Father Cutie's fall

I can't decide if the lay Catholics quoted in the piece being very forgiving of Father Cutie over this are being admirably merciful, refusing to kick a priest when he's down, or are excusing him too easily because he's a celebrity they like and admire. Thoughts?

I suspect they are glad to see a Catholic Priest canoodling with an adult woman rather than an underage boy or girl.

I don't think celebrity has much to do with the quoted Catholics excusing this man. I suspect that the Good Father's Hispanic parishioners are culturally sympathetic to the idea that a young, handsome Priest, celebrity or not, would be tempted by a woman.

I suspect they are glad to see a Catholic Priest canoodling with an adult woman rather than an underage boy or girl.

Exactly my thoughts.

Honest question:
If the temptations of South Beach are so strong, would marriage really be a remedy? Or would it simply be a different vow that he would break?
If a man can't keep a vow of celibacy in such an environment, are you sure he could keep a vow of fidelity to one woman? If you are, please explain.

MJS, I think it would be easier to keep a vow of fidelity to one woman than it would be to keep a vow of celibacy, not just in South Beach, but anywhere, because the desire to to be faithful to vows exchanged with a woman has a natural means of reinforcement in the pleasures of marriage act, whereas vows of celibacy sworn to the Church have no such natural means of reinforcement.

Whether this particular man could stay faithful to his wife, I cannot say, but I do not think that the inability to keep a vow of celibacy necessarily means he could not keep his marriage vows, were he to be married.

There are some fundamental differences between the two conditions.

Thanks, John E.
I (of course!) can see fundamental differences. I just see sooo many examples of men who can't keep the marriage vows - despite any natural reinforcement - that I wondered. Thanks for your answer.

Why is this journalist saying that teenage girls dressed as teenage girls make it impossible for a priest to be 'celibate?' Make themselves impossible temptation for men? If you don't want to see teenage girls dressed in a Florida climate, then don't go to church in Florida. Don't blame females for 'poor' Father Cutie. And yes priests should be allowed to make a choice. But the Catholic Church is still a medieval institution where power has to be maintained by keeping a celibate clergy. This system worked ages ago to centralize power, but now celibacy is a worthless vestige of an ignorant past.

I recall that during the heyday of the homosexual pedophile scandal, the then Cardinal Archbishop of Boston, Bernie Law, excoriated a priest who had had an affair with a woman and drummed him out of the priesthood (or presbytership, or whatever it's called these days.) Geoghan and Shanley and their ilk were free to prowl the parishes to sate their perverted lusts with impunity of course.

I think that a priest should be able to marry both before and after ordination. And remarry, should his wife die. I take an essentially biblical view of this: several apostles were married (was Mrs. Peter in Rome with him?) And in the same vein, I think that Patriarchs should be able to abrahamically have several wives and concubines. Noblesse de la soutane oblige, après tout.

Geoff G: I think you make a great point! Lust needs to be addressed in both the homosexual and heterosexual forms. They're different sides of the same coin. But the Catholic Church does hold that homosexual desires themselves are intrinsically disordered, so I'm not surprised that they're more, fbofw, explicit about those than the heterosexual versions.

Your Name at 12:03 p.m. Letterman is (as Johnny Carson said) bizarre, but talented. I used to find him very unfunny, but now I think maybe I get the joke - over the years, Letterman has grown on me while I've become sick of Jay Leno. Anyway, Alberto Cutie's troubles are a Godsend to comedians.

I object to the article's statement "These are career ending photos". The priesthood is not a career, it is a vocation.

I don't get how saying a miniskirt is "distracting" (and isn't that the POINT of wearing a miniskirt? To show off?) is equal to saying that women should be covered in black cloth from head to toe. There IS a middle ground, people!

Women need to grow up and take responsibility for their actions. If a woman wears clothing intended to cause a man to look at her lustfully, and the man looks at her, she needs to recognize that she may have been "an occasion of sin", as Catholics say. (And please don't start with a diatribe about blaming rape victims or some such nonsense. That's not what I said.)

I don't think "Catholics are just glad it's a woman". That just shows ignorance and bias. Most Catholics do not want to see their priest involved in scandal of any kind.

I don't think "Catholics are just glad it's a woman". That just shows ignorance and bias. Most Catholics do not want to see their priest involved in scandal of any kind.

I doubt the commenter was being serious, but the fact that Roman Catholic bishops have had a history of turning a blind eye when priests molest or rape children while making a big deal of a priest who was involved with an adult woman, leads to this mockery of the bishops.

Cynics? Sure. When the folks who claim to set their church's moral standards are willing to hide crimes against children while punishing things that, while properly punished within the context of the Church, are not crimes, the rest of the country becomes fairly willing to decide that the bishops are not people of integrity and that they are in no position to start demanding that our country conform our laws to their moral pronouncements.

Alicia,

letterman is about as funny as saturday night live, saturday night live, saturday night live. both lack whit, creativity and insight. they merely replay the same shtick over and over again. letterman does deadpan. snl does repitition, repitition, repitition. Although now that obama is president snl is going to have to breakout the "i am so popular i can do whatever i want skit" they used during lewinsky.

throwing a watermellon off a roof....hilarious! doing it yr after yr and calling it comedy....??? if you thought letterman's catholic priest joke was anything other than utterly predictable then what have you been doing with your life. when you can predict the punchline after hearing half of the set up it isn't called a joke, its called being a hack. i would be embarassed to go out on stage, collect the amount of money he does and be a hack.

I'm waiting for the "Lman" to do a joke about a Mullah or an Imam. Do you think I will have to wait long?

Fr Cutie is not a young one - he is in his forties. Looks like he is 20 something though.

Seems the Fr made a statement a few weeks(months?) ago that celibacy should be optional - that it was unhealthy. Sort of a clue there.

He has been sent to pray and make a decision about his future says his bishop.

The thing I dont get - seems this guy is some kind of celeb - yet he has his hands down the pants of a bikini clad lady on a public beach - and doesn't expect to get caught?

I think priests - well seminarians - should be celibate as part of their priestly formation - maybe celibacu vows should have time limits - like 5 years then you can make other choices. Marriage should be permitted if desired, celibacy should be ok too.

I don't think ending the celibate priesthood is going to solve the problem of lust, whether we're talking about men lusting after women or men lusting after teenage boys. That the problem of lust hasn't been one widely addressed in the Church in America in the recent past is a matter of history, unfortunately.

That said, the discipline of the celibate priesthood is something the Church can, if she chooses, change, unlike the prohibition against women priests, which the Church has said repeatedly is not something she has the power to change; people often confuse the issues.

Roland, I once asked a very reputable Catholic theologian about the "Peter's wife" question, which came up in a class discussion on Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." His answer was to take a closer look at the Gospel passage involving the healing of Peter's mother-in-law; it is the MIL who is ill, and it is the MIL who immediately gets up and starts preparing food for Jesus and His apostles when Jesus has healed her. Culturally speaking, according to this scholar, it was therefore highly likely that Peter's wife was already deceased, or else she would appear in this Gospel scene. I'm not a Scripture scholar myself, of course, but I found it an interesting possibility.

I have been privileged to know several married Catholic priests (former Episcopalians, mostly). The interesting thing is that they seem to think that it would be a disaster for the Church to ordain a lot of married men to the priesthood--it is extremely difficult to be married to a human wife and, in a rather real sense, to the Church as well. I know that some married former Protestant, now Catholic, priests have ended up either leaving the priesthood or seeking a reduced ministerial role because of the constant tension between their duties to their human families and to their Church families.

If a married Catholic man discerns in himself a call to pursue ordination, he should sincerely and prayerfully consider the permanent diaconate. I have also been privileged to know many deacons who serve the Church in this way, and their assistance to priests, especially those in rural dioceses, can be invaluable; while a deacon can't say Mass or hear confessions, he can read the Gospel, preach a homily, visit the sick and bring Communion to the shut-ins; he can baptize babies and even conduct weddings that take place outside of a Mass (or perform the wedding ceremony within a Mass that a priest is celebrating). Our pastor, who is from India, finds the assistance of the Spanish-speaking deacon in our sister parish greatly helpful to him.

If there were truly a plethora of married Catholic men hearing a call to ordination, the permanent diaconate programs would be full to overflowing in every diocese; since that doesn't appear to be the case, where are all these vocations to some future hypothetical married Catholic priesthood going to come from?

Erin, if being a married priest is so darn difficult, how has the Orthodox Church (and, for that matter, the Eastern Rite Catholics) survived with married priests? The only unmarried priests are usually the ones in monasteries; virtually all parish priests are married. Jut sayin'.

Father Cutie deserves to be expelled from the catholic church, for being a hypocrite to the church and his followers. The pain he has caused the church is unforgivable, personally I believe he is a coward, for the way he revealed his infidelity to the catholic church after twenty years of service. I 'am stun by his poor judgment

JTPARDO

Isn't the celibate priesthood question being answered in the United States by the decisions of current priests to leave and young prospects not to go to seminary? I expect the next pope or the one after that, rather than admit that the Church's rules are failing, to create a new class of worker for the church, one that can marry and give the sacraments, but one that will not be called a priest. It might even include women.

This may be why the Church is so adamantly set against birth control. They know that mothers with a half-dozen kids don't mind if one of them becomes a priest, but if she only has two, she risks ending up with no grandchildren if one becomes a priest.

Priests (and not all the "good looking ones") have had affairs for centuries, I expect, just not gotten caught. At one time they were allowed to marry, until the church worried about their finances! Nuns aren't always faithful to their vows either...so let the guy out of his vows, if he wants, or...allow the priests to marry. Marriage doesn't solve all problems, but certainly makes things physically easier for a male, I'd think! (after all masterbation is a SIN!) As to the child molesters, just toss them in the clink.

The greatest problem with the mandatory celibacy of Roman Catholic priests, in my thought, is that it is so seldom really observed. This institutional hypocrisy has so many unfortunate effects, and like all systematic lying, corrodes everything it touches.

Most priests in my experience stumble badly on this one. And I know a great many priests.

The truth is always better than pretense.

Do all parish priests in the East receive their full income from the Church? It is difficult in the West for married (former Protestant) Catholic priests to support their families on what the Church can afford to pay them, generally speaking. But it would be impossible for them to supplement that income with other employment, because their schedules and obligations don't allow for that sort of thing.

A very sensible comment, Erin. Especially difficult if as one would hope the priest and his wife refrain from using artificial contraception.

Roman Catholics are among the stingiest givers at the collection plate. Make no mistake. If the Catholic laity want this change - and I think a lot of them do - they are going to have to open their wallets to support the priest and his family. Those who favor a married priesthood point out that this would in all probability much increase the number of available priests, which would be great given how overworked the average Catholic pastor is these days, but that too would increase the expense.

The RC Church does not have a money tree in the basement of the Vatican, and much of its supposed "wealth" is illiquid, tied up in real estate. Catholics cannot have the cake and eat it, or continue to enjoy services which they are unwilling to support financially.

Re: A very sensible comment, Erin. Especially difficult if as one would hope the priest and his wife refrain from using artificial contraception.

I would assume that most people who advocate priests being allowed to marry are also in favor of Rome relaxing the ban on artificial contraception. Which I believe they will do eventually: maybe not today, or tomorrow, or for the next hundred years, but eventually. In any case, it seems to me that the ban isn't really very much enforced today- for good reasons, you rarely hear homilies about the evils of contraception, and I don't think that priests would be disciplined for using them.

Ms. Manning,

How do you know what the church will choose to do a hundred years from now? you don't.

The Catholic church has changed their position on other things in the past. You know that as well as me. They were against capital punishment before they were for it, now they're against it again. They used to believe (along with all other Christians) that the Jews were cursed of God, but now they utterly repudiate that. They didn't completely repudiate their position on interest lending, but it certainly evolved over the last few centuries. And no, they were most certainly not always OK with natural family planning either- see what St. Augustine had to say on the topic.

Theres nothing wrong with the fact that the position on these questions evolved. Tradition is an evolving thing. And I believe the position on birth control will evolve as well.

Jon, Since when does Orthodoxy approve of contraception?

Re: Jon, Since when does Orthodoxy approve of contraception?

The Orthodox Church has no blanket ban on contraception (assuming we are talking about non-abortifacient birth control practiced by married people). This is one of those matters where there is no dogma and a diversity of opinion is allowed. You may well have a priest, or even a bishop, who hews closer to Rome's line, but many do not. I have always read and heard that it is perfectly legitimate for an Orthodox married couple to plan the number and timing of their children, and they should seek spiritual advice, and (certainly!) pray to Our Lord on the matter. In Orthodox teaching it is not a single sex act that must be open to procreation, but rather marriage as a whole.

Rick,

I also, favor the Pill while I'm more critical about condoms (not fully made up my mind there, I can see good arguments for and against). It suprises me that more people don't appear to see a relevant theological distinction between the two.

I also agree that a sexual relationship should be eventually oriented towards procreative marriage, but that not every sex act within the relationship needs to be within those constraints. I'm Anglican, for what it's worth.

No. No, I don't think I do accept that the predictions of Paul VI (who I think was a great man, by the way), were 'fairly accurate'. There was one country (China) which, following Humanae Vitae, mandated family size limitation, though there were a few others (Vietnam, India) that strongly encouraged it. None of them were Christian, btw, so it's unlikely that they were influenced by Humanae Vitae in any way. In India, the Catholics have quite a bit lower birth rate than the Hindus and Muslims. (good for them, by the way- this is probably because Christian women are more educated and have higher status than Hindu or Muslim women). As for 'sins against chastity', your view about this is partly going to be related to your view of the sexual revolution in general. While I think the acceptance of adultery and divorce are bad things, and the general cheapening of sexuality is a bad thing, I think the sexual revolution was more of a good thing gone wrong than a bad thing in itself. I would certainly not want to go back to the sexual ethic of 1900 England or America, which was parasitic on a large and miserable class of prostitutes.

As for divorce, I'm actually somewhat more sympathetic to the Catholic position there, as the proscription against divorce is both clearer, and more directly Dominically based, than the blanket proscriptions of birth control, homosexuality or premarital sex. I think divorce is sometimes a necessary evil, but it's an evil: no one can divorce sinlessly. I don't think that my church should perform remarriages, at least in ordinary circumstances, although I think they should welcome civilly remarried couples without denyin them communion.

Could we please get rid of this stupid habit of ending a statement with the words "just saying" (or, even worse, "just sayin'")? It's meaningless (who is not just saying something? The rest of us who are busily sending mail bombs to the OP?) and it's the online equivalent of sticking one's tongue out at people. People who end their statements with "just sayin'" presumably regard their contributions as uniquely witty, but invariably they're not that hot.

Thomas R.,

Even if you don't think that the Catholic church has chnaged their position on capital punishment in the 20th century (personally, I think that it counts as a change) they have clearly changed it _at least_ once. Until the fifth century (if I recall correctly) all branches of the Christian church were pacifist, and opposed war and the death penalty. Lactantius held that 'Thou shalt not murder' forbade the death penalty categorically.

More generally, St. Augustine in that time period goes to some length to explain why the use of force by Christians in some contexts is not contrary to the law of Christ. And he doesn't pretend that this is not a change in doctrine: he acknowledges that up to that point, it had been nearly universally held that for Christians to use force on other people (in war or through the judicial system) was forbidden. He says basically that the pacifist ethic taught by Christ and St. Paul was appropriate for the time before the Empire was converted, but that now that there exist Christian states, a pacifist ethic is now irresponsible. I'm not sure the exact source but he talks about this at some length in his anti-Donatist writings.

Now personally I think there is much Scriptural ground for rejecting pacifism, but if you are going to argue that traditional teaching has been absolutely unchanging then you need to explain why pacifism was held until the 5th century and then rejected.

I don't know if it's precisely absolutely unchanging, but I think it is based on some kind of continuity. A total rupture is usually not desired.

For example Christ praises a Centurion in one of the Gospels and he seems to have known at least some of his people had swords. In one of the Gospels the repentant thief states that he "deserves his punishment" and a couple is apparently killed by God in the Acts of Apostles for treason or embezzlement or something. (I forget the details)

Hector asserts someday the Church will change its mind on birth control and I don't see how that can be done without a total rupture. At the very least I think you'd need some kind of Vatican Council III and even then I'm not sure where they'd get the justification in tradition or the Gospels. (Vatican II at least tended to state it was reviving some older traditions and ideas, there is no older Catholic tradition that's okay with contraception. At most there's just one totally ignorant of it)

The Orthodox position, I believe, is that they have no position on the matter. The issue is not directly/clearly spoken of in the Gospels or in the Councils up to 787. The Catholic Church does not have that same luxury. There are pretty clear papal statements on the matter. (Granted there were clear statements opposing the separation of church and state too, but that's one of the few analogous things I can think of. Even then the Church still may oppose the idea that the state must always be separated from the church because if it doesn't oppose it on occasion I don't see how they would justify the Vatican being a state) So to accept birth control, without just saying "we're basically just making this up as we go", would be highly difficult. Even the Anglicans didn't allow forms of birth control until 1930 as I recall.

On the death penalty there was some modification, but I think this seems more extreme than it is in reality. The personal opinions of Cardinals, even Popes, is often for ending the death penalty outright. However this is largely personal opinion based, at least somewhat, on being Europeans who lived during WWII. (Or in the case of the US based in American Catholics traditionally being members of the Democratic Party) The idea of the Church itself being always opposed to the death penalty is not really something they've declared, likely because they know there's no coherent way to do that. So they mostly speak of it being anachronistic rather than always and everywhere wrong.

Some years ago I read a learned argument on a site, I think it was called Pontifications, intended to prove that the Catholic Church had not changed its position on extra ecclesiam nulla salus est. Popes ancient and modern, councils ancient and modern, were quoted extensively.

The entire discussion convinced me that the Catholic Church has indeed made a 180 degree turn on this issue. And all the learned waffling and re-definition on the site was utterly unconvincing.

This was an important step for me as I detached myself from the Roman Catholics - realizing that they aren't always right, cannot be always right, because they've directly contradicted themselves on this one, and not an unimportant point, either.

I think, by the way, that the new position is the correct position, and that if anything the institution should be praised for being willing, however reluctantly, to learn something once in a while, but the effect on alleged infallibility remains.

So I'm with Hector on this one, at least in theory. They may change their position on birth control, or they may not, depending on how things go. Rely on it, though, that if they do change it, the change will be accompanied by loud protestations that they've "really" thought this new thing all along.

Plenty, Erin. Natural family planning was once considered a sin. Being outside the Catholic church was believed to remove you from the possibility of salvation- see "Unam Sanctam". Taking income from investment/interest were once considered sins. (Personally I wish that Christian churches had tried to maintain the spirit of that prohibition a bit more, but the point stands). If you do condemn the taking of interest, then I applaud your consistency. And perhaps most important of all: war, the death penalty, and all use of force by Christians were considered sins right up until the fifth century. You can't get around that fact.

Your whole argument, moreover, rests on the premise that birth control is a sin. Comparing birth control to pornography works only if you consider birth control a sin. But I don't accept that premise, and I never shall. I don't believe that the Catholic church will always condemn it, because that would be to believe that the church will remain promulgating a falsehood, and I don't think that it will. There's nothing 'objectifying', necessarily, about artificial birth control, any more than there is about an aspirin. It can be used for immoral purposes, but also for moral ones. We are better off for being able to plan our families, and for being able to regulate and reduce birth rates. A world where everyone had large families would be heading towards environmental catastrophe. Now I don't want to go the other extreme either, I think that childless marriages are wrong, and that our society de-emphsizes procreation far too much, even as you over-emphasize it. I stand for something in the middle. The fact that we've gone too far to the other extreme doesn't mean that the sexual revolution was in its essence and origin, a bad thing or opposed to divine and natural law.

And no doubt, groups like the Old Catholics and Polish National Catholic Church don't join a Protestant church because, like the Anglo-Catholics, they believe Catholic teachings about the Mother of God, transubstantiation, and so forth. Feel free to demand that they're not Catholics if you choose, but I don't see why you're implying they should join the Methodists or something. There's very little that's theologically Protestant about an "Old Catholic" or a high-church Anglican, unless by Protestant you mean "denying the primacy of Rome".

Rules are rules. He broke an important one. Who does he think he is? He vowed celibacy. Can't have a collar and a lover dude. Get over it

Jon, Hector, it doesn't take a lot of reading around to see the difference in re: usury, both in how it was and is defined (did you know it's still prohibited?) and in how laws against it grew from a prohibition against the *clergy* charging fees to lend money to a broader prohibition involving the laity, etc., and artificial birth control, which has never been permitted in any sense, and--I repeat--never will be.

This has gone off topic for the thread, of course, but I do have to wonder why it matters to non-Catholics what the Catholic Church teaches about birth control. I don't worry about what the Episcopalians allow or prohibit, because I'm not Episcopalian. If your church allows artificial birth control, why care that Catholic teaching holds that artificial birth control is a grave moral evil and a serious sin for any Catholic who uses it (of the sort that, if the other two conditions necessary for mortal sin are met, will indeed cut the people using it off from the life of grace and place them in a state of serious danger in regard to their souls)? In other words, you who are not Catholic are free to believe that Catholics are in error about birth control--but you'll never convince a serious Catholic like me that we are in error about it, because I don't believe that we are, and indeed have seen plenty of evidence illustrating how morally harmful and sinful artificial birth control really is, even if used by married couples. I guess I don't understand why you find it so necessary to assert on no evidence at all that the Church will change her teachings on the subject, something that is patently unlikely and would gravely harm the souls in the Church's care.

But, like I said, this has gone far off topic from Fr. Cutie's regrettable infidelity to his vows and to his calling; you can ignore it, if you like.

Re: Jon, Hector, it doesn't take a lot of reading around to see the difference in re: usury, both in how it was and is defined (did you know it's still prohibited?)

Yes of course: Usury is now defined as charging excessive interest. But it used to be defined as charging any intetest period. Look, you have to be guilty of invincible ignorance to fail to note this from all the medieval texts condemning it (including St Thomas Acquinas himself).

Re: laws against it grew from a prohibition against the *clergy* charging fees

This isn't right-- in fact it's not even wrong. The Church's ban on interest was part of a very general trans-cultural moral disapproval of interest. You can find the same among ancient Greek and Roman moralists (Aquinas, as with much else, followed Aristotle), in Islam, and even in Judaism (where a similar ban applied only when lending money to other Jews).

Re: I do have to wonder why it matters to non-Catholics what the Catholic Church teaches about birth control

Since I hope that the Apostolic and sacramental Churches may someday be restored to unity, I care that Rome insists on dogmatizing matters that are best left to individual pastoral care and in doing so throws up yet more needless roadblocks to Christian reconciliation. This is of a piece with Rome's greatest error, its obsessive monism about everything. Not all i's must be dotted and not all t's must be crossed.

...why care that Catholic teaching holds that artificial birth control is a grave moral evil...

Because there arefolks out there who would like to see their religious beliefs on the subject written into civil law.

I can't eat chocolate anyway. It's a migraine trigger. :)

Happy Mother's day.

I notice that the defender(s) of Roman Catholic Church infallibility and hence consistency of teaching have skipped any discussion of the previous doctrine that "outside the Church there is no salvation."

Wisely, I think, because that doctrine was turned on its head during the last century. Now it's fuzzed out to mean, well, anyone anywhere who has the right intentions.....

But that's not what it meant before, say, 1900. It mean, you had to be a card carrying member of the Roman Catholic Church particularly, in good standing, to even have a chance at salvation, and this condemnation very definitely and specifically included members of all other Christian denominations, including the Orthodox. Oh, there was a little wiggle room in there for "baptism of desire" if you desired God and were really actually ignorant of Christianity (not "invincibly ignorant" like Protestants), and an even smaller hole for "baptism of blood" if, being a non-baptized person, you managed anyway to be martyred for the Faith (the Holy Innocents were probably the last historical examples), but basically that's it. Be Orthodox or Protestant or God forbid just a heretic, and you've signed your damnation warrant.

One can go on and on quoting Popes and Councils to this effect.

So, they changed their minds, rightly I think. When you're wrong, is it a wonderful thing to just go on being wrong because "we've always done it this way"? I think not. I think wiser heads prevailed in the middle of the last century, and more power to them. The worst thing you can probably say is that it took them a while.

But for me, this whole transaction proves that they're not right all the time. Can't be. Either they were right before and now they're wrong, or they were wrong before and now they're right. The learned historians and theologians I read debating this question, trying to prove the two positions are consistent...well, let's just say it doesn't hold water.

Well, I can't speak for all defenders of Catholicism, but the way I see it if you're determined to believe the Church has changed her teachings on a matter like usury as a way of justifying whatever current sin you want to accept, there's no way a nuanced doctrine like "outside the Church there is no salvation" is going to be defended to your satisfaction in a comment box on a blog.

In other words, I realized the futility of arguing with Hector et. al. sometime yesterday afternoon, and am not about to waste hours and hours pulling up the documents of various councils, popes, and so forth to defend what is essentially a huge philosophical misunderstanding about what the Church believes about the development of doctrine in the first place.

Either you believe that the Church has in the past, does currently, and will continue to teach with authority, or you don't. There's simply no point answering over and over what are essentially well-known Protestant "dodges" that have been around a lot longer than the Internet.

Besides which, the matter at hand (Fr. Cutie's peccadilloes) may have prompted a side-discussion into the Church's teaching on the married priesthood (possible) and artificial contraception (never possible, being a damnable--literally--sin), but we're getting pretty far afield when the thread starts to be open season to drag out any Protestant objections we like from the rummage-bag of these historical objections (though I'm glad nobody has started asking, if transubstantiation is real, whether we silly Catholics would take communion if we knew the matter had been contaminated with arsenic first--I think I've seen most of the other old Protestant dodges dragged up in these boxes, though).

It should just be said that it should NOT be assumed that just because we Catholics have decided not to expand greatly in this place on one of the Protestants' favorite would-be "gotcha!" moments that no explanation is possible. You can find entire books written by Catholics who specialize in these fields devoted to both "outside the Church there is no salvation" and the topic of usury if you are really interested. But demanding that any casual Catholic reader who wanders into one of these threads ought to be ready to throw citations on these topics at you for days, when your underlying motive is to continue to reject Catholicism as comfortably as you already do and plan to keep doing, is disingenuous and a waste of everybody's time.

Don't be ridiculous, Erin. I believe in transubstantiation, as does Jon I assume. (I'm an Anglo-Catholic, and he's Orthodox, I think). Your trick of assuming everyone who disagrees with you is an atheist, a liberal loosey-goosey Unitarian, or a low church Protestant, is just the old 'He who says A, must say B' trick the Bolsheviks were infamous for. And it's no less contemptible now than it was then.

I'm not anti-Catholic in any meaningful sense. Indeed, where I live now I lack an Anglican church liturgically traditionalist enough, so I very often attend Catholic services. I feel much closer to most Catholics than I do to most atheist or low church Protestant modes of religious reasoning. I think papal primacy and some other Catholic teachings are in error, but I certainly don't accuse them of malicious error, being power hungry misogynists or whatever. Some individuals might be, but certainly neither Paul VI nor Benedict XVI was. I criticize Rome because I believe in the branch theory of ecclesiology, and I see them as a sister church about whom I care. I want Rome to get it right on this issue because they're already right on so much else, and I will continue to criticize Rome and other churches for whom I feel a certain fraternal affinity, when my conscience impels me to do so. Hell, I find much more to criticize about many liberal Episcopalians than I do about Rome.

Believe whatever you choose about contraception, and teach your kids and your catechumens whatever you choose. As deeply intellectually and morally wrong as I think you are, I'll be happy to defend the pharmacists who don't want to sell birth control from the feminist yahoos in a second. But do not insult the motivations and the faith of those who disagree with you, and don't accuse us of atheism or low church Protestantism. That is a really low class and deplorable mode of debating.

Here is what I posted a while back on Deacon's Bench about celibacy:

If the Church ever dispense with mandatory celibacy, she should only do it if she reclaims and safeguards the beauty of celibacy, of virginity for the kingdom's sake. Sometimes those agitating for a married priesthood -- not those from the East mind you, they aren't agitating even -- put forward a view of priests as sacramental dispensers rather than spiritual fathers. Now it is obvious that married men can also be spiritual fathers. But it is not obvious to me that you have an understanding of spiritual fatherhood where you have made the priesthood into a job or a task. And that is something those who advocate for a married priesthood seem prone to.

I have questions -- I guess I see paradoxes, but they don't make me think that we should end mandatory celibacy. It does seem strange that the Church recognizes that there are Catholic men who have both vocations to the priesthood and to marriage. Does this mean that by accident of birth in a particular rite you can have both calls or only one or other? In other words, a man who is an Eastern Rite Catholic can have both calls but a man who is a Latin Rite Catholic can only have either/or? That seems strange to me. I realize it is a mystery but I don't know how the Church can hold both together. What does this suggest about celibacy? Does this mean that if you are a man in the Latin Rite who is called to the priesthood you are automatically called to celibacy? Or could there be men who have the call to priesthood but are not called to celibacy? There are obviously men called to celibacy who are not called to the priesthood. And, if it is the case that someone could have the call to priesthood, but not celibacy, what does that mean then for those men who are called to the priesthood but who are not called to celibacy? Perhaps this is like the paradox of the Church's teaching on birth control: we are called to responsible parenthood and to be open to life, contraception is always wrong, and yet until the last 40 years, the only morally licit and reliable way to space children was to abstain fully. I find that interesting, paradoxical, but it doesn't make me doubt the Church's teaching. It makes me scratch my head.

On the other hand, has the Latin Rite understood celibacy too juridically or too much as a discipline? When people talk about the practical benefits of celibacy, I agree with them (in that sense I disagree with how strong Msgr. Albacete speaks against that line of thinking, though I understand where he is coming from, in this pretty good piece http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E3D6123BF932A05750C0A9649C8B63), and yet I think this can't be the reason for celibacy. If it is simply a practical concern, then we could just try to add more and more married priests to compensate for the loss of availability with married priests. It isn't simply a practical concern, but there is a practical benefit. It has to be the theological meaning of virginity. And this is what most of those who want to allow married priests in the Latin Rite do not understand. They don't understand what a friend told me a few weeks ago: we are all called to a position of viriginity vis-a-vis the world. A married man is called to that. A priest is called to that. That to me, to agree with Albacete, is the value of the celibate priesthood.

Its value is really in its utter uselessness (let me explain!), in that it is so gratuitous. Celibacy isn't useful, it is hard, it isn't something people want in this day and age. So let's get rid of it, people scream! Come on, who is going to consecrate the eucharist -- as if that were the value of the priest. These people don't get spiritual fatherhood, they don't get that virginity freely chosen and lived with passion affirms the gift of creation. It says to the world, "This is all the Lord's. It is from him and we are going back to him." Now, there are married men who live this, but virginity says this in a special way. And that is what seems lacking in much of the discussion of ending priestly celibacy. It seems not to get past that utilitarian level. That's the point. There isn't any darn utility in it. And that is why it is so needed -- more needed today than in any day perhaps because we are gluttons, lechers, and we cannot see that this is all from Him!

So before we ever talk about practical solutions of allowing older married men to be priests, before we talk about ending celibacy, why don't we retrieve the riches of virginity.

Furthermore, when people point to the East and say, "Hey, they do it," do they ever consider that they might have this worked out better theologically? You can have married priests in the East -- not just because of custom -- but because of how that custom has understood married priests and the relation between monks and priests, and the rich theology of mystery that is present within the Eastern tradition. We in the West sometimes seem to be functional dualists. I think we need to retrieve the liturgy, the body, the tangible things, and this will strengthen virginity. Then perhaps we can talk about married priests. But my guess is then we won't have to talk about ending celibacy, because lo and behold the Lord will provide through the witness of richly lived virginity.

Finally, I think it is inaccurate to call married priests or celibate priests innovations. From the beginning you have had both and certainly an understanding of the value and beauty of virginity. It hasn't always been a juridical norm in the West, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't valued or perhaps even privileged.

The only thing I would flesh out is this: I don't think you can just say, "This works in the East," and assume that it will work in the West. As I mentioned in that post, this has grown up organically with a specific culture and set of customs in the East, customs that are totally lacking in the West. Can you just have a married priesthood and expect those customs to be there?

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I wanted to clarify one point.

Christians reject abortifacent birth control for one specific reason: From the moment the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary (conception) the divine was united to human flesh. Ultimately for us the question is not about "When does life begin?" or "When is ensoulation?" but it is about the fact that God has taken on human flesh. Orthodox and Catholics will not waver on this because it is a grave evil to destroy that which God has united Himself to.

On the question of barrier methods, while Orthodox lack a blanket statement, that is not to say we have no position. The Orthodox wedding ceremony is explicit that the purpose of marriage is raising children. While Orthodox do allow some pastoral "wiggle room," the use of barrier methods are ultimately contrary to the teaching of the Church and the vast majority of our bishops and presbyters echo this sentiment. Orthodox are far closer to Catholics in our view than we are Anglicans. Our only real difference with Catholics is the amount of "economy" that a priest/bishop is allowed to dispense.

Nathaniel McCallum,

I also abhor abortion and believe it should be outlawed except in extreme cases (life of the mother, nonviability, etc.) However, the Pill is not an abortifacient. It works by preventing conception, not by destroying conceived embryos. Properly used birth control, on the contrary, can reduce the number of abortions, as it has done in much of Latin America and in northern Europe.

Odessa, it is still true that outside the Church there is no salvation. What is not true is that the Feeneyite interpretation of that statement, often proposed *erroneously* as the "true" Catholic teaching even before Feeney, that only baptized practicing Catholics in full communion with the Church had any shot whatsoever at getting to Heaven. That was an error no matter who proposed it or when.

When I read ancient writers on the subject, I see them saying clearly that the Church is the source of our salvation. When has that stopped being true? Never. I also see the early writers condemning in the harshest terms heretics, that is, those who knowingly and willingly cut themselves off from the life of the Church. Are heretics still not in danger of eternal death? They are--those silly women who dress up in tie-dyed sheets and call themselves Catholic priestesses are as much in danger of eternal damnation as the heretics of the early Church.

But we are in a different situation than the early Church was in. Plenty of Christians are born, live their entire Christian lives and die without ever *choosing* to be "outside the Church." The decision to leave the Church was made for them generations ago. They may remain unaware of the Catholic Church's claims or lack the ability to understand them. Since when has the Church placed culpability for heresy on the children's children's children of the original heretics?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses this matter in numbers 846 and following. Plenty of scholars have discussed any apparent discrepancy between the writings of past Catholic authors (many of whom were not speaking for the whole Church and certainly with not any particular teaching authority) and the Church's teaching in this area. It is outside the possible scope of a comment box to get into any of these things in the depth and detail which they deserve. I've said so more than once, but the reply I get from you and Hector is, "Oh, well, so the Church changes her teachings, and will probably wise up on birth control one of these days, too." Which is insulting, to say the least.

And Hector, if you want the Church to "get it right" on birth control and celebrate the same ugly sterility that the rest of the world embraces, you might want to get your facts right about the Pill. The birth control pill "prevents" pregnancy three ways: by suppressing ovulation, by thickening cervical mucus, and by thinning the uterine lining to make implantation of a fertilized ovum impossible.

That third bit of information has been removed from most US birth control websites (though the package insert for the pills may still contain that info) because pro-life groups started talking about that effect here. However, this UK website is quite forthright about it:

http://www.womens-health.co.uk/birth_control_pill.html

"When you take an oral combination pill (those with both estrogen and progesterone), the hormones present block the release of an egg from the ovary. This is the primary method through which the pill works. The pill also helps in thickening the cervical mucus so that it becomes harder for sperm to move and fertilise an egg in the fallopian tube.

"Progesterone-only pills generally do not prevent ovulation but instead thickens the cervical mucus to prevent fertilisation from occurring. Both these kinds of pills may also thin the uterine lining, which can prevent implantation from taking place if an egg is fertilised."

So unless you believe that the earliest embryo before implantation is not a human being, or that implantation somehow "makes" a baby, you have to accept that the Pill can act as an abortifacient. One doctor I heard on the subject put the chance of an early abortion caused by the Pill each month at about one in 12--most women using the Pill, according to him, may abort an average of once a year while on the Pill. Other hormonal types of birth control have similar effects.

But by all means let's keep talking about usury and "outside the Church there is no salvation," if it keeps us from having to confront what Fr. Cutie represents--which is the absolute failure of most Christians to understand, accept, or live according to the Church's teachings on sexual morality.

Hector,

http://womenshealth.about.com/od/thepill/f/howpillworks.htm

The pill works in three ways:
1. It prevents ovulation.
2. It prevents sperm from entering the uterus.
3. It prevents a fertilized egg from implanting into the uterine lining.

It is this last item which we consider to be abortifacent. Why is this so? Read Luke 1:26-35. Mary wonders "How can I conceive a child, since I am a virgin?" The angel explains to Mary how she can conceive without sperm: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

Thus, when considering the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ, Christians consider the divine to be united to the human *at fertilization* (i.e. before implantation) since it was the Holy Spirit who fertilized Mary's egg. Since Christ has united the divine to humanity so that humanity may participate in the divine life, we believe that even an un-implanted fertilized egg can and does in fact participate in the divine life. To prevent the implantation of a egg which participates in the divine life is to starve it from its life, hence to kill it, and is thus a great evil. This is the same reason we baptize babies, to enable them to partake in the divine life more fully.

If you would like this phrased as a syllogism:
1. To participate in the divine life is to truly live.
2. Christ has united himself to humanity that we may particpate in the divine life.
3. Christ was united to human flesh at fertilization, before implantation.
4. Therefore (2+3) an un-implanted, fertilized egg may participate in the divine life
5. Therefore (1+4), an un-implanted, fertilized egg is truly alive.
6. To prevent the life of any living being is to kill it.
7. Therefore (5+6), to prevent the implantation of an un-implanted, fertilized egg is to kill an alive being that is participating in the divine life.

For a more engaging take on this, see http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/aborting-jesus/ which is an excerpt from the introduction of a work by St. Maximus written by Dr. Joseph Farrell.

Erin,

"which is the absolute failure of most Christians to understand, accept, or live according to the Church's teachings on sexual morality."

I'm afraid Fr. Cutie represents more than that. Following the philosophy of Locke on government, most American Christians believe that the hierarchy of the Church exists to enact the will of the people (Church government as Social Contract). Further, they believe, following Thoreau, that it is the responsibility (or at least the privilege) of every person to disobey the laws (s)he finds unjust. Thus, most Christians feel vindicated in violating their Church's teaching and, further, that by their disobedience, the Church leadership is obligated to change its position.

This is far more than mere disobedience, but an insidious rebellion. Further, it is in this strain of thought that the media operates. Every single time the media reports on something like this they *always* include a mention of how the majority of "Catholics" (whatever they mean by Catholics, its never defined) disagree with priestly celibacy. Their motivation is that by communicating the will of the people the bishops will do their job to change the teaching of the church to mirror the "will of the people."

This is a far cry from the ancient teaching of the Church that our bishops are the divinely instituted mechanism through which we find the ordering of the Church's life and the preservation of our doctrine.

And by the way, don't give me that line about 'Feeneyism'. Feeney didn't invent the teaching, it goes back at least as far as St. Augustine. Read Book 21 of the City of God (I think) where the talks about hell, and who shall go there, and forcefully controverts the "tender minded Christians". He's very clear that no one not a baptized Catholic will be saved.

I'm a "devout" (try to be, anyway) Catholic and I can understand how Fr. Cutie faced many temptations. As Catholics we are called to give offer our entire being to Christ. A vocation should not be chosen in the same way we choose a job. It's a calling. Also, if we had married priests, would it not be likely that priests might leave for other reasons, stress of parish life too great, wife wants priests to make more money, jealous of time he spends with parishoners. Ask any honest pastor's wife and she'll tell you that the family strain in enormous. I'm not saying there should definatively never be married priests, for it is a Church discipline, not a divine law. However, it will not end the scandals as long as sexual perversion pervades our cultue.

Seems to me the RC Church ( any church) must be able to respond to new social conditions, new technologies and new discoveries. The Church must also be able to recognize and admit when either the Church or those who use the Church have done wrong and must correct that. Consistency and a logical connection in all of the Church's teachings is necessary, but one would not continue the Spanish Inquisition in the name of consistency. I am inclined to say that the Church has evolved in some of its teachiings not changed. And this to me is best.

On birth control, sometimes it seems to me that the Church is obsessed with protecting sperm. I am pro life but would appreciate a lot more pro life talk from the bishops about rape, incest, domestic violence too. I also think the bishops are not the only ones who can hear the Holy Spirit. Being given authority does not mean you always use it well