[Editor's Note: The message below is a follow-up letter to The Wrong Church? The viewer’s comments are in italics with Mark Shea’s response in plain type.]
Dear Nick:
First off, I'd like to thank you for taking time to address my emails.
A pleasure. Thank you, in turn, for being more civil in this email.
The reasons I believe the current scandals further prove the RCC to be a false church are because the RC priesthood is both unscriptural and unchristian.
Okay. So then are you saying that the scandals don't actually prove anything by themselves, but merely are icing on the cake of the real problem, which is the Church's teachings? I'm trying to be clear here.
This is just one of dozens of abominable teachings your church promotes.
It would help if you could take things one at a time rather than simply throw a bunch of claims about the Church's teaching all at once. It's much easier to throw out objections than to answer them, and the net effect tends to be that when an objection is, in fact, answered, the objector just hurries on to the next objection and never acknowledges the answer. I'm sure you would agree this is not fair-minded.
The only priesthood we read of in the New Testament church is (a) the high priesthood of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 7-8), and (b) the general priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:5,9).
Actually, we read about Bishops (episcopoi), priests (presbuteroi), and deacons (diakonoi). We also read that Christians worship at an altar (that is, a place of sacrifice requiring a priest) at which the unbaptized Jews have no right to worship (Hebrews 13:10). And the Church immediately after the apostles bears testimony to this basic biblical structure. The fact of the common priesthood of the baptized (which the Catholic Church has always taught) does not eliminate the institution of the ordained priesthood. The Church follows the basic OT pattern: all Israel, like all the baptized, was a “chosen nation, a royal priesthood.” But Israel, like the Church, also had an ordained priesthood. In the Old Testament, the Aaronic priesthood offered animal sacrifices. In the New Covenant, the ordained priesthood celebrates the sacrifice of the Eucharist. That the Eucharist is regarded as a sacrifice is clear, not only from the fact that it is offered in obvious terms of sacrifice, separating body and blood and offered for sin, but also because Paul very clearly sees it as a direct parallel (and opposite) of pagan sacrifice:
Therefore, my beloved, shun the worship of idols. I speak as to sensible men; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Cor 10:14-22).
In other words, pagan ritual meals are sacrifices to pagan deities which are demonic. The Eucharist is the sacrificial offering of the body and blood of Christ to God the Father. Don't mix them up.
The point is this: sacrifices require priests (presbuteroi). And the Church has always had them, because they were ordained by Christ to “do this in memory of me.”
Second, in the New Testament Scriptures we never read that the other Christians confessed their sins to the Apostles. The Bible teaches that it is blasphemous to claim that a mere man can forgive sins (Luke 5:21). Sin is always confessed directly to God (Ps. 32:5; 51:4; 86:5; Dan. 9:19). This is how Christ taught us to pray (Luke 11:2,3). James 5:16 says, “Confess your faults to one another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed,” but this refers to all Christians and not merely to the Apostles.
Note your self-contradiction: “Sin is always confessed directly to God” followed immediately by James 5:16 in which sin is manifestly confessed to other human beings. Which is it?
And note that James does not say that Christians have the authority to forgive sins; he says they have the responsibility to pray for one another that GOD will heal and forgive sins.
Perhaps realizing that you have contradicted yourself, you now change the subject to “Well, okay. We can confess our sins to human beings (evidently for no reason whatever) but human beings cannot absolve anybody of sin.” What you overlook is the clear testimony of John 20:22-23, where Jesus Christ says plainly to the apostles: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Like it or not, Scripture is quite clear that Jesus did delegate the authority to forgive sins to human beings.
The Catholic Dictionary states:
“The apostolic fathers also abstain from any mention of a Christian priesthood” (Cath. Dic., 692)
Go here: Bishop, Priest, Deacon on Catholic Answers
You will find abundant testimony to the priestly office from lots of apostolic fathers. Remember “priest” is simply a contraction of “presbuteroi” a term used by Paul repeatedly. You will also find abundant testimony from the Fathers that the Eucharist is a sacrifice (i.e. a “participation,” as Paul calls it in 1 Corinthians 10, in the one and only sacrifice of Jesus Christ). Sacrifice requires a priest, which is why Jesus delegated the authority to celebrate the Eucharist to the apostles just as he delegated the authority to forgive sins to them.
Now here is something I would like to challenge you with. One of the problems that frequently afflicts people who make it their mission to attack the Catholic Church is something you are doing here: namely, cutting and pasting uncritically from a source they know nothing about. Let's face it, you didn't actually go to the Catholic Dictionary or the Catholic Encyclopedia. You just went to some website with a bunch of quotes (probably cut and pasted from some other source), took it for granted these sources are accurate and dumped them into your email. As it happens, your very first quote contains bogus information. So why should you trust the rest? And why should I bother answering bogus quotes from a bogus source?
My suggestion: next time, show some critical thought about phony bibliographic references. Generally a bib. ref. that cites some generic title and a page number, with no other information, is screaming to be debunked. This is important for you to know, particularly if you are going to conclude your email with some ringing challenge to stop accepting The Party Line and Learn to Think for Yourself.
[At this point the viewer included several more of the inaccurate quotes.]
See above. You've been sold a bill of goods and have uncritically bought it.
You admit yourself that the doctrine of legislated celibacy is not taught in Scripture, but you accept because it became popular over the years.
If you are going to make priestly celibacy the big issue, then you should really familiarize yourself with what you are talking about. Priestly celibacy is not a “doctrine.” It is a discipline: a way of doing things. There is nothing set in stone about it. The Church is perfectly aware that, for instance, Peter had a wife. The Church also has other rites besides the Latin rite in which priests are married. Indeed, even in the Latin rite, there are married clergy (for instance, Anglican priests who convert). The reasons the discipline arose are complex, but the basic idea was that it made it easier for the priest to focus on his duties. It's also true that celibacy was very popular in the early Church. I don't quite see why that is a problem, unless you think the Church should have forced priests to marry.
You can jump up an down and hold your breath until you turn blue, but you'll never find an unmarried celibate priesthood in the new testament.
Sure, I can. St. Paul.
You have look towards tradition to support it. This is where you're right at home because your church always uses its vile traditions to wrest the scriptures from the original context.
Actually, apostolic tradition places Scripture in its original context. The irony, of course, is that this is as true for you as it is for Catholic, only you don't know it. One of the reasons I came to take apostolic tradition seriously was that I realized Protestants relied on it almost as much as Catholics, only they didn't realize it. That's why you know what books belong in your Bible. It's not that you figured it out. It's that you accepted apostolic tradition (or a good chunk of it). And you accept lots of other aspects of apostolic tradition too. Don't believe me? See: The Lens in My Eye (excerpted from Chapter 6 of By What Authority?)
That said, priestly celibacy is, I reiterate, a discipline, not a feature of apostolic tradition per se. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It simply means that the Church, while it has the right to order its sacraments how it wishes, doesn't have to impose celibacy.
The fact that “She” can order her sacraments as “She” pleases means nothing if it violates scripture. The doctrine of a celibate Christian New testament Priesthood does just that.
No it doesn't. Paul praises celibacy as a higher state than marriage. He wishes everybody could be celibate like him. You will answer: “But Paul never forced people to be celibate!” Right. And neither does the Church. Nobody has to be a priest. The Church compels nobody to take Holy Orders. But if they do, the Church has the right to say how her priests will order their lives, just as Paul had the right to tell Timothy and Titus how to order their lives as ministers of the gospel.
In closing I'd just like to say that I never meant to intimate that Catholic laypeople are to blame for the sins of their priests and hierarchy.
Good. Thank you.
They are however responsible to view the actions of their Church in light of the Bible, for they will give an account before God one day.
I agree.
Although you claim that you have lobbied for reform, your church has hardly made any efforts to establish any concrete method of eradicating the depraved behavior of Its priests. I believe this is because the church will never depart from its position of an unmarried priesthood. If it did, she would have to admit to teaching error for centuries, and you know as well as I that you're church is always right and never admits to its errors.
I quite agree that the Church has far to go in dealing with the problem of abusive priests. However, I think your analysis is badly unacquainted with the facts. First, you are still failing to confront the fact that 80% of the victims were adolescent boys. Heterosexuals who just wish they could be married are not the people committing these crimes. The problem is gay priests flouting their vows.
Second, you still fail to grasp that priestly celibacy is a disciple, not a doctrine. It's not a “teaching” of the Church that priesthood and celibacy must be forever conjoined. If it were, then there could be no married priests. But there are married priests. And if Rome changed the discipline tomorrow to allow all priests to marry, this would no more constitute an “admission of error” than if Rome were to commission another translation of the Bible. The Church does not function by the rule “That which is not forbidden is compulsory.”
Finally, you must have missed the entire last decade of John Paul II's papacy, in which he spent a huge amount of time apologizing for the sins of Catholics. You may want to read just a fraction of these Google links.
As a Bible-believing Christian who takes to heart the words of Jesus concerning forgiving 7 times 70 times, I'm confident you will be eager to offer your forgiveness.
What an unfortunate vocation you have chosen Mr. Shea. May the Lord have mercy on your poor seared conscience. I'm praying for you in hope that it's not too late and you are already reprobate.
I appreciate your prayers. I'm not afraid to examine the questions you raised. Are you willing to look at the issues I raised?
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
