> Rev. Robert Prevost bears responsibility for allowing former Providence Catholic H.S. President and priest Richard McGrath to stay at the high school amidst sex abuse allegations that dated back to the 1990s.
> That's according to Eduardo Lopez de Casas, a clergy abuse survivor and national vice president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
[0]: https://willcountygazette.com/stories/671124585-if-he-saw-an...
The zeitgeist is inaccurate. Sexual abuse and subsequent cover ups were a massive problem that has largely been addressed, but the numbers of offenders are proportionally lower than those in public schools. From wikipedia:
"Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft, the author of a 2002 report on sexual offenses in schools, said sexual violence is much more prevalent in schools than in the Church.[315] Ernie Allen, former president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, stated: "we don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this [sexual abuse and pedophilia] or as a place that has a bigger problem [with this issue] than anyone else."[316]"
Just not true; the rate isn't really higher than what you see at football clubs, scout clubs, etc. What made it so bad in the catholic church are the cover-ups. Lots can be said about that. It was really bad. But the notion that many (or all) Catholic priets are pedos is complete bollocks.
1 Timothy 3:1-7
[1] This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
[2] A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
[3] Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
[4] One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
[5] (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)
[6] Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.
[7] Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
The issue with the Catholic Church is that it is the largest church on the planet and therefore is in the news more often. People, however, are pretty much the same wherever you put them. Most are good, some suck.
Doesn't seem likely since none of the Churches that existed prior to the Protestant Reformation allow it.
All of the ancient churches, including the Catholic Church, do allow men who are already married to become priests. The rules are more strict for Catholics than the others.
How frequently? The issue is them covering up those crimes and protecting the perpetrators. It's like saying that BBC is run by podophiles (when it was "just" aiding and abetting them).
Certainly not in general. You either have to be Eastern or Greek Catholic, Anglican/Episcopal convert etc. Overwhelming majority don't have that option.
You can look it up in the original Greek, but translation is extremely clear with the approved Catholic translations saying the same thing.
Thomas Aquinas in his Latin (and in the English translation of his writings) agrees with the translation and also agrees that priests fall under the Bishop, but then seems to completely ignore the obvious contradiction.
Finally, mandatory celibacy wasn’t mandatory until the second Lateran Council in 1139 with the admittance that it was ecclesiastical rather than dogma (with the ruling clearly going against the New Testament).
I find this to be unlikely.
This position also ignores the East, as we tend to do, although I will admit they understood themselves to be changing convention when permitting it.
The official Catholic translation agrees with KJV as does Thomas Aquinas in his commentary. In fact, I don’t know that there’s ANY disagreement about this translation anywhere.
The clear issue is that the Catholic Church believes (and states) that their ecclesiastical authority supersedes even the Bible on not only this minor topic, but more important ones too.
On the other hand, de-facto marriages (say, a live-in servant woman the priest treated like a wife, including having sex with her) were overlooked by the catholic church on continental Europe well into the high middle ages.
Since, IIRC, the 1200s (may be off by a couple centuries), there has been a practice (not a doctrine) prohibiting ordination of married men in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.
Because this is a prohibition but not a doctrinal invalidity, it does not invalidate otherwise-valid ordinations (i.e., by Bishops holding valid apostolic succession), and the prohibition was never applied to the Eastern Churches that were at the time (Inthink the Maronite Church was) or later came into union with Rome. There is also now a special exception allowing (with individual permission, not automatically) married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism and are otherwise eligible for ordination as Catholic priests to be ordained in the Latin Rite despite being married. So it is possible to encounter married priests in the Latin Rite (Western) Catholic Church, but the door is not generally open to married men becoming priests.
Nor are they expected to refrain from sex within marriage, which may be what you mean.
> Late Latin episcopus in Spanish became obispo, in Italian vescovo, in Welsh esgob. The Germanic forms include Old Saxon biscop, Old High German biscof.
Episkopos literally changed over time into the English transliteration of Bishop.
Yes. Episkopos is where we get “bishop" and presbuteros is where we get “priest”, but their use for distinct positions in the heirarchy of orders are newer than the NT itself, in which they are used more loosely and apparently, at least in some cases interchangeably.
Confusing knowing etymology (either forward or backward) for knowing meaning in context is a common, but potentially very serious, error.
Like I said, it would mean that Paul was not legitimate which is just nonsense. Nobody believes that.
You should read this: https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-st-paul-say-bishops-must-be-...
None of the Eastern churches allow priests to marry.
"You can't find any reliable scholar" is an appeal to authority fallacy. EVERYONE regardless of Christian denomination agrees that the text says what it says very clearly (can you point to even one controversy about 1 Tim 3:1-7 ?). The idea that they reject what the book clearly states while also claiming the book to be divinely inspired is extreme cognitive dissonance.
If you are a Christian, prove your position from the Bible alone. In this case, that clearly isn't possible. You should look at what other claims from many churches (including the Catholic Church) that also aren't supported by the Bible without resorting to sophistries while obviously ignoring the parts that are inconvenient to your position.
The only reason the word bishop exists in English is because we needed a loan word for episkopos. It has served that purpose and in the religious context has had no significant change in semantics.
As to your assertion that bishop and priest are different, you are wrong even from the Catholic framework (and completely wrong from a Protestant framework). Here's a quote from Thomas Aquinas about 1 Tim 3:1
> But since Dionysius declares that there are three orders, namely, bishops who rule, priests who enlighten, and deacons who cleanse, why does the Apostle make no mention of priests?
> The answer is that priests are included under the term, bishop, not as though the two orders are not really distinct, but only nominally. For priest is the same as elder, and bishop the same as overseer. Hence priests and bishops are indiscriminately called both bishops and priests.
But if homosexual men begin to dabble in pederasty and begin to abuse their positions of power against vulnerable and defenseless boys, this is a real scandal, and the Church has been quite embarrassed for people to find out just how prevalent homosexuality is among the ranks of clergy and religious. And the general public and the mainstream media know this, and they have leveraged that embarrassment against the Church in order to discredit her.
And the homosexual aspect of all of this tends to get swept under the rug and sort of ignored, because the general public, in a hypocritical sort of way, doesn't really mind if men are having sex with boys, at least they're not supposed to, but the absence of little girls from the records has been difficult to deny.
The Church can try and correct this by denying entry to homosexual men. But then she will have a profound vocations crisis if she is selecting heterosexual men and hanging the gays out to dry with nothing at all to do. More than a vocations crisis, she will be accused of being "unwelcoming" and "unjust" towards gay men entirely. So she is truly upon the horns of a dilemma.
Your quote of Aquinas also appears to disagree with you, and takes "episkopos" more generally than the modern usage of "bishop." It actually seems that the catholic bishops may have adopted a word that was in common use for an overseer of a parish.
More recent translations and scholarly commentaries all turn away from the "episkopos" = "bishop" idea. Again, the literal translation of "episkopos" is "overseer."
You are not making a good argument. If the rule required bishops to be married then a large chunk of the bishops consecrated by the apostles were not legitimate. Nobody thinks that.
> "You can't find any reliable scholar" is an appeal to authority fallacy. EVERYONE regardless of Christian denomination agrees that the text says what it says very clearly (can you point to even one controversy about 1 Tim 3:1-7 ?). The idea that they reject what the book clearly states while also claiming the book to be divinely inspired is extreme cognitive dissonance.
Fine, ignore the scholars. Point to anybody in the first 1500 years of the Church that takes your position. If it was that clear you should be able to find somebody who agrees with you.
You are being prideful and assuming that you are reading it correctly despite nobody agreeing with your interpretation. This is why there are thousands of different churches. Everybody just reads whatever they want into scripture. You are trying to prove Christians, or maybe just Catholics, are idiots or whatever you are trying to do. If you actually want to convince somebody maybe you should have some charity and humility.
> If you are a Christian, prove your position from the Bible alone. In this case, that clearly isn't possible. You should look at what other claims from many churches (including the Catholic Church) that also aren't supported by the Bible without resorting to sophistries while obviously ignoring the parts that are inconvenient to your position.
Maybe you should learn basic Christan beleifs. No Christian, including those who believe in Sola Scriptura, believes everything can be found in scripture.
The Catholic Church believes in 2 Thessalonians 2:15
> So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter
There is clearly things outside of scripture they believe.
Anybody who can follow basic logic can come to the Catholic position from the Bible as I have already mentioned.
Premise 1: The apostles are bishops.
Premise 2: Paul was an apostle.
Premise 3: Paul was not married and had no children.
Therefore bishops are not required to be married and have children.
Aquinas is writing a narrative more than 1,000 years after the fact rationalizing how it is possible for the biblical narrative to be consistent with the order observed later. He does a very good job of that. It is not, in the slightest, evidence that the three-orders system and the particular roles assigned to each—which has evolved considerably over time since it is first clearly attested within the Catholic Church, without even considering what Protestants and newer movements claiming the title "Christian" have done with it —actually existed at the time of the NT and was being referenced therein.
Can you point to a bishop appointed by Jesus' 12 disciples who was not married with children? If not, then you are making a baseless assertion.
> Point to anybody in the first 1500 years of the Church that takes your position.
Paul does in 1 Tim 3. We also have reformers like Martin Luther who after discovering the Bible for himself rejected his vows of celibacy, got married, and had several children. Luther would not have rejected his vows before God had they not conflicted with what he read in the Bible.
> You are being prideful and assuming that you are reading it correctly despite nobody agreeing with your interpretation.
You are jumping straight into the ad-hominems. The Bible says what it says and everyone agrees that there is no mistake or mistranslation. It's like when modern Mormons reject polygamy when it is espoused as critically important by Joseph Smith. You can't take a very clear and intentional meaning of what you believe to be inspired and ignore it just because you don't like what it says or it goes against current tradition and norms.
> Everybody just reads whatever they want into scripture.
If you can just make up whatever you want, then the whole thing would certainly be a farce. Are you simply arguing against Christianity and the Bible as a whole?
> If you actually want to convince somebody maybe you should have some charity and humility.
Another ad-hominem. I addressed the facts. You took issue with the clear writings in the Bible and went on a crusade to prove the unprovable.
> Maybe you should learn basic Christan beleifs. No Christian, including those who believe in Sola Scriptura, believes everything can be found in scripture.
Yet another ad-homenem. Setting that aside, you are making a non-sequitur here.
If I fully agree that not everything is in the Bible, that has zero bearing on what IS in the Bible. If we were discussing the nature of the divinity of the Christ, your point may have merit (though those arguing on all sides believe they can scratch together an argument), but we are talking about a very clear "Bishops should be married to one woman with well-mannered kids". There is no room for debate and you won't actually find much debate -- just outright ignoring what was said.
> Premise 1: The apostles are bishops.
What evidence do you have for this? Apostle means "messenger" or "sent forth". This is far different than Bishop which means "overseer". Paul was certainly familiar with both terms (calling himself a "servant of God, called to be a apostle (messenger)").
Ephesians 4:11 (KJV) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
Paul sees a clear distinction between the messengers and those who would oversee the churches. This is why he doesn't see his writings as hypocritical and why the other two premises simply do not matter to the conclusion.
Of course, if a married Eastern Catholic priest decided to join the Latin Church with the rest of his family, this could happen too.
But generally, a married man will want to discern the diaconate, as the priesthood will simply be out of the question, except in these exceptional circumstances.
The clear reference was to the overseer of a church or what would be considered a pastor or priest. All bishops are priests.
Mark 10:8-9 KJV
[8] And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
[9] What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
This shows that even if you considered bishops to be a new creation, they shouldn't abandon their family for the position. And of course, the order of deacons isn't necessary of commentary as it is specifically addressed in the next part of 1 Tim 3.
Because it is discussing churches, it would be saying that priests must be married. As all bishops are priests, it would apply to them as well.
Even if you took the broader position that it must apply elsewhere, the Catholic Church has only three orders -- deacon, priest, and bishop. These verses MUST be discussing either priest or bishop meaning at least one of those two is not following what Paul wrote.
Kind of, but that's only true in the Latin Rite and not the Eastern Rites, and only since 1972, when the other orders were renamed “ministries”.
… Consider Wikipedia's explanation of the situation described upthread. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Leo_XIV&oldi...
> In 2022, alleged victims of abuse in 2007 by priests Ricardo Yesquén and Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles said Prevost failed to investigate their case.[58] The Diocese of Chiclayo stated that Prevost followed proper procedures, met with Ana María Quispe and her sisters in April 2022 to personally attend the victims, encouraging civil action while initiating a canonical investigation (which he sent to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith).[59][60] The sisters stated in 2024 that no full penal canonical investigation occurred, and an article from América Televisión agreed the church's investigation was not thorough.[61][62]
Please consider whether you might be prejudiced, and whether the things you believe might be false. Your assertions certainly are.
First let me say more than just Paul was unmarried. John was also unmarried. There is also debate if Peter's wife was alive. We only hear about his mother in law, not a wife.
In terms of bishops consrecated by the apostles, we do not have a huge amount of evidence for most, but almost everybody believes St Ignatius of Antioch was unmarried.
> Paul does in 1 Tim 3. We also have reformers like Martin Luther who after discovering the Bible for himself rejected his vows of celibacy, got married, and had several children.
You can't use the verse we are debating to prove your point.
> Luther would not have rejected his vows before God had they not conflicted with what he read in the Bible.
OK? You did see that I said "Point to anybody in the first 1500 years of the Church that takes your position". I know Protestants rejected this understanding. My point is that if everybody in the Church disagrees with your understanding for the first 3/4 of the existence of the church then you are in the wrong.
I don't care what they think on the Bible because they reject what all the early Christians believed.
> You are jumping straight into the ad-hominems.
You are literally saying you know what the Bible means better then almost every Christan who has ever lived. Only a minority of modern Christians agree with you. That is a steller example of pride.
> The Bible says what it says and everyone agrees that there is no mistake or mistranslation.
Nobody is saying there is a mistake. I am saying you are misunderstanding and your only evidence is your interpretation and some people 1500+ years after it was written.
> It's like when modern Mormons reject polygamy when it is espoused as critically important by Joseph Smith. You can't take a very clear and intentional meaning of what you believe to be inspired and ignore it just because you don't like what it says or it goes against current tradition and norms.
This is a bad example. They do not deny that Smith taught polygamy. They belive that Woodruff received a revelation telling them it is no longer permissble.
Nobody is claiming there is a new revelation when it comes to the bishop topic.
> If you can just make up whatever you want, then the whole thing would certainly be a farce. Are you simply arguing against Christianity and the Bible as a whole
That makes absolutely no sense. If I write the statement "the sunrise was beautiful." Somebody could say I believe the sunrise was ugly. Does that mean that my statement is a farce? No, it just means they don't know what I was saying.
> Another ad-hominem. I addressed the facts.
This is not an adhominen. I am literally trying to help you out and give you constructive criticism.
> You took issue with the clear writings in the Bible and went on a crusade to prove the unprovable.
I take issues with your interpretation. You clearly don't understand and context and are saying if the Bible isn't worded in the exact way I want it to be, then it doesn't mean what it says.
> Yet another ad-homenem. Setting that aside, you are making a non-sequitur here.
You sure love the phrase ad-homenem despite not knowing what it is. Telling somebody they don't understand something isn't an ad homenem. I am not attacking your character or anything like that.
> If I fully agree that not everything is in the Bible, that has zero bearing on what IS in the Bible. If we were discussing the nature of the divinity of the Christ, your point may have merit (though those arguing on all sides believe they can scratch together an argument), but we are talking about a very clear "Bishops should be married to one woman with well-mannered kids". There is no room for debate and you won't actually find much debate -- just outright ignoring what was said.
It has a massive bearing because you can see that nobody took it to mean what you are claiming it means. Surely the Apostles and early bishops would not have had unmarried bishops if that is what they thought it meant.
> What evidence do you have for this? Apostle means "messenger" or "sent forth". This is far different than Bishop which means "overseer". Paul was certainly familiar with both terms (calling himself a "servant of God, called to be a apostle (messenger)").
Apostles are bishops with a special role due to personally meeting Jesus. Of course since it is only implied in the Bible you are going to reject it.
> Ephesians 4:11 (KJV) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
> Paul sees a clear distinction between the messengers and those who would oversee the churches. This is why he doesn't see his writings as hypocritical and why the other two premises simply do not matter to the conclusion.
Apostles are bishops, but not all bidhops are apostles so it would be accurate that not everybody had an apostle.
That quote also doesn't deny that somebody could have multiple roles. Surely an evangelist would also be a teacher? Surely prophets are also teachers (teaching the prophecy they received)?
This is such a weird argument.
Can you provide any evidence of this?
> almost everybody believes St Ignatius of Antioch was unmarried.
Speaking of him, read Philadelphians. He makes the assertion that the apostles were married men (including Paul). What he makes of himself, it either implies that he is married or would like to be (to be like those others).
https://www.logoslibrary.org/ignatius/philadelphians1/04.htm...
> You can't use the verse we are debating to prove your point.
I'm asserting that it says what it says. YOU are the one who must prove that Paul didn't mean what he said.
> You are literally saying you know what the Bible means better then almost every Christan who has ever lived.
To the contrary, YOU are making an assertion that everyone believes this, but are then failing to show any proof except clear cases of "nobody knows, but I'll assert that they were unmarried anyway".
> only evidence is your interpretation and some people 1500+ years after it was written.
Even the Catholic Church didn't mandate celibacy until nearly 1200AD. You are making a very fallacious argument both on this count and that an appeal to authority or extra-Bibical tradition isn't an argument to overturn what the book clearly says.
> the Church disagrees with your understanding for the first 3/4 of the existence of the church then you are in the wrong.
This is a very misleading representation of history. Locking the Bible behind a Latin barrier meant that most people couldn't read and question and most who could read Latin had no access to a Bible and it seems that most of those who did had very little inclination to read it. Of those priests or educated laity who did read and question, most were captured and tortured until they died or recanted.
Under such ignorance and extreme pressure to comply, an appeal to tradition is especially weak.
> This is a bad example. They do not deny that Smith taught polygamy. They belive that Woodruff received a revelation telling them it is no longer permissble.
The very core of their beliefs around the requirements for becoming a God are rooted in this claim and having multiple wives is a necessity for this in the afterlife (not to mention that God is believed to have multiple wives). While I disagree that polygamy is good (it seems to always result in misery), I do respect the LDS who stick to their book no matter what.
> Nobody is claiming there is a new revelation when it comes to the bishop topic.
If there's no new revelation, then the old revelation still applies, but is being ignored.
> it just means they don't know what I was saying.
Explain what you mean without then.
> Telling somebody they don't understand something isn't an ad homenem. I am not attacking your character or anything like that.
Telling me that I am prideful or uncharitable or not humble has NOTHING to do with the topic aside from trying to attach a bad label on me so the logic can be ignored. These are textbook examples of ad-hominem attacks.
> Apostles are bishops with a special role due to personally meeting Jesus. Of course since it is only implied in the Bible you are going to reject it.
Of course. It is inductive reasoning. You start with the conclusion that it must be so then try to find reasons it should be true. That's been this entire conversation. Deductive reasoning would lead to the conclusion that I am correct in my assertion, but the Catholic Church says otherwise, so you must fabricate reasons however feeble to justify them.
You haven't even hit on the actual reasoning from that 1139 decision either. Their argument was nothing like what you are trying to push. It was the argument that they otherwise couldn't keep the priesthood from becoming nepotistic with the priest father passing the role to his son.
But this doesn't hold any weight either.
First, passing on the priesthood was a strict requirement in the Old Testament, so it certainly isn't necessarily bad.
Second, if it IS being passed along for purely nepotistic reasons, they would be duty-bound to remove the offending priest and their children from their office. There's an entire hierarchy that should in theory be aimed at exactly this. The ruling speaks in at least some degree to their inability to govern their own priests.
Third, an inability to stop your priests from doing something bad is not a reason to do something else against the Bible in response. The correct response is a reformation of your clergy.
> Apostles are bishops, but not all bidhops are apostles so it would be accurate that not everybody had an apostle.
This does not hold. Paul was an Apostle, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of him overseeing a church. Instead, he would travel to a place to preach for a time then move on to the next place right up until his final voyage to Rome where he was killed.
As I recall, the Catholic view is that Paul was a Bishop because he layed hands on others, but of course, this is an argument that proves too much as the priest/bishop arrangement by their own admission did not exist at that time and as such he could not be a bishop in that manner, but also not an overseer of a church.
> That quote also doesn't deny that somebody could have multiple roles. Surely an evangelist would also be a teacher? Surely prophets are also teachers (teaching the prophecy they received)?
Certainly, but likewise, it does NOT indicate that Apostles and Pastors/bishops are always linked.
First, what is this Latin barrier? The New Testament was written in Greek and continued to be available in Greek. I assume you think that the Catholic church was the sole church back then. It wasn't. The Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, and the Eastern Orthodox churches all existed. They all agree with what I am saying. They had scrupture in a variety of languages not just Latin.
This was a universal view.
Your are misreading the letter from Ignatius. He did not say they were married he said "and the rest of the apostles, that were married men." That were married would mean not all were in fact married.
Not mandating celibacy is not the same as mandating men were married. How are you making an argument like this? The Bible says what it says, but the Bible also makes it clear you shouldn't interpret the Bible on your own (Acts 8). This is what you and Protestants did to come to this conclusion.
Unless you are willing to submit to what all the Churches that have actual claims of succession from the Apostles, there is no point in continuing. If you are a Christian you aren't following Acts 8. If you aren't a Christian then you are just pushing your secular views onto Bible to push your own narrative.