How Scott Distorts the Pope’s Message

In a very subtle way, Scott turns what the Pope said positively into a slam on something else. The Pope spoke positively of marriage which Scott then took to mean that the Pope was slamming gay marriage.

Alas, speaking positively of something does not rightly equate to speaking negatively of something else. And Scott needs to be fair.

To be sure, the Pope has spoken out against gay marriage. But the notion that every utterance positively spoken about marriage is a veiled slam at gay marriage is misleading misprision.

If I say that Scott’s wife is pretty I am not at all implying that everyone else’s is ugly. If I confess that my wife is the most beautiful woman I know it isn’t a slam on the wife of everyone else.

Scott is free to support gay marriage all he likes just as I and the Pontiff are free to object to it. But Scott (and marriage equality-ites) aren’t free to insist that every positive comment is also a negative comment at the same time. That’s just not fair. And how can Scott, or anyone, talk about equality inequitably!?!?!

Yesterday in Madrid, Pope Benedict tried to give a speech to approximately 1.5 million people at Spain’s World Youth Day. In the address he said “The Lord calls many people to marriage, in which a man and a woman, in becoming one flesh, find fulfilment in a profound life of communion,” he told the young pilgrims. “For this reason, to acknowledge the beauty and goodness of marriage is to realize that only a setting of fidelity and indissolubility, … Read More

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Check Your Brain at the Door: Faith and Intellectual Freedom (via scientia et sapientia)

Truly, nicely done.

Am I free? Not legally (I’m not in jail) or metaphysically (who knows if I have “free will”?) but intellectually. Do I have intellectual freedom? After all, I teach at a school with belief commitments. To get my job, I had to sign our Faculty Teaching Position. And, if I ever changed my mind on a core aspect of that document, my job would probably be in jeopardy. In that kind of situation, can I have any kind of real intellectual freedom? Or, am … Read More

via scientia et sapientia

If One Priest Can Marry, Why Can’t They All?

The Catholic Church actually has quite a number of married priests.  They’ve all been married while outside the Church and then entered the Catholic Priesthood.  Sure, it’s rare, but it happens.  And it has happened again:

In a rare move that needed the pope’s approval, a Lutheran convert is being ordained as a Catholic priest in Germany and is being allowed to remain married to his wife — who has already become a nun.  The Cologne archdiocese said 61-year-old Harm Klueting is to be ordained as a Catholic priest Tuesday. Pope Benedict XVI gave him a special permission to remain married to his wife Edeltraut Klueting, who became a Catholic Carmelite nun in 2004. The couple has two grown children.  Klueting and his wife were both Lutherans when they married in 1977 and both converted to Catholicism several years ago.

If the Catholic Church admits to the priesthood men who are married, why doesn’t it allow its own priests to marry?  It really isn’t consistent and it makes no sense.

Rome, let your priests marry.  Since the Reformation you’ve been asked to.  It’s time.  It’s better, to borrow Paul’s phrase, ‘to marry than to burn’!

Related Articles

• Married German being ordained Catholic priest (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Anglican bishops ordained as Catholic priests in London (reuters.com)
• Choosing between marriage and faith (religion.blogs.cnn.com)