[Sca-cooks] OT - - What do you call?

[Philippa Alderton]

--- Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net> wrote:

> Sigh. Okay, I had trouble wording that and it's not
> that clear.

Now Stefan, you were just being teased ;-)

> I was referring to the fact that, despite various
> Church pronouncments
> that lower level clergy should not get married or
> have mistresses,
> more than a few Popes did.

Actually, in the early church, there was no
prohibition on marriage for priests. In the Greek
Orthodox church, marriage is permitted, and, I
understand, encourage. Nowadays, if a Greek Orthodoc
married priest converts to Catholicism, he is allowed
to remain married, although if his spouse dies, he may
not remarry.

Throughout much of the MA, in different times and
places (usually those far from the Inquisition) the
sexual activities of priests and monks were rather a
running joke, particularly about those noble sons who,
in the tradition of their families, were given to the
Church- the first son to inherit, the second to the
church, the third to the army. A man given to the
church under the customs of primogeniture might have
no more of a true vocation, than his elder brother
might have a talent for administering the family
lands.

> Obviously in that case,
> they were not
> 'fixed' and thus wouldn't need to be verified.

I think that this may have occurred in the later MA,
after the rumors of the female Pope became so strong,
but you're looking at two different issues here. The
first is the gender of the potential Pope, which might
very well require verification. The other is the
physical requirements of the priesthood, which
included that a priest be possessed of all his parts,
ie, not missing an arm or leg, or his testicles.

This requirement has extended into modern times,
although I'm not sure when it oroginated- I had a
conversation with an elderly priest, Father Mulvey,
who strongly believed that physical perfection was a
requirement for the priesthood, despite the more
recent loosenings of the rules as dictated by the
Vatican Counsil, and that any priest who found himself
disabled in any significant way should retire, and
cease performing his office. OTOH, talking to several
other, more modern priests, their feeling is that as
long as the disability is not painful or otherwise
impossible for the priest, they need disabled clergy-
the modern shortage of vocations has started to
stretch them very thin.

This has also led to a strong effort to rehabilitate
consecrated priests, both those physically disabled,
by illness or injury, or by spiritual failings, as in
marriage, alcoholism or child molestation.

> I was
> specifically
> thinking of the Medici (sp?) Pope that was sleeping
> with his
> daughter.

Nowadays, if caught, the Church would try to
rehabilitate him ;-)

I might add that homosexuality among the priesthood
was winked at for quite a long time- still is, to a
certain extent these days, the reasoning being that
slaking one's lusts is understood, and at least
between homosexuals, no offspring are going to occur.

Phlip

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