How Many Roman Catholic Priests Are Married?
Most people, myself included, would have answered none to this question. But now after this case reported here and in several papers like The Times, the question is how many other priests are leading a hypocritical double life?
I think the Catholic church should take serious action to stop priests from doing things their vows of chastity explicitly forbid them. I’m told that there are fiendish devices available on the Internet, which have their origins in those, that mediaeval knights locked around their ladies interesting bits.
Alternatively, they could change the vows and make them more in line with the real world.
The Anonymous Widower 
Perhaps they could make the vows of celibacy optional, as some priests are able to keep them and others quite clearly are not.
Another idea is to emulate the Greek Orthodox Church in this respect: Orthodox priests are allowed to marry but, if they are ambitious and want to rise in the ranks to become, e.g. bishops, they need to be unmarried (and presumably celibate). So if someone is content to be a parish priest, he can marry. Not a bad idea for what is a traditional organisation that is every bit as old and in some ways resistant to change as the Roman Catholic Church, e.g. no women priests.
While I am on the subject of the Greek Orthodox Church, the hierarchy is far less judgemental than the RC Church on matters of personal morality (e.g. contraception) and even allows people to marry 3 times in church – a twice divorced individual can marry in church for a third time. Mind you, they draw the line at the 4th time!
The more I think of it, the more preferable the Greek Church seems to its western counterpart.
Personally, I am a Methodist.
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013 |
I know little of the Greek Orthodox church, thanks! But from what I’ve seen in the Jewish museum in Athens, they were more anti-Nazi, than the wartime Pope.
Comment by AnonW | March 16, 2013 |
They most certainly were and helped the Jewish population of Greece far more than the Pope did those in Italy.
One example is Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos, who hid the entire Jewish community of the island (275 people) and stopped the Nazis from deporting them to concentration camps.
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013
I know that story, as it is featured in the museum in Athens.
I don’t know how we’d have reacted in this country. My father had something to do with preparations for invasion, as a civilian. They were very worried about some counties.
Comment by AnonW | March 16, 2013 |
Yes, I think the UK was prepared for the possibility of invasion during WW2, especially after the Channel Isles were invaded. My father spent most of the war as a soldier in India, near the theatre of war in the east (Burma), so it wasn’t so immediate for him, but my mother, who was a Wren based in England – and all her relatives, friends and colleagues – the threat of invasion was very real.
People today forget that WW2 was an existential struggle, a struggle for survival.
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013 |
I agree! Read this page.
https://anonw.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/venice/
Comment by AnonW | March 16, 2013
Marvellous story (and I love the pictures) – it can be breathtaking how arrogant the Americans can be about WW2 and I am glad that the “Col Sanders” type set the others right on that score. Their problem is that they get too many films of the “Saving Private Ryan” kind and don’t know much about history, only what is filtered incorrectly through Hollywood for the intellectually lazy.
I agree that they would probably not have joined in and helped in WW2 if we had lost the Battle of Britain, but then, I have no illusion of the “special relationship” and opposed intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. They should have been America’s war, not Britain’s. America has never helped us, not even supporting us over the Falklands.
America’s “special relationship” is with America alone. All they need is a mirror.
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013
Hollywood always rewrites the non-Americans out of the story. The Sunday Times recently printed the true story about Argo. The British, Canadian and the New Zealand embassy were all involved, but weren’t in the film.
They also don’t learn the lessons of history. Remember that the Royal Navy in 1940, showed the world, how to destroy a fleet at Taranto in Italy, in one of the great naval battles of all time. The Japanese noted what we did and repeated it at Pearl Harbor. I’ve got an American book, that tells the whole story and it also indicates how Pearl Harbor could have been avoided.
Comment by AnonW | March 16, 2013 |
The example of Taranto being repeated at Pearl Harbor may demonstrate that the Japanese are quicker and readier to learn from (recent) history and experience than the Americans.
As for “Argo” and most other US films, you can’t expect them to:
(1) tell the truth
(2) reflect reality
(3) include any non-Americans unless (usually) as villains
(4) be anything other than an insult to most people’s intelligence
If they are historical films about non-American subjects, they tend to be rubbish like Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” (or what about “The Patriot”?). What a crock of excrement!
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013 |
There are certain actors, who I have no desire to see in a film, like Ricky Tomlinson, Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe to name three of many. I also don’t watch films that aren’t historically or scientifically correct. I haven’t seen masny films recently, as I don’t like going alone. The most surprising film I’ve seen recently was It always rains on Sundays, which was made in the 1940s.
Comment by AnonW | March 16, 2013
I remember going to see a wildly inaccurate film about King Arthur years ago in Athens. Now I know we don’t know a great deal about King Arthur, or even if he ever existed, but this film (whose name I forget) was so anachronistic in every way that my friend and I found it extremely amusing. My friend a lady from Edinburgh, tutted and chuckled a bit, as befits a dour Celt, but I was in stitches, shaking with suppressed laughter and with tears running down my face. On leaving the cinema, we both agreed that it was the funniest non comedy we had seen in years.
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013
There should have been a comma after “My friend, …”
Comment by Janice Mermikli | March 16, 2013 |