Hi Deb, Hi All,
Prior to really digging into biblical historical scholarship, there was a lot of what was written in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that I really didn’t understand. Then I discovered the books of Bart Ehrman. Bart is a biblical historical scholar who seems to write with much clarity in his explanations. For me, he’s the kind of like the “Seth” of historical scholars.
While I can’t say for certain exactly why the RC Church opted for the specific celibacy policy that it chose for itself, if I had to guess, I’d say that it probably comes from Paul’s epistle, 1 Corinthians.
This epistle, is a letter that Paul wrote to one of his churches, the Corinthian church, which was really messed up. In Chapter 5 of this epistle, we find that one of the church members was having an affair with his father’s wife. I don’t believe that this was incest however, because it wasn’t addressed as a man having an affair with his mother.
Not only was Paul upset about this, because this was considered to be adultery, but he was also upset by the fact that other church members appeared to be Ok with it. In the last 10 verses or so of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6, Paul seems to go on a rant about this situation and then in the first 2 verses of Chapter 7 he says the following:
1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
There is much about the RC Church, its history and policies that I don’t know or understand. However, I believe that the RC Church probably holds a belief that God inspired Paul to write 1 Corinthians. Along these same lines, I also believe that the RC Church also holds a belief that verse 1, and not verse 2, is what God really wants his people to do. Thus, I think that this, at least, is part of the basis for their celibacy policy.
Personally, I think that when Paul wrote verse 1, he knew that there would be problems if anyone ever tried to enforce this concept, and that’s why he also wrote verse 2.
Thus, from a RC Church standpoint, given that God inspired Paul to write 1 Corinthians, then it’s reasonable to conclude that God inspired Paul to write verse 2 as well.
Thus, it seems to me that if the RC Church really wanted to, they could easily justify changing this policy, and let “every” man have his own wife, and let “every” woman have her own husband, as Paul wrote in verse 2.
Given this then and given all of their sexual abuse problems, I personally don’t understand why they seem to have so much difficulty in opting to make this change.
jbseth.
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