A Quote by William P. Leahy
The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.
Related Quotes
The truly longstanding tradition in the church is that some are called to celibacy. Some feel called to it. But the church has never supported that celibacy be mandated for someone not called to it. It's never imposed on someone.
That clerical celibacy doesn't guarantee asceticism is obvious, any more than attending Mass guarantees prayerfulness (trust me on that one). But it preserves the call even when the system is corrupted.
An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.
Exporting Church employees to Latin America masks a universal and unconscious fear of a new Church. North and South American authorities, differently motivated but equally fearful, become accomplices in maintaining a clerical and irrelevant Church. Sacralizing employees and property, this Church becomes progressively more blind to the possibilities of Sacralizing person and community.
The clerical system of church management is exceedingly popular, but the whole thought is foreign to Scripture. In a church all the members are active. He [God] appointed some to take oversight of the work so that it might be carried on efficiently. It was never His thought that the majority of the believers should devote themselves exclusively to secular affairs and leave church matters to a group of spiritual specialists.
Has God no living church? He has a church, but it is the church militant, not the church triumphant. We are sorry that there are defective members, that there are tares amid the wheat. . . . Although there are evils existing in the church, and will be until the end of the world, the church in these last days is to be the light of the world that is polluted and demoralized by sin. The church, enfeebled and defective, needing to be reproved, warned, and counseled, is the only object upon earth upon which Christ bestows His supreme regard.
Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs.
The clerical system of church management is exceedingly popular, but the whole thought is foreign to Scripture.
The Church is holy, although there are sinners within her. Those who sin, but who cleanse themselves with true repentance, do not keep the Church from being holy. But unrepentant sinners are cut off, whether visibly by Church authority, or invisible by the judgement of God, from the body of the Church. And so in this regard the Church remains holy.
A church determined to hold only those doctrines that a secular world finds adequately comprehensible is a church that will hold to no central vital Christian teaching whatsoever.
As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful, e.g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by the whole Church wherever it has been established.
Wisdom plays such a part in life that whatever may happen outside, whatever may be the trend, whatever may be the fashion, whatever may be the people are all changing into, you do not change. You change within.
The Church of England holds very firmly, and continues to hold to the view, that marriage is a lifelong union of one man to one woman. At the same time, at the heart of our understanding of what it is to be human is the essential dignity of the human being.
In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.
Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.
One of the reasons Americans hold Washington in such low regard is the perception that nothing ever gets done. Whatever the issue - no matter how urgent - they always seem to be 'working on it.'
Related Authors
Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes
American
Educator
Bill Nye Quotes
American
Educator
Cornel West Quotes
American
Educator
Dean Ornish Quotes
American
Educator
Horace Mann Quotes
American
Educator
Jeffrey R. Holland Quotes
American
Educator
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes
American
Educator
Lucy Maud Montgomery Quotes
Canadian
Educator
Maria Montessori Quotes
Italian
Educator
Michael Pollan Quotes
American
Educator
Paulo Freire Quotes
Brazilian
Educator
Peter Kreeft Quotes
American
Educator
Randy Pausch Quotes
American
Educator
Stephen Covey Quotes
American
Educator
Temple Grandin Quotes
American
Educator
Timothy Leary Quotes
American
Educator