was a real person and modern scholarship no longer even questions that FACT, dumbass.

The Roman Catholic concept of the priest is that he is married to Christ, what like a gay marriage ?

Actually, NUNS are married to Christ, priests foresake earthly bonds for God. And Hitchens is dead, Dawkins MAY be hedging his bets (99% sure God does not exist.)

Why is it atheists don't talk much about Anthony Flew any more?

Antony Flew - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Could it have anything to do with this?

According to the introduction, Flew informed Habermas in January 2004 that he had become a deist,[22] and the interview took place shortly thereafter. Then the text was amended by both participants over the following months prior to publication. In the article Flew states that he has renounced his long-standing espousal of atheism by endorsing a deism of the sort that Thomas Jefferson advocated ("While reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings."). Flew stated that "the most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries" and that "the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it".

Lol, at least Flew is among the more honest atheists, errr, FORMER atheists.

Further more....

In another letter to Carrier of 29 December 2004 Flew went on to retract his statement, writing "a deity or a 'super-intelligence' [is] the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature," and "I now realise that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction." He blamed his error on being "misled" by Richard Dawkins, claiming Dawkins "has never been reported as referring to any promising work on the production of a theory of the development of living matter."[24] His 2007 book revisited the question, however, and questioned contemporary models: "the latest work I have seen shows that the present physical universe gives too little time for these theories of abiogenesis to get the job done."[25] He added: "The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and 'coded chemistry'? Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem."[25]

The work of the Orthodox Jewish nuclear physicist Gerald Schroeder had been influential in Flew's new belief, but Flew told Carrier that he had not read any of the critiques of Schroeder that Carrier referred him to.

However, in spring 2005, when Raymond Bradley, an atheist in Editorial Board for The Open Society journal, wrote an open letter to Flew accusing him of not "check[ing] the veracity of [Schroeder's] claims before swallowing them whole," Flew strongly responded to that charge in a letter published in the same journal in summer 2006, describing the content of Bradley's letter "extraordinary offensive" and the accusation made by him as an "egregiously offensive charge"; he also implied that Bradley was a "secularist bigot," and suggested that he should follow Socrates's advice (as scripted in Plato's Republic) of "follow[ing] the argument wherever it leads."[26] Other prominent atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, suggested Flew's deism was a form of God of the gaps.[27]

When asked in December 2004 by Duncan Crary of Humanist Network News if he still stood by the argument presented in The Presumption of Atheism, Flew replied he did but he also restated his position as deist: "I'm quite happy to believe in an inoffensive inactive god." When asked by Crary whether or not he has kept up with the most recent science and theology, he responded with "Certainly not," stating that there is simply too much to keep up with. Flew also denied that there was any truth to the rumours of 2001 and 2003 that he had converted to Christianity.[28]

About other atheists, Flew said:[29]
"I have been denounced by my fellow unbelievers for stupidity, betrayal, senility and everything you can think of and none of them have read a word that I have ever written."

"...and none of them have read a word that I have ever written" pretty much sums it up for the entirety of the libtard neoMarxist movement, of which militant atheism is a subset.

 

[JoeB131]

The Gospels were written by people who met Him, dude. The modernists once dated the gospels as written in the fourth century, and each time they find older manuscripts they have to back the date up, again and again. That is because their arguments are fundamentally flawed to start with.

Most Christian and other scholars now place the gospels at around 60 to 90 AD and well plausibly written by the men named as having written them.
.

Uh, no, guy, they weren't.

Mark's Gospel was the first written (of the Canonical Gospels). Even Church Tradition holds that Mark never met Jesus. Some have tried to claim he was one of the "70 disciples", but meh, most call him a companion of Paul, who never met Jesus.

The Author of Mark is clearly not a Judean. He gets a bunch of stuff wrong, such as geographical locations, or what Jewish law was on Divorce. (Jesus admonishes Judean women not to get divorces when they couldn't initiate a divorce to start with, unlike their Greek and Roman counterparts.)

Now, the reason why this becomes important later is that Matthew and Luke heavily plagiarized off of Mark. In fact, 90% of Mark's text reappears in Matthew or Luke or both.

Now we get to Matthew, who is supposedly the Apostle Levi described in some of the Gospels and was a tax collector. but if he was one of the 12 who traveled with Jesus, why would he need to plagiarize off Mark?

Luke- Held to be a companion of Paul.

You also have the fact that Luke and Matthew have completely contradictory birth stories for Jesus that place Jesus' birth about 10 years apart AND come up with some rather silly plot devices as to why someone from Nazareth would be born in Bethlehem.

Finally, you get John. John is written by someone who is angry at the Jews for not accepting Jesus and denounces them in every verse. Clearly not one of Jesus' Jewish original followers. I could do whole paragraphs on John and his trippy Gospel.

 

[JimBowie1958]

The Gospels were written by people who met Him, dude. The modernists once dated the gospels as written in the fourth century, and each time they find older manuscripts they have to back the date up, again and again. That is because their arguments are fundamentally flawed to start with.

Most Christian and other scholars now place the gospels at around 60 to 90 AD and well plausibly written by the men named as having written them.
.

Uh, no, guy, they weren't.

Mark's Gospel was the first written (of the Canonical Gospels). Even Church Tradition holds that Mark never met Jesus. Some have tried to claim he was one of the "70 disciples", but meh, most call him a companion of Paul, who never met Jesus.

The Author of Mark is clearly not a Judean. He gets a bunch of stuff wrong, such as geographical locations, or what Jewish law was on Divorce. (Jesus admonishes Judean women not to get divorces when they couldn't initiate a divorce to start with, unlike their Greek and Roman counterparts.)

Now, the reason why this becomes important later is that Matthew and Luke heavily plagiarized off of Mark. In fact, 90% of Mark's text reappears in Matthew or Luke or both.

Now we get to Matthew, who is supposedly the Apostle Levi described in some of the Gospels and was a tax collector. but if he was one of the 12 who traveled with Jesus, why would he need to plagiarize off Mark?

Luke- Held to be a companion of Paul.

You also have the fact that Luke and Matthew have completely contradictory birth stories for Jesus that place Jesus' birth about 10 years apart AND come up with some rather silly plot devices as to why someone from Nazareth would be born in Bethlehem.

Finally, you get John. John is written by someone who is angry at the Jews for not accepting Jesus and denounces them in every verse. Clearly not one of Jesus' Jewish original followers. I could do whole paragraphs on John and his trippy Gospel.

That is a bunch of outdated old bullshit mostly and conjecture I am not going to waste my time with.

Here is what the Roman Catholic Church says on the matter.

Are the Gospels Myth? | Catholic Answers

The Historical Evidence

Those supernatural elements—especially the miracles of Jesus and his claims to divinity—are, as we’ve noted, why skeptics call the Gospels "myth" while remaining unruffled about anything written about Julius Caesar and the Rubicon by Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. Yes, Suetonius did write in his account (Lives of the Twelve Caesars) about "an apparition of superhuman size and beauty . . . sitting on the river bank, playing a reed pipe" who persuaded Caesar to cross the river, but it has not seemed to undermine the belief that Caesar did indeed cross the Rubicon on January 11, 49 B.C. But, for the sake of argument, let’s set aside the theological claims found in the New Testament and take a brief look at the sort of data a historian might examine in gauging the reliability and accuracy of an ancient manuscript.

First, there is the sheer number of ancient copies of the New Testament. There are close to 5,700 full or partial Greek New Testament manuscripts in existence. Most of these date from between the second to 16th century, with the oldest, known as Papyrus 52 (which contains John 18), dating from around A.D. 100–150. By comparison, the average work by a classical author—such as Tacitus (c. A.D. 56–c. 120), Pliny the Younger (A.D. 61–113), Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17), and Thucydides (460–395 B.C.)—has about 20 extant manuscripts, the earliest copy usually several centuries newer than the original. For example, the earliest copy of works by the prominent Roman historian Suetonius (A.D. 75–130) date to A.D. 950—over 800 years after the original manuscripts had been written.

In addition to the thousands of Greek manuscripts, there are an additional 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and thousands of additional manuscripts in Syriac, Aramaic, and Coptic, for a total of about 24,000 full or partial manuscripts of the New Testament. And then there are the estimated one million quotes from the New Testament in the writings of the Church Fathers (A.D. 150–1300). Obviously, the more manuscripts that are available, the better scholars are able to assess accurately what the original manuscripts contained and to correct errors that may exist in various copies.

When Were They Written?

Closely related is the matter of dating. While debate continues as to the exact dating of the Gospels, few biblical scholars believe that any of the four works were written after the end of the first century. "Liberal New Testament scholars today," writes Blomberg, "tend to put Mark a few years one side or the other of A.D. 70, Matthew and Luke–Acts sometime in the 80s, and John in the 90s" (Making Sense of the New Testament, 25). Meanwhile, many conservative scholars date the synoptic Gospels (and Acts) in the 60s and John in the 90s. That means, simply, that there exist four accounts of key events in Jesus’ life written within 30 to 60 years after his Crucifixion—and this within a culture that placed a strong emphasis on the role and place of an accurate oral tradition. Anyone who denies that Jesus existed or who claims that the Gospels are filled with historical errors or fabrications will, in good conscience, have to explain why they don’t make the same assessment about the historical works of Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Julius Caesar, Livy, Josephus, Tacitus, and other classical authors.

Secondly, historical details are found in the Gospels and the other books of the New Testament. These include numerous mentions of secular rulers and leaders (Caesar Augustus, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Felix, Archelaus, Agrippa, Gallio), as well as Jewish leaders (Caiaphas, Ananias)—the sort of names unlikely to be used inaccurately or even to show up in a "myth." Anglican scholar Paul Barnett, in Is The New Testament Reliable? , provides several pages’ worth of intersections between biblical and non-biblical sources regarding historical events and persons. "Christian sources contribute, on an equal footing with non-Christian sources," he observes, "pieces of information that form part of the fabric of known history. In matters of historical detail, the Christian writers are as valuable to the historian as the non-Christian" (167).

Then there are the specifically Jewish details, including references to and descriptions of festivals, religious traditions, farming and fishing equipment, buildings, trades, social structures, and religious hierarchies. As numerous books and articles have shown in recent decades, the beliefs and ideas found in the Gospels accurately reflect a first-century Jewish context. All of this is important in responding to the claim that the Gospels were written by authors who used Greek and Egyptian myths to create a supernatural man-god out of the faint outline of a lowly Jewish carpenter.

Pay Dirt

Various modern archeological discoveries have validated specific details found in the Gospels:
In 1961 a mosaic from the third century was found in Caesarea Maritima that had the name "Nazareth" in it. This is the first known ancient non-biblical reference to Nazareth.
Coins with the names of the Herod family have been discovered, including the names of Herod the king, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee (who killed John the Baptist), Herod Agrippa I (who killed James Zebedee), and Herod Agrippa II (before whom Paul testified).
In 1990 an ossuary was found inscribed with the Aramaic words, "Joseph son of Caiaphas," believed to be a reference to the high priest Caiaphas.
In 1968 an ossuary was discovered near Jerusalem bearing the bones of a man who had been executed by crucifixion in the first century. These are the only known remains of a man crucified in Roman Palestine, and verify the descriptions given in the Gospels of Jesus’ Crucifixion.
In June 1961 Italian archaeologists excavating an ancient Roman amphitheatre near Caesarea-on-the-Sea (Maritima) uncovered a limestone block. On its face is an inscription (part of a larger dedication to Tiberius Caesar) that reads: "Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judaea."

Numerous other finds continue to demolish the notion that the Gospels are mythologies filled with fictional names and events.

The External Evidence

Third, there are extra-biblical, ancient references to Jesus and early Christianity. Although the number of non-Christian Roman writings from the first half of the first century is quite small (just a few volumes), there are a couple of significant references.

Writing to the Emperor Trajan around A.D. 112, Pliny the Younger reported on the trials of certain Christians arrested by the Romans. He noted that those who are "really Christians" would never curse Christ:


They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. (Letters, Book 10, Letter 96)

The historian Tacitus, in his Annals —considered by historians to be one the finest works of ancient Roman history—mentioned how the Emperor Nero, following the fire in Rome in A.D. 64, persecuted Christians in order to draw attention away from himself. The passage is noteworthy as an unfriendly source because although Tacitus thought Nero was appalling, he also despised the foreign and, to him, superstitious religion of Christianity:


Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. (Annals, 15:44)

Robert E. Van Voorst, author of Jesus Outside the New Testament, offers a detailed analysis of scholarly controversies about this passage, and then states, "Of all the Roman authors, Tacitus gives us the most precise information about Christ" (45). This includes Tacitus’s understanding that "Christus"—not Paul or someone else—was the founder of the Christian movement. He notes that Christ was executed under Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, and that Judea was the source of the Christian movement. All of which further confirms the historical reliability of the Gospels.

Conclusion

As Pope Benedict XVI noted in his book on Jesus, there is much that is good about historical-critical and other scientific methods of studying Scripture. But these approaches have limits. "Neither the individual books of Holy Scripture nor the Scripture as a whole are simply a piece of literature" (Jesus of Nazareth, xx).

The Christian apologist should not be embarrassed to admit that he has a certain bias when it comes to reading and understanding the Gospels. He should point out that everyone has biases, and that the skeptic’s bias against the supernatural and the miraculous shapes how he reads and understands history, especially the historical data found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Christian, in other words, should have no problem with an honest historical examination of the Gospels. But why do so many skeptics shy away from a candid examination of their philosophical biases? That is the question apologists should pose and demand (politely, of course) to be answered.

Again, you are so full of shyte you cant see the shit for the manure.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Wow...this Pope is shaking some shit up! He's rocking the joint and I'm loving it. Go Frankie Go!!!

Pope Francis Raises Idea of ‘Solutions’ to Clergy Celibacy

Pope Francis reportedly called the Catholic Church’s requirement that its clergy remain celibate a “problem” for which “there are solutions,” during a controversial interview with an Italian newspaper.​

Let priests marry, that's your solution.

Just what I thought when I read the headline, the entire story is a misrepresentation of his words.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Wow...this Pope is shaking some shit up! He's rocking the joint and I'm loving it. Go Frankie Go!!!

Pope Francis Raises Idea of ‘Solutions’ to Clergy Celibacy

Pope Francis reportedly called the Catholic Church’s requirement that its clergy remain celibate a “problem” for which “there are solutions,” during a controversial interview with an Italian newspaper.​

Let priests marry, that's your solution.

A celibate Clergy is the result of the political situation of the late dark ages/medieval period. It allowed families to shunt sons into something that would support them, but prevent them from having progeny requiring inheritances.

If you think this will lead to other changes of position, I hate to dash your hopes. Positions against homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, etc are doctrines based on the bible. Celibate priests are not.

Francis is a traditionalist, he isn't going to be allowing the clergy to marry anytime soon.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Let priests marry, that's your solution.

It only took them 12 centuries to even consider this.

Francis is shaking it hard. And it's like a brittle 90 year old man. He might just unravel their global entanglements. That will be interesting to see.

If Francis wanted to make this change he could do it ex cathedra. The fact that he hasn't is all the proof informed people need to understand that the OP is wrong.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

A celibate Clergy is the result of the political situation of the late dark ages/medieval period. It allowed families to shunt sons into something that would support them, but prevent them from having progeny requiring inheritances.

If you think this will lead to other changes of position, I hate to dash your hopes. Positions against homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, etc are doctrines based on the bible. Celibate priests are not.

Yeah...just keep on believin' that. Even "the Church" will come around on "the gheys"...but that's not what this is about. This is huge, all by itself.

I swear, if Frankie comes out and says women can be priests, I'm convertin'.

I think they will lose more members than they will gain by doing this. Being a former Catholic I know these folks love that tradition. the things that make the church bizarre to the test of humanity makes it endearing to them.

Does the rest of humanity view clubs that are exclusive to gay men as bizarre, or are you speaking out of your ass again?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

the OP claim it was to conform----just clearing things up for him.

You're just messing around with ambiguity in language. You aren't clearing anything up.

conform--submit-------different

check it out for yourself---It's true.

Conformist aren't able to understand the difference.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

relgions goal is NOT conformity. It is submission to a belief system.

I disagree.

your partially right----some religions could care less if you adhere to their dogma/philosophy or not.

Unitarianism comes to mind.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

[

Paul was a person of gnostic/monastic bent, and saw denial of sexual desire as a method of becoming closer to God. He did however recognize that this was not possible for all people, and instructed those to could not or even should not to keep it in marriage.

Also, you are cherry picking specific lines out of context, and you know it.

Paul invented Christianity. You didn't think that Jesus guy was a real person, did you?

Historians do.

Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ - RationalWiki

Please note that I used a non Christians source to make my point.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

[

There are a lot of ideological shit-for-brains that will question it for the attention and purchasing power of idiots like you, but no one seriously questions this any more.

Even Wikipedia for fucks sake agrees; Jesus lived and there is no serious scholarship that doubts it.

What you are reading is merely stupid bullshit for idiots.

You mean after 2000 years of burning people at the stake for not believing in Jesus, we are finally getting people to ask the silly questions like, "If Jesus existed, why are the only accounts of him written by people who never met him personally, and plagarized off of each other.

Someone coming back from the Dead, that's actually kind of a big deal. So how come no one else but the Christians talk about it?

There you go making unsupportable statements again.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The Gospels were written by people who met Him, dude. The modernists once dated the gospels as written in the fourth century, and each time they find older manuscripts they have to back the date up, again and again. That is because their arguments are fundamentally flawed to start with.

Most Christian and other scholars now place the gospels at around 60 to 90 AD and well plausibly written by the men named as having written them.
.

Uh, no, guy, they weren't.

Mark's Gospel was the first written (of the Canonical Gospels). Even Church Tradition holds that Mark never met Jesus. Some have tried to claim he was one of the "70 disciples", but meh, most call him a companion of Paul, who never met Jesus.

The Author of Mark is clearly not a Judean. He gets a bunch of stuff wrong, such as geographical locations, or what Jewish law was on Divorce. (Jesus admonishes Judean women not to get divorces when they couldn't initiate a divorce to start with, unlike their Greek and Roman counterparts.)

Now, the reason why this becomes important later is that Matthew and Luke heavily plagiarized off of Mark. In fact, 90% of Mark's text reappears in Matthew or Luke or both.

Now we get to Matthew, who is supposedly the Apostle Levi described in some of the Gospels and was a tax collector. but if he was one of the 12 who traveled with Jesus, why would he need to plagiarize off Mark?

Luke- Held to be a companion of Paul.

You also have the fact that Luke and Matthew have completely contradictory birth stories for Jesus that place Jesus' birth about 10 years apart AND come up with some rather silly plot devices as to why someone from Nazareth would be born in Bethlehem.

Finally, you get John. John is written by someone who is angry at the Jews for not accepting Jesus and denounces them in every verse. Clearly not one of Jesus' Jewish original followers. I could do whole paragraphs on John and his trippy Gospel.

Wrong again.

If you are an expert on New Testament textual criticism why don't you mention Q? Q is considered the source for Mathew and mar among scholars, not Mark.

Feel free to keep spouting nonsense though.

 

[JoeB131]

[

Wrong again.

If you are an expert on New Testament textual criticism why don't you mention Q? Q is considered the source for Mathew and mar among scholars, not Mark.

Feel free to keep spouting nonsense though.

I could have worked the Q Gospel into my critique, but I was trying to keep it simple enough for slack jawed Red State morons to follow.

What is believed is that Matthew and Luke compiled their Gospels combining Mark and the Q gospel (which contains many of the sayings of Jesus which are not in Mark but are in Luke and Matthew).

But even if you accept that the Q gospel is real, then what you are saying is all the later gospels cribbed off of it, which proves my original point that none of the Gospel Writers had ever met Jesus personally.

 

[JoeB131]

[

That is a bunch of outdated old bullshit mostly and conjecture I am not going to waste my time with.

Here is what the Roman Catholic Church says on the matter.

I was pretty much done with anything the Catholic Church has to say on any matter after the Nun told me God had a good reason for why my Mom died of Cancer. Seriously fuck those creepy ass, pedophile hiding, lying bastards. But let's have fun with a bit of it.

[
Those supernatural elements—especially the miracles of Jesus and his claims to divinity—are, as we’ve noted, why skeptics call the Gospels "myth" while remaining unruffled about anything written about Julius Caesar and the Rubicon by Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. Yes, Suetonius did write in his account (Lives of the Twelve Caesars) about "an apparition of superhuman size and beauty . . . sitting on the river bank, playing a reed pipe" who persuaded Caesar to cross the river, but it has not seemed to undermine the belief that Caesar did indeed cross the Rubicon on January 11, 49 B.C. But, for the sake of argument, let’s set aside the theological claims found in the New Testament and take a brief look at the sort of data a historian might examine in gauging the reliability and accuracy of an ancient manuscript.
.

But here's the problem with that. Yes, the whole "Miracle' that was added later after it became the position of the Roman State that Julius Caesar was a God is downright silly. But the fact that Caesar did cross the Rubicon on Jan 11, 49 BCE is an established fact.

JC"s existence is also attested to by the fact we have contemporaneous coins and statues with his picture on them, monuments he built, places he conquered being added to the Roman Realm and that members of his family ruled the Roman World until 69 AD when Nero was deposed and people continued to call themselves Caesar long after.

So now we get to the other JC, Jesus Christ.

We don't know what day he was born, unlike Caesar. They picked Dec. 25 to supplant other Pagan holidays, and we don't know what year he was born. Matthew says before the death of Herod the Great (4 BCE) Luke says when Quirrenius was governor (6 CE and after.) We don't know what year the Crucifixion happened in.

the argument that we don't have a lot of non-pagan documents today is because the fucking Christians burning them all. That's like the guy who murders his parents and then asks for mercy because he's an orphan.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Wow...this Pope is shaking some shit up! He's rocking the joint and I'm loving it. Go Frankie Go!!!

Pope Francis Raises Idea of ‘Solutions’ to Clergy Celibacy

Pope Francis reportedly called the Catholic Church’s requirement that its clergy remain celibate a “problem” for which “there are solutions,” during a controversial interview with an Italian newspaper.​

Let priests marry, that's your solution.

A celibate Clergy is the result of the political situation of the late dark ages/medieval period. It allowed families to shunt sons into something that would support them, but prevent them from having progeny requiring inheritances.

If you think this will lead to other changes of position, I hate to dash your hopes. Positions against homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, etc are doctrines based on the bible. Celibate priests are not.

Francis is a traditionalist, he isn't going to be allowing the clergy to marry anytime soon.

I wouldn't be so sure, this may be a case of 'only Nixon could go to China'.

 

[JimBowie1958]

The Gospels were written by people who met Him, dude. The modernists once dated the gospels as written in the fourth century, and each time they find older manuscripts they have to back the date up, again and again. That is because their arguments are fundamentally flawed to start with.

Most Christian and other scholars now place the gospels at around 60 to 90 AD and well plausibly written by the men named as having written them.
.

Uh, no, guy, they weren't.

Mark's Gospel was the first written (of the Canonical Gospels). Even Church Tradition holds that Mark never met Jesus. Some have tried to claim he was one of the "70 disciples", but meh, most call him a companion of Paul, who never met Jesus.

The Author of Mark is clearly not a Judean. He gets a bunch of stuff wrong, such as geographical locations, or what Jewish law was on Divorce. (Jesus admonishes Judean women not to get divorces when they couldn't initiate a divorce to start with, unlike their Greek and Roman counterparts.)

Now, the reason why this becomes important later is that Matthew and Luke heavily plagiarized off of Mark. In fact, 90% of Mark's text reappears in Matthew or Luke or both.

Now we get to Matthew, who is supposedly the Apostle Levi described in some of the Gospels and was a tax collector. but if he was one of the 12 who traveled with Jesus, why would he need to plagiarize off Mark?

Luke- Held to be a companion of Paul.

You also have the fact that Luke and Matthew have completely contradictory birth stories for Jesus that place Jesus' birth about 10 years apart AND come up with some rather silly plot devices as to why someone from Nazareth would be born in Bethlehem.

Finally, you get John. John is written by someone who is angry at the Jews for not accepting Jesus and denounces them in every verse. Clearly not one of Jesus' Jewish original followers. I could do whole paragraphs on John and his trippy Gospel.

Wrong again.

If you are an expert on New Testament textual criticism why don't you mention Q? Q is considered the source for Mathew and mar among scholars, not Mark.

Feel free to keep spouting nonsense though.

Well, to be fair he also spouts bald faced lies as well as nonsense.

 

[JimBowie1958]

[

Wrong again.

If you are an expert on New Testament textual criticism why don't you mention Q? Q is considered the source for Mathew and mar among scholars, not Mark.

Feel free to keep spouting nonsense though.

I could have worked the Q Gospel into my critique, but I was trying to keep it simple enough for slack jawed Red State morons to follow.

What is believed is that Matthew and Luke compiled their Gospels combining Mark and the Q gospel (which contains many of the sayings of Jesus which are not in Mark but are in Luke and Matthew).

But even if you accept that the Q gospel is real, then what you are saying is all the later gospels cribbed off of it, which proves my original point that none of the Gospel Writers had ever met Jesus personally.

roflmao, you trying to pass your lies off as targeting 'red state' posters is hilarious when we all know that conservatives on average have far higher educations than libtards like you, and no one worth a moment of consideration would leave out Q and other likely documents that predated Mark.

You are an ignorant liar and incompetent at it as well.

 

[JimBowie1958]

[

That is a bunch of outdated old bullshit mostly and conjecture I am not going to waste my time with.

Here is what the Roman Catholic Church says on the matter.

I was pretty much done with anything the Catholic Church has to say on any matter after the Nun told me God had a good reason for why my Mom died of Cancer. Seriously fuck those creepy ass, pedophile hiding, lying bastards. But let's have fun with a bit of it.

[
Those supernatural elements—especially the miracles of Jesus and his claims to divinity—are, as we’ve noted, why skeptics call the Gospels "myth" while remaining unruffled about anything written about Julius Caesar and the Rubicon by Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. Yes, Suetonius did write in his account (Lives of the Twelve Caesars) about "an apparition of superhuman size and beauty . . . sitting on the river bank, playing a reed pipe" who persuaded Caesar to cross the river, but it has not seemed to undermine the belief that Caesar did indeed cross the Rubicon on January 11, 49 B.C. But, for the sake of argument, let’s set aside the theological claims found in the New Testament and take a brief look at the sort of data a historian might examine in gauging the reliability and accuracy of an ancient manuscript.
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But here's the problem with that. Yes, the whole "Miracle' that was added later after it became the position of the Roman State that Julius Caesar was a God is downright silly. But the fact that Caesar did cross the Rubicon on Jan 11, 49 BCE is an established fact.

JC"s existence is also attested to by the fact we have contemporaneous coins and statues with his picture on them, monuments he built, places he conquered being added to the Roman Realm and that members of his family ruled the Roman World until 69 AD when Nero was deposed and people continued to call themselves Caesar long after.

So now we get to the other JC, Jesus Christ.

We don't know what day he was born, unlike Caesar. They picked Dec. 25 to supplant other Pagan holidays, and we don't know what year he was born. Matthew says before the death of Herod the Great (4 BCE) Luke says when Quirrenius was governor (6 CE and after.) We don't know what year the Crucifixion happened in.

the argument that we don't have a lot of non-pagan documents today is because the fucking Christians burning them all. That's like the guy who murders his parents and then asks for mercy because he's an orphan.

There are pagan and Jewish references to Jesus that you simply ignore to make room for your hateful lies.

Go straight to Hell Joe for all I care. It is made for people like you.

 

[martybegan]

[

Paul was a person of gnostic/monastic bent, and saw denial of sexual desire as a method of becoming closer to God. He did however recognize that this was not possible for all people, and instructed those to could not or even should not to keep it in marriage.

Also, you are cherry picking specific lines out of context, and you know it.

Paul invented Christianity. You didn't think that Jesus guy was a real person, did you?

I'm sure he was.