Maintaining the Faith Via Dismantling the Priesthood
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/06/06
A former priest, James Carroll, has prescribed that given the ongoing and rather perpetual failings of the hierarchs in the Roman Catholic Christian church; that there should be a move towards a dismantlement, at least on the issues of the abuse of children, for example, of the priesthood with the Church.
“In his article appropriately named Abolish the Priesthood, the American identifies the concentration of power in a celibate and an all-male clergy as one of the significant sources of the problem,” the reportage stated.
Carroll wrote about the secrecy or lack of transparency around the priesthood, the hierarchical concentration of massive amounts of authority and power, the sexual repression in the priesthood as a whole, and the general anti-woman or misogynistic elements of the hierarchical elements of the faith exhibited by it.
The report said, “Carroll, who was a priest for five years advocates the dismantling of the clerical hierarchy. Only by doing this, he opined, can the church end the almost permanent scandals and move into the modern age. It can also preserve the faith cherished by its believers. Carroll makes a compelling case for his prescribed action. The reader is logically presented with facts, as to how ending priests’ celibacy and allowing women to enter the church administration will benefit the Catholic church.”
The main point of the article was heavy critique from the point of view of a former priest but also for the maintenance of that which is genuinely good within the hierarchy and structure of the priesthood within the church.
“He stressed the church should import lay individuals into positions carrying real power. It must also foster complete equality for women officeholders in the Vatican power structure. Carroll went even further,” the article emphasized, “pushing for female sexual autonomy and a yes for pleasure and love and not only to reproduce when it comes to aim of sex.”
Some of his pragmatics included a call for the possibility of contraception and marital rights and privileges to the priesthood to change the current trajectory and prior history of the culture of the priesthood in addition to acceptance of homosexuals within the institutional Church.
Carroll called an end to the double standards including the dominance, in general, of the women over the men and believes that these changes are reasonable and enforceable within the institutional Church seen in the priesthood, as he noted with the changes brought about after Vatican III and a change to the Roman Catholic Church with “radically revised” teachings on the Jews after the Holocaust.
As reported, “former American priest recollected the “Christ Killer” slander being renounced by the church council which later affirmed Judaism’s integrity. He said that developments had made a more profound impact into Catholic tradition and doctrine when compared to clericalism being overthrown, involving the ordination of women or married priests.”
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