[James]

Ritual purity, at least wrt sex, is part of the Old (Ceremonial) Law, no longer binding. No-one seriously argues now that this type of law binds. Cf. S Thomas Aquinas. If it did, Eastern-rite (and Latin-rite!) married clergy would be guilty of mortal sin. God doesn't draw a line line half way down Europe and say, "To the West, ritual pudity wrt marriage applies, to the East, it doesn't". My comparison of priests with lawyers, etc, was to do with time management. Marriage is a sacramemt, which ex opere operato, sanctifies. It is not "worldly" although Luther thought it was. It has never been the actual teaching of the church that sex is either inherently or ritually impure, but many catholics, including saints and popes, held such an erroneous idea (it was VERY popular in the 19th C), and it was responsible for the imposition of the alleged obligation, as one can see, examining the original papal legislation, namely, the decretals of Popes (Ss) Damasus and Siricius.

[English Rose]

I've been reminded this week that allowing married ministers in the Anglican church don't stop child sexual abuse which is rife in the Anglican church: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gj77pvwwo Here's another example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-be...s-66739880 and another: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ox...e-43367265.

There have been countless examples in the last decades which usually seem to involve a homo erotic element. Having married priests doesn't stop the problem. I've read the rate of child abuse in Catholic priests is the same as the general population so it doesn't seem to be something specific to the clerical culture. In my view better screening procedures for priests would help, though they may not catch everyone who is that way inclined.

[James]

There's evidence that the situation in the Catholic Church is vastly different. Comparing married Latin-rite clerics (deacons) to celibate Latin-rite clerics (priests), the rate of abuse perpetrated by the latter compared to the married Catholic clergy shows that the catholic situation is entirely different to the Anglican one (and I'm not claiming for one minute that the majority of Anglican ministers are abusers): https://x.com/DavidAJMHoward/status/1316994003267588098

This is also verified by a friend of mine, an Eastern-rite catholic who, amazingly enough, was also an employee of the SSPX for a while. He told me that the seminary of the rite to which he belonged, while celibacy was enforced on their clergy, was a notorious hotbed for homosexuality and abuse. Guess what? It stopped when the Vatican stopped insisting on celibacy and started accepting seminarians who either were already married, or intended to marry. He described the celibacy situation as "gay party-time behind closed doors". Funnily enough, the only problem with this sort of thing in the Australian Ukrainian Catholic Church was, you guessed it, one of the few celibate priests. One day, I was discussing the situation wrt the SSPX and clerical marriage, and how Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre went so far as to claim that Eastern-rite catholics regard their priests' wives as mistresses (a polite way of calling them *****s). This is outrageous, and shows that even holy persons can fall into gross error. Of course, my friend could verify from first hand experience that this was not the case (same with the Orthodox). As if to signify heaven's blessing upon my position, just after that conversation, I crossed paths with a married Eastern-rite priest and his wife.

On a lighter note Sheena, have you had that pint at Tolkien's and Lewis' pub?