Posts tagged Priesthood
“Whatsoever thy soul shall say to me, I will do for thee.”
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Anonymous asked:
I know this might be too personal. Are you discerning a call to marriage since you are not in the seminary? if so, how did you know you were called to marriage? i'm only asking because no one seems to give me an answer besides "you just pray and then you know. duh."
I am actually leaning more towards priesthood in my discerning, though I am leaving everything up to God’s will. I am not in seminary yet because my parents want me to get a 4-year degree before I enter seminary, but your question still stands.
I would not discount the importance of prayer in discerning a vocation. I did not even think about the possibility of becoming a priest until I went to adoration and heard the call for the first time. So, prayer is important, and I would suggest frequent adoration in front of the blessed sacrament is one of the best forms of prayer for spiritual discernment.
Other than that, ask! Go to members of different orders, ask them what their life is like. Speak to married people you trust (parents aren’t a bad start) and ask them what its like to be married.
Finally, something that has helped me, is imagining myself as a priest, and imagining myself as a married man. Both fantasies are joyful, but when I imagine myself as a married man, it doesn’t feel like me. It feels like I’m looking on someone else’s life. When I imagine myself as a priest, I am full participant in the scene, I know it is me I see. Does that make sense?
I hope this helps! God bless!
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spamusubi asked:
I recently started reading the bible (no view of any church influencing me) so I apologize if there is something past the gospels but out of curiosity, I saw in another book about a man who is a Priest in the Philippines and in his story and I saw that the Pope was called the Holy Father? Doesn't that go opposite of what Matthew 23:9 says? Especially with the title 'Holy' as well as 'Father'? While it doesn't go in hand with the Holy Spirit or 'Father'.. it just felt weird that he's called that?
It does not contradict the command of Matthew 23:9.
Jesus was speaking figuratively here. All he meant was do not worship any man on Earth, for you only have one God in heaven.
Jesus was not saying that you couldn’t call your dad, father. And he was not saying you could not call religious authorities father. In fact, Jesus himself says, “your father Abraham” once or twice.
Does that answer your question? God bless!
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Anonymous asked:
But Niko, where did Jesus insist on an only male clergy? I must have missed that part of the Bible... Not to mention, how does your policy account for trans* individuals? Is this a sex-based rule or a gender-based one?
You should check this.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/DOCTRINE/MALEPRIE.TXT
As for trans* individuals, as in people who do not accept their natural sex, that is not a “body issue” but rather a psychological issue, where one does not identify with their proper body and should be instructed through therapy on how to accept it. Apart from this, trans* does not exist.
In the same way, gender does not exist (language related use of gender aside,) except as a social construct. Objectively speaking, there is sex, male and female, not gender.
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brendalina asked:
Thought this was a good question from houndoftruth: "So my mom just told me that Catholics consider the Pope equal to God…what is the correct way to respond to this? Part of the difficulty is in that I don’t totally understand what the Pope does, and while I realize she is not correct, I don’t know how to respond at all. So…ummm….help?"
Alright, it seems that the best way to handle this is to start with the basics. Catholics know that Jesus is the head of the Catholic Church while the Church is the body of Christ. (Colossians 1:24, John 15:5) But the Pope is the visible head of the Church, as Christ appointed him to be, when he appointed Peter the first pope. (Matthew 16:18)
So, there are two ways to think about this, and they both reveal truths about the Pope’s relationship with Christ. One way is that the Pope is Jesus’s ambassador to us, just like a diplomat is the ambassador of a nation. So, the Pope represents Jesus, and speaks for Jesus to us, and we give him respect as a representative of Christ, but we know he is not himself Christ, and he is certainly not a God.
The other way, is to think of the Pope as the steward of the Church while we await for the second coming of Christ. A steward is someone who rules over a kingdom while the king is away, but he is not the king, even though he exercises many of the same powers and with similar authority as that of a king. So, while we await for the return of Christ the King at the second coming, we trust the Pope, who is guided by the Holy Spirit, to guide the Church, as if Christ Himself was physically guiding it.
So no, the Pope is not equal to God. He simply represents Him.
Does that answer your question? God bless!
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So I haven’t said much about the discernment retreat I went on…
…But, I will say that at least in Baltimore, the faith is alive and well. There were 25 solid men discerning at this retreat, each of them professing a robust Catholicism. Many of them seemed drawn to the priesthood, and even if not all of them do join the priesthood, they will still be strong voices for the faith, and wonderful fathers to their own children.
But 25 people who are at least discerning the priesthood, and the vocations director said he was going to another discernment retreat when he left us.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!
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CS Lewis and the Male Priesthood
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In aspiring to priesthood, I believe that women are ‘shooting themselves in the foot’ by promoting a position that to be truly powerful, purposeful, fulfilled, used by God, relevant etc etc., you really need to be ordained as a priest. This position actually devalues the diverse and influential roles that many women live out in the Catholic Church - particularly married women who raise a family. In a perverse way, this push for female ordination actually exacerbates the problem of clericalism we face in our Church. There is more than a smidgeon of hypocrisy when women lament this clericalism of men, but desperately want it for themselves.
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Anonymous asked:
If Confession is supposed to be completely confidential, what if a man confesses to murdering someone, and the police are trying to find him? Is it the priest's duty to turn him in?
No, the priest in fact cannot assist the police, or use the information learned in confession in any way. In fact, if he does, he would be defrocked.
haveievermentioned replied to your post: If Confession is supposed to be completely confidential, what if a man confesses to murdering someone, and the police are trying to find him? Is it the priest’s duty to turn him in?
addendum: I think this is a legal right. If the police know the person talked to a religious authority, I don’t think they can demand the authority to talk about what he said. Catholic or not.
In Australia and the UK there’s talk of getting rid of that legal right, (unless they’ve done so already,) arguing that a priest should violate the seal of confession if they know of a crime. Obviously, no priest is actually going to do so, but its annoying that the secular world thinks it can mess in the affairs of the Church.
crusadermaximus replied to your post: If Confession is supposed to be completely confidential, what if a man confesses to murdering someone, and the police are trying to find him? Is it the priest’s duty to turn him in?
I think the priest could withhold absolution until the man confessed the crime to the authorities, is this correct?
That is an option.
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My goal is to get taken off the Jesuit orders mailing list. But seriously, from the perspective of someone who once felt called to the Jesuit order, the way this order has bought in to secular culture is disheartening.
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Can someone explain how this makes sense at all? (By the way, the instance I was referring to in the first post is when Jerry Slevin claimed JP2 had called Fr. Marciel Maciel a good man. I don’t know whether or not His Holiness actually said that, but I didn’t want to get involved in that discussion because it was irrelevant.)
