In case you're tuning in
late, folks, we've been dissecting – sans anesthesia – a horrid creature thrust
on innocent passers-by by a wounded man preying on a mixture of gullibility,
ignorance, and sympathy. Here are the first five incisions:
Let's get on with this;
tomorrow I'm going to take a break – can handle only so much disgust – and
instead post a letter that nearly got me fired from work a couple years ago.
Back to our indignant,
bigoted coward. In the third through sixth paragraphs of his quite-aptly titled
"Moral
Imbecility",
John Wojnowski rants:
It may not be immediately obvious
but ignorance and cowardice also keep the arrogant and childishly delusional
Roman Catholic Church from discarding the strange medieval folly of the bizarre
notion of priestly "celibacy".
Healthy individuals with
integrity cannot stomach the stench of hypocrisy and leave the priestood.
In a culture of shame a robust
moral eunuchood is the ticket for a career in the Catholic hierarchy.
Here we finally touch on one
of the two or three bigger issues in his literally all-over-the-page bluster:
celibacy of the Catholic priesthood.
And once again our poor
friend John makes a grand statement with no backup, no evidence… and no further
information. To wit: "It may not be immediately obvious, but…" And he proceeds
immediately to tie himself in a rather unappealing knot: it is in
fact quite obvious that the Roman Catholic Church has not discarded priestly
celibacy. What is entirely unobvious is that this could possibly
be owing to "ignorance
and cowardice",
rather than, say, through the Church's embracing of a tradition that goes back
to the first centuries of her rich history.
Here, for a supposed genuine
rationale, John offers nothing but semantically weighted words for any wo/man
brave and determined enough to try to read his garbage and make any kind of
sense of it – words that are totally hollow, empty: he has attached to them
nothing whatsoever as evidence. Thus we are to believe that from his post,
prowling around bus stations to hand out his sheets of raging, insubstantial
hyperbole, he is somehow absolutely in the know about how and why the Church
has operated down through the ages, from Jesus to Peter to Benedict, and from
St. Peter's in Vatican City… all the way down to the tired, exhausted parish
priest, working well beyond anyone else's retirement years because no one is
left to guide his flock. It is John
Wojnowski, and not the Roman Catholic Church, who is childishly deluded.
I repeat, he seems beyond
question a wounded man; and when I've finally made it through this entire
tirade of his (it may be another week or two – there is a staggering array of
falsehoods, errors, lies, and outright fabrications (and far worse), that need
each to be addressed into oblivion), I promise you (and him, especially) a
serious, honest look at what's been called "the scandal in the
church".
Back to celibacy. The Catechism
of the Catholic Church, no. 1579, states in full:
"All the ordained
ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are
normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend
to remain celibate 'for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.' Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to
the Lord and to 'the affairs of the Lord,'
they give themselves entirely to God and to men [i.e., to
all of humankind]. Celibacy is a sign of this new life
to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a
joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God."
The two hyperlinked phrases
above (footnotes at the Vatican website, and in my hardbound copy of the first
edition of the Catechism) will each take you to a New Testament passage
that forms the core and first precedent of this passage. Let's look at both of
them. (This item in the Catechism also references a decree promulgated
by Pope Paul VI; more on that afterward.)
The second of these is 1
Corinthians 7:32. Saint Paul is writing on
marriage; verses 32-35 read: "I would like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious
about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man
is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is
divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the
Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other
hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you,
but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction." In other words (as I
read this), the attachment of marriage – physical (pardon me) and emotional –
would be a distraction in single-minded, total focus on God. (In Luke 16:13,
in part, Jesus points out: "No servant
can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be
devoted to one and despise the other.")
The first scriptural passage
cited in the above Catechism quote is from Matthew 19:12: Baited
once again by the Pharisees, Jesus is talking to his disciples on divorce, and
marriage. The full passage is Matthew 19:3-12; it is the last verse that is
quoted in the Catechism instruction above. The entire verse is: "Some are incapable of marriage
because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because
they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Whoever
can accept this ought to accept it."
Let me once again state
something that is "immediately obvious" about John Wojnowski: he shouts, but does not research. So;
John: you call priestly celibacy a "strange medieval folly" and a "bizarre notion". You are dead wrong. In the just-cited quote from Matthew, Jesus
himself lauds the practice of holy celibacy.
Or are you calling Him a
liar?
(Me, I'll stick with the most
beautiful sentence in Polish I know, John – lovelier even than the sweet "moja droga ja cie kocham". Thanks to Helena
Kowalska and Karol Józef Wojtyła, we now can proclaim in faith: "Jezu ufam Tobie". Just give it a try,
John.)
Celibacy goes back to the
beginnings of the Church; nothing merely medieval about it… other than the dark
ages you seem to be caught up in, I'm sorry to say.
More on celibacy on Tuesday;
I want to get Pope Paul's 1965 decree up here also, before we turn to
Wojnowski's next falsehood.
And, in fact, there are
married priests in the Catholic Church… something John should in fact know,
coming from Eastern Europe: most serve among the Eastern-rite Catholic rites in
union with Rome – and some are former protestant ministers (including
Anglican/Episcopalian priests) converted to Catholicism, already married when
they entered the Church, who have been ordained into the Catholic clergy... and
thus are married today as Latin-rite Catholic priests.
(PS: John doesn't mention
another obvious gaping hole in his text, and subtext: that eliminating the
ages-old practice of priestly celibacy will not eliminate pedophilia in
the priesthood. Think about it: these perverted men are eying and molesting
boys… why would they want to marry a woman? And… what woman would want one?)
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