Tag Info

This article gives an overview of the history of celibacy in the clergy. Even the Catholic church would admit that celibacy was not enforced on clergy in New Testament times, but would point out that those who chose celibacy were held in high honour, even in that period. There is dispute over how early the rules of celibacy came to be enforced. The earliest ...

The important thing to consider is that celibacy, or practicing non-marriage, was practiced far before Christianity. Druid priests, Aztec Priests, etc were told to have been mandated to be pure and have no marriage with women. I believe that the first written mandate that states that priests should be celibate was made around AD 300. The Council of Elvira ...

Do any Christian denominations have any policies to prevent nepotism? Short answer: Yes The modern Catholic Church does, as of June 22, 1692. Pope Innocent XII. Innocent XII gave nepotism a death blow by his celebrated Bull "Romanum decet Pontificem," 22 June 1692. However, it does not appear to have actually ended the practice. Romanum ...

Frank K. Flinn's Encyclopedia of Catholicism defines an antipope as "a person who lays claim to the office of bishop of Rome and tries to act as head of the Roman Catholic Church, in opposition to the person duly holding that ecclesiastical office in the eyes of the church as a whole." Flinn points out that there have been 39 antipopes in the history of the ...

Wikipedia has a good, though slightly sparse, article on the subject of Antipopes. An Antipope was someone who claimed the title of Pope in opposition to a current pope, typically setting up an alternative papacy. The two main groups of Antipopes were those set up by the Holy Roman Emperors during the 11th and 12th centuries, and those established by the ...

Luther viewed Thomas Aquinas as one of his adversaries. He saw him as someone who interpreted the Bible according to Aristotle. There are many references against Thomas in Luther's writings. Here is an example when speaking against indulgences: They are far more foolish than the Pythagoreans who assert only those things which Pythagoras has said. These, ...

As an Augustinian monk himself who tried desparately not to leave the church, but rather only to reform it, I think this would be a hard claim for someone to make of Luther. That said, the "invisible church" or what we moderns would probably call "real Christians" is always a subjective term. I'm sure he thought many clergy weren't truly Christian, but I ...

I would like to add a few other Biblical reasons Protestants in general will allow for married Pastors. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. -Mark 1:30. Simon Peter having a mother-in-law necessarily meant that he had a wife. If one of Jesus's own apostles had a wife, then right there is pretty good ...

Protestants take the priestly celibacy as unbiblical or unnatural. They claim that every man must obey the biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply"(Gen. 1:28) and Paul command that "each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband"(1Cor. 7:2). They also argue that celibacy somehow causes illicit sexual behaviour or perversion or at ...