{"id":716,"date":"2011-02-10T23:08:06","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T22:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/?p=716"},"modified":"2011-03-04T09:37:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T08:37:19","slug":"discussion-of-celibacy-or-abolition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/discussion-of-celibacy-or-abolition\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion of Celibacy, or Abolition?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not a few of the blogs and news outlets mentioning the 1970 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/ratzinger-rahner-et-al-on-celibacy-1970\/\">letter<\/a> of Ratzinger and eight other theologians calling for a new and open discussion of the discipline of celibacy speak of it as though it were a call for the abolition of the law requiring celibacy of those to be ordained as priests. This is, however, a quite unjustified &#8220;reading into&#8221; the text of the letter, which states that those entering into the discussion should do so with an openness to whatever the outcome of a renewed and frank discussion of the issue might be, but explicitly refrains from proposing what the outcome of such a discussion <em>should<\/em> be (whether retaining the law regarding celibacy, or changing it).<\/p>\n<p>Cardinal Walter Kasper, one of the other eight signatories to the letter, recently affirmed just that in an address to the Catholic University of Lisbon, namely that he had proposed a <em>discussion<\/em> of priestly celibacy, not its <em>abolition<\/em>. Moreover, he suggested that the discussions of celibacy that have taken place do not favor a need for change in the discipline.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There have been three world synods that have spoken of celibacy, and it was decided to maintain this discipline, and I myself believe that celibacy is a good for the Church.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At present I don&#8217;t have access to his full address. If I get it, I will post it or a link to it here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The media in their reports on the 1970 letter of Ratzinger and other theologians to the German bishops regarding priestly celibacy have often spoken as though the letter were a call for the abolition of celibacy. In fact, it is a call for the discussion of the discipline, but does not state that it should be abolished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[31,62],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-states-of-life","tag-celibacy","tag-ratzinger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}