Can we talk about the pope?

I've been working under the same general impression as well. I think the Catholic church made some attempt to ground the concept in theology but it was mostly to avoid heirs.

 

That would be plausible if priests owned the land. They don't.
ALL Catholic Church land in North America, for example is owned in name and deed to the diocese. The diocese owns the land, the churches, the buildings.
And priests are not stationed to any one place permanently. They are routinely shuffled every 7 to 9 years to another parish or diocese.


And my explanation came from the church leaders (not saying it's the real reason) but it's the official one.
Where's your from?

 

Ok that explains the early years .. the really early years, but for hundreds and hundreds of years the church has been accumulating land in its name, not the priests, not the bishops or cardinals.
Land owned by the diocese is not isolated only to North America. The Catholic Church is one of the largest land holders in the world.
What you say may have been the truth more than 1,200 years ago, but that is not the case in the last 500-800 years - not since the recording of property ownership.

Your answer may have been true at one time, but not for a long, long, long, long-ass time.
I was providing Jay part of the Church-sanctioned reasons behind single priests.

 

And Headbutt is providing you with the reason it was changed originally, and the real reason it was done. They later had to come up with some dogmatic reason to keep from anyone questioning why priests can't marry. Many major church decisions have been made bureaucratically, not dogmatically. It's one of the main reasons I'm a lapsed Catholic.

 

Not to disrespect the office as God-inspired people would have it, but I wonder if the pope himself ever committed such an act and won't do anything because, well, someone knows about what he did. Just saying. After all this was a pope who once was a Hitler Youth.

I miss JPII. I guess great men simply come around once in a generation.

 

What's the process for Sainthood in the papacy? I thought JPII was headed that way. You never hear anything about it. God, for the sake of good RC's everywhere, I hope that somewhere in a dark room where decisions are made like this, that he doesn't have anything in his past. That's one thing with worse impact than Nolan Ryan admitting he used steroids.

 

Nothing would suprise me. if not this pope, I'm sure others who wore the hat committed similar offenses.

And don't get too hung up on the Hilter Youth apsect.
Just about all German his age were members of Hilter Youth. The Youth incorportaed more than 4 million young german boys or girls. It was a perverted form of Boys Scouts and and under Hitler and the Nazis, not many had a choice to say no.

 

Plus the Catholic Church had a distinguished record of dissenting and fighting Hitler and the Nazis. :

 

You never want to follow The Guy. You want to follow the guy who follows The Guy.
Would have thought Benedict would have been well served to spend his tenure cleaning up the church, airing the dirty laundry and such. Instead he seems hell bent on doubling down on the secrecy and denial.