The 4th Century Science of St Macrina (I)
16 hours ago
Thursday, January 12, 2012
A really really bad article on priests' wives
I am not going to excerpt this one. If you want to read it go here. Seriously, it is so ridiculous it borders on insulting. This is not the Middle Ages. Catholics are not going to start running around treating the wives of their newly ordained clergy like she-demons. Even her (the author's) dating of theological issues is wrong. Both in the East and West there was a pretty clear understanding of the nature of Holy Communion dating to the earliest days of the Church. This entire article is so wrong I am tempted to use a very crude descriptive for it. But being a Christian blogger I am above that.
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15 comments:
I read it! your instrument of of degree is right on target!
Actually that was pretty funny. Thankfully, I'm in a tradition that has a much better view of priest's wives, considering that it is actually part of that tradition (Catholics had that tradition too...many centuries ago).
This is speculation based on out of context quoting. It was more like there was a certain favouritism towards wives and children of priest's that often interfered with a priest's ministry.
The author is forgetting that even in the Orthodox church Bishops are celibate and a single priest cannot marry or re-marry once his wife dies.
Savvy
Peter Damian was crazed ferret, whose personal opinions are just that.
Take four deep breaths, slowly. Then consider whether this article might not be dead accurate in its description of the attitude toward priests' wives in the medieval Roman Catholic Church in Europe.
I suspect it's spot-on, including the description of the faulty understanding of the Eucharist, and although this writer's warnings to contemporary women seem greatly exaggerated, they aren't entirely without foundation, either.
I'm going to have to look it up to refresh my memory, but wasn't it Peter Damian Pope Benedict cited as someone to heed carefully on the subject of priesthood?
Anastasia,
Peter Damian, was not referring to those women legally married to priests, but married priests prancing around with women who were not their wives.
Women who should not have been with them in the first place.
The language is harsh, because immorality was not accepted the way it is today.
This article explains the context.
http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2012/01/eastern-christianity-to-the-new-york-times-helloover-here.html
This is reassuring. (Did he have equally harsh words for the priests involved?)
Consider the source. The old gray bat (the NYT, not the author) tries to come off as erudite and cosmopolitan, but her world-view is so frozen that she nothing but a has-been out in the provinces.
Oh...and I see that my word verification is "fogies." Misspelled perhaps, but still appropriate.
Nikolaus
Anastasia,
Yes he did.
"Any cleric or monk who seduces young men (adolescentium) or boys (parvulorum), or who is apprehended in kissing or in any shameful situation, shall be publicly flogged and shall lose his clerical tonsure. Thus shorn, he shall be disgraced by spitting into his face, bound in iron chains, wasted by six months of close confine- ment, and for three days each week put on barley bread given him toward evening. Following this period, he shall spend a further six months living in a small segre- gated courtyard in the custody of a spiritual elder, kept busy with manual labor and prayer, subjected to vigils and prayers, forced to walk at all times in the company of two spiritual brothers, never again allowed to associate with young men for purposes of improper conversation or advice."
It proves marriage is not going to to some magic bullet against priest's misbehaving.
Nikolaus,
This is just one those "they hate women, gays blah, blah" attacks by the theologically illiterate.
"The language is harsh, because immorality was not accepted the way it is today."
Hah, hah, hah.
See this link about child abuse in the Empire of Constantinople;
http://www.medievalists.net/2012/01/07/child-sexual-abuse-historical-cases-in-the-byzantine-empire-324-1453-a-d/
This...in The Orthodox Empire.
Anon@5:38 p.m.
Sin is certainly not new. The difference is most people believed in it's existence.
"The sin of this age, is that they have lost all sense of sin"
Bishop Fulton Sheen
"Sin is certainly not new. The difference is most people believed in it's (sic) existence."
Really? If your statement ( and the quote from Sheen) were true, then there would have been no sin back then, which of course is false.
cough cough... I think we are wondering off topic in some of the comments.
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