Any catholic scholars have a vision for how The Church could remove its prohibition against sex (including homosexual sex)?
It seems unlikely to happen soon, but also it seems kind of inevitable. I’d love for this particular wheel to turn faster.
Some fascinating stuff on Wikipedia:
> In February 2019, the Vatican acknowledged that the policy has not always been enforced and that rules had been secretly established by the Vatican to protect non-celibate clergy who violated their vows of celibacy.[2][3][4] Some clergy have also been allowed to retain their clerical state after fathering children.[2][3][4] Some Catholic clergy who violated their vows of celibacy also have maintained their clerical status after secretly marrying women.
> [Pope Francis (current Pope)] commented that celibacy "is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change" but added: "For the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with all its pros and cons, because we have ten centuries of good experiences rather than failures.... Tradition has weight and validity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy_in_the_Cat...
I just can't fathom how he gets his head so far up his behind with that hat.
They're acting like this is entirely a modern problem, when I find it far more likely that they're just now getting caught, and people don't fear the catholic church anymore. Modern media, and now watchful communities, are lifting the veil on horrific abuse. It doesn't just come out of nowhere. There's likely a history of this sort of crap going back as far as 3-400 ad, or as soon as there was an institution with the means and incentive to hide abusers and censor their crimes. Probably a lot of sanctioned murder if offending priests through the years, as well, to be charitable.
Perverse incentives of the worst and most base kind seem to infest catholicism.
I don't know if it's reasonable to expect rational reform when their fundamental world view is authoritarian magical thinking based on iron age myths and centuries of politics, graft and extortion of their flock.
From Epstein to Savile to Weinstein, sexual abuse and cover-up is clearly not a uniquely Catholic or religious problem. By blaming religion alone, you're ignoring the other mechanisms that allow this to happen.
With regard to this particular story, this guy, as far as we know, was just secretly gay and not technologically savvy.
The real story in my view is how and why he was outed. It's not just priests who have a lot to lose by being revealed to be gay.
Your right and I'm sorry for misrepresenting your argument. The RC Church does have a sordid history that anyone belonging to it (from the Pope on down) has somehow to come to terms with. Hopefully, the recent scandals will lead to a better organization: just by dint of its size and wealth it could do a lot more good for the world.
> Any catholic scholars have a vision for how The Church could remove its prohibition against sex (including homosexual sex)?
I am not a Catholic scholar, but as far as homosexual sex goes, they can't. It's in the Bible, and literally set in stone as being an abomination to God as far as all of the Abrahamic religions are concerned.
The only thing the Church could ever possibly do is remove their requirement for celibacy (which isn't, AFAIK, Biblically mandated, but an artifact of medieval attempts to keep Church property from being inherited away) and allow heterosexual Catholic marriages by clergy, but homosexual activity of any kind will always be prohibited.
> I am not a Catholic scholar, but as far as homosexual sex goes, they can't. It's in the Bible, and literally set in stone as being an abomination to God as far as all of the Abrahamic religions are concerned.
You might be surprised to learn that those references are considerably more ambiguous than how they are generally talked about.
The Bible has been continually retranslated by people with specific agendas and moral frameworks. Some of those translation choices are pretty questionable. As one example, Thomas Aquinas chose to translate "don't practice witchcraft" as "don't interpret dreams" due to his own inability to manage his (intense) dream life. That probably singlehandedly set back discourse around dreams in Western culture a couple hundred years.
The idea that the New Testament speaks against homosexuality comes largely from the (mis)translation of the single Koine Greek word 'arsenokoites.' It has often been translated as 'men who lie with men' but does not have that literal meaning and was not used as a term for homosexuality at the time.
As just one proposed example other scholars have put forth, that line could actually be chastising 'men who lay about,' as in rich people who do nothing to contribute to society. It could also be referring to temple prostitution, something completely alien and irrelevant to most modern people. It isn't nearly as clear cut as homophobic Christians wish it was.
As one other example, the story of Sodom is actually about not providing shelter and assistance to travelers who come to you needing help. The licentiousness is secondary to the main moral teaching of that bit, which a lot of Christians conveniently ignore when they are actually called upon to support strangers in need.
I don't know as much about the Old Testament, so can't really speak to that. Personally I find most of that stuff much harder to relate to than the reforms Jesus was trying to lead people into, so I have a harder time imagining how or why you might try to build a modern ethical framework from it. That said, it seems to me that Judaism generally does a better job of acknowledged the ambiguities and interpretative nature of translating religious texts; debate has always been a central part of Jewish religious discourse.
> I am not a Catholic scholar, but as far as homosexual sex goes, they can't. It's in the Bible, and literally set in stone as being an abomination to God as far as all of the Abrahamic religions are concerned.
Lots of things are in the Bible. Catholics are not Biblical literalists; I mean, that's a big part of what the reformation was about. If the Church of England can square this particular circle, Catholicism probably can, too.
> According to commercially available records of app signal data obtained by The Pillar, a mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020 — at both his USCCB office and his USCCB-owned residence, as well as during USCCB meetings and events in other cities.
So setting aside the specific circumstances of this case, if this guy was unmasked by de-anonymizing data, this should send a shiver up the spines of politicians, journalists, or anyone else who might be targets of blackmail, smear campaigns, etc. With the millions of independent datapoints people are unknowingly emitting every day, I can only imagine this becoming easier and easier.
Maybe this will finally be what it takes to rein in surveillance capitalism. If politicians are threatened, maybe they'll start to take it seriously.
IANC: That’s unfortunate, I think Catholic church officials and priest should be allowed to be gay, but I can understand the celibacy requirement, as antiquated as it may be.
13 comments
[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 49.5 ms ] threadIt seems unlikely to happen soon, but also it seems kind of inevitable. I’d love for this particular wheel to turn faster.
Some fascinating stuff on Wikipedia:
> In February 2019, the Vatican acknowledged that the policy has not always been enforced and that rules had been secretly established by the Vatican to protect non-celibate clergy who violated their vows of celibacy.[2][3][4] Some clergy have also been allowed to retain their clerical state after fathering children.[2][3][4] Some Catholic clergy who violated their vows of celibacy also have maintained their clerical status after secretly marrying women.
> [Pope Francis (current Pope)] commented that celibacy "is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change" but added: "For the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with all its pros and cons, because we have ten centuries of good experiences rather than failures.... Tradition has weight and validity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy_in_the_Cat...
They're acting like this is entirely a modern problem, when I find it far more likely that they're just now getting caught, and people don't fear the catholic church anymore. Modern media, and now watchful communities, are lifting the veil on horrific abuse. It doesn't just come out of nowhere. There's likely a history of this sort of crap going back as far as 3-400 ad, or as soon as there was an institution with the means and incentive to hide abusers and censor their crimes. Probably a lot of sanctioned murder if offending priests through the years, as well, to be charitable.
Perverse incentives of the worst and most base kind seem to infest catholicism.
I don't know if it's reasonable to expect rational reform when their fundamental world view is authoritarian magical thinking based on iron age myths and centuries of politics, graft and extortion of their flock.
With regard to this particular story, this guy, as far as we know, was just secretly gay and not technologically savvy.
The real story in my view is how and why he was outed. It's not just priests who have a lot to lose by being revealed to be gay.
I am not a Catholic scholar, but as far as homosexual sex goes, they can't. It's in the Bible, and literally set in stone as being an abomination to God as far as all of the Abrahamic religions are concerned.
The only thing the Church could ever possibly do is remove their requirement for celibacy (which isn't, AFAIK, Biblically mandated, but an artifact of medieval attempts to keep Church property from being inherited away) and allow heterosexual Catholic marriages by clergy, but homosexual activity of any kind will always be prohibited.
You might be surprised to learn that those references are considerably more ambiguous than how they are generally talked about.
The Bible has been continually retranslated by people with specific agendas and moral frameworks. Some of those translation choices are pretty questionable. As one example, Thomas Aquinas chose to translate "don't practice witchcraft" as "don't interpret dreams" due to his own inability to manage his (intense) dream life. That probably singlehandedly set back discourse around dreams in Western culture a couple hundred years.
The idea that the New Testament speaks against homosexuality comes largely from the (mis)translation of the single Koine Greek word 'arsenokoites.' It has often been translated as 'men who lie with men' but does not have that literal meaning and was not used as a term for homosexuality at the time.
As just one proposed example other scholars have put forth, that line could actually be chastising 'men who lay about,' as in rich people who do nothing to contribute to society. It could also be referring to temple prostitution, something completely alien and irrelevant to most modern people. It isn't nearly as clear cut as homophobic Christians wish it was.
As one other example, the story of Sodom is actually about not providing shelter and assistance to travelers who come to you needing help. The licentiousness is secondary to the main moral teaching of that bit, which a lot of Christians conveniently ignore when they are actually called upon to support strangers in need.
Here's a bit on difficulties translating arsenokoites if you're curious: https://www.stopbibleabuse.org/biblical-references/paul/arse...
I don't know as much about the Old Testament, so can't really speak to that. Personally I find most of that stuff much harder to relate to than the reforms Jesus was trying to lead people into, so I have a harder time imagining how or why you might try to build a modern ethical framework from it. That said, it seems to me that Judaism generally does a better job of acknowledged the ambiguities and interpretative nature of translating religious texts; debate has always been a central part of Jewish religious discourse.
Lots of things are in the Bible. Catholics are not Biblical literalists; I mean, that's a big part of what the reformation was about. If the Church of England can square this particular circle, Catholicism probably can, too.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pillar-investigates-usccb-g...
Maybe this will finally be what it takes to rein in surveillance capitalism. If politicians are threatened, maybe they'll start to take it seriously.