If there are Catholics who thinks Mary is not a creature but equal to God, then they are wrong as the Church has never taught such a thing. I've mentioned different degrees of worship/veneration in the past, so I won't repeat it here, but we can never venerate Mary on the same level as God. As for thinking that is no need to venerate Mary or the saints and angels, let me give an example. If we believe all the saints and angels are alive in Christ and are like our family members in the mystical Body of Christ (read up on the concept of the Church Triumphant, Militant, Suffering), aka the doctrine of Communion of Saints, do we treat them with disdain and ignore them? Would we do the same to our fellow brethren in the Faith here on earth? Food for thought.

As for baptism, I have quoted scripture to back up that it does wash away sins. The thief on the cross can be easily explained. He was still under the Old Covenant, Christ ascended to Heaven 40 days after His resurrection. So the thief couldn't have been in Heaven before Christ did. Catholic Tradition explains that Christ descended into Hell (as per the Creed, not the Hell of eternal punishment but the place of the Fathers of the Old Covenant traditionally called Limbo of the Fathers of the OT) between the time of his Crucifixion and his Resurrection when he brought salvation to all of the righteous who had died since the beginning of the world. The soul of the good thief would be together with these righteous souls and enter Heaven together with Christ at His Ascension.

Not sure what you mean by mistake on the election of Matthias to replace Judas. Can you elaborate?

On water baptism, there is a difference between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus.

Acts 19:2-6: And he said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said, "No, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism." And Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

(**NOTE - Here we see the difference between the initial baptism of John the Baptist, a kind of early form of confession, and the later Baptism of Jesus, where the Holy Spirit actually comes into you and makes your body His temple.)

An important thing to remember concerning Baptism, is that Jesus Himself was Baptized to not only sanctify the waters of Baptism for us all (He was sinless, and had no need of the sacrament to remove any of His sins, therefore), but to take on our sins, through space and time, unto himself. We see this in scripture in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

This is why the devil tempted Him right after Baptism, because he was now carrying the sins of the world upon Himself. In Romans 6: 3-6 below, the bible says that we have been baptized into HIS DEATH, which means that the sacrament of Baptism unites us to Jesus through His crucifixion, forever:
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin."
And to reiterate the Baptism-Crucifixion link, we have the following verses as well;
Mark 10:38-39: But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" And they said to him, "We are able." And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
(**NOTE - Here Jesus is talking about his crucifixion).
Galatians 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
(**NOTE - Paul was never physically crucified; as a Roman citizen, he was beheaded).
Galatians 5:24: And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the the flesh with its passions and desires.

So, most people don't realize that when they are baptized they are also being crucified with Jesus, but the good news is that being crucified with Jesus means that we also get to rise from the dead into heaven with Him, to eternal life! This being crucified with Jesus through Baptism goes a long way in helping to explain why so many bad things happen to good Christians - It's part of the crucifixion process!

Paul is not considered one of the 12 original apostles based on the criteria of Acts 1:21-22. Matthias is the replacement of Judas, and nowhere did Scripture nor Tradition said it was a mistake in choosing Matthias, but again, some later strange Protestant group ideas.....

Jesus didn't say not to elect a replacement apostle. Also, Barnabas, was also called an apostle, but not part of the original 12.

Sirach 18:17 is usually translated as gracious man or justified man. Your error is thinking Luke 1:28 is a proof-text of the Immaculate Conception when it is merely a support, albeit an extremely strong one. But you will not see that word scream “Immaculate Conception!” The authority for the Immaculate Conception is the Church, and the authority of the Church is DEFINITELY given in Scripture. If you read Sirach 18 in context and in entirety, it points to the good works exhorted by the father to his son. On the other hand, Luke 1 points to the favour given to Mary, not on her own account, but by the grace/gift of God.

I've also explained the teaching of the Church that the just baptized are free from sin.

Every Christian once in heaven will be perfected by God’s grace. However, only of Mary, and of “her seed,” which is Jesus Christ, is it said that there will be enmity between them and Satan. Since Jesus is God and since holiness is an aspect of His Nature, he has that enmity by nature. Where as with Mary, she has it as a gift.

Genesis 3:14-15
“And the LORD God said unto the serpent … I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” KJV

Of which woman’s seed was He born ? The answer of course is Mary. Jesus even goes on to identify Mary as the “Woman” in John 2:4 , 19:26, and also see Revelation 12: 1, 5, while Protestants think that Jesus is insulting His own mother! Gosh!

If there had ever been a time when Mary was under Satan’s domination through personal or original sin, then there would not be a real enmity between her and Satan. Therefore, by virtue of the grace He gave her, God put Mary in opposition to Satan from the beginning and throughout her life. Notice that God the Father says that He will put the enmity between her and Satan. Only in God, and by His gift of grace, also in Mary, can it be said that there is enmity with Satan because only in them is their entire life opposed to Satan.

Therefore, since Mary had an enmity between her and Satan, and even though she was a descendant of Adam and would have contracted Original Sin, she was saved from the stain of it by the merits of Jesus Christ from the first moment of her life.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Feb 20 2019, 03:23 PM

The Old Testament prefigures the New. God in His infinite wisdom and mercy from all eternity already has a plan for mankind's redemption even before the Fall.

In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul compares Jesus to Adam: Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” In Genesis 1, we learn that Adam was formed out of the dust of the earth by God. God breathed the breath of life into Adam. The perfect and sin-free Adam eventually fell in Genesis 3 by disobeying God, accepting the lies of the devil (about not dying and being like God), and eating the forbidden fruit from a tree, which allowed sin and damnation to enter the world. The perfect and sin-free Jesus, who said that he is the bridegroom of man in Matthew 9:15, also declared Himself to be The Bread of Life in John 6. He said that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life. This reference to eating, of course, is the antidote to overcome what Adam did. Jesus, who died on the tree of life known as the cross, commands us to eat the fruit from that tree (his flesh and blood), so as to give us eternal life and to overcome the two lies of the devil to Adam. The devil said that if you eat the forbidden fruit, “You shall not die.” (LIE!). By eating the fruit of the cross, the flesh and blood of Christ, “You shall live forever,” said Jesus (TRUTH!). The devil also told Adam that if he ate the forbidden fruit, he would be like God (LIE!). Jesus said that if we eat His flesh and drink his blood, He would abide in us, and we in Him (TRUTH!).

Similarly, Mary is called "the New Eve"by the early Church Fathers. Take, for example, Justin Martyr, who wrote within a couple of generations of the apostles. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (ca. A.D. 150), Justin explains that Christ destroyed Satan’s work in the same way evil originally entered the world. Evil entered through Eve while she was still a virgin; so too salvation entered through Mary while she was still a virgin. Each woman willingly participated in the act they performed. Neither was an unconscious instrument. Eve listened to the serpent and conceived death. Mary listened to the angel Gabriel and conceived life. Justin sees this clearly in Luke 1:38 when Mary says, "Let it be to me according to your word." Thus, for Justin, Christ’s becoming a man involved his Mother’s willing cooperation in undoing the tangled web of sin that Eve introduced. Also St Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons in the second century mentioned a similar thing. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus teaches that Christ embodied Adam and all his posterity in order to redeem mankind from sin. Basing his teaching on Paul’s inspired doctrine of Christ as the Last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), Irenaeus viewed Jesus as reversing the effects of Adam’s sin by bringing the life and righteousness that Adam lost (Rom. 5:17, 18). Irenaeus saw the obvious implication. As Eve cooperated with Adam, the covenant head of humanity, so Mary cooperated with Jesus Christ, the covenant head of the new humanity. Thus Irenaeus says that Eve "by disobeying became the cause of death for herself and the whole human race, so also Mary . . . was obedient and became the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race" (Against Heresies 3.22.4). Later he says of these two virgins, "Just as the human race was subject to death by a virgin, it was freed by a virgin, with the virginal disobedience balanced by virginal obedience" (ibid., 5.19.1).

You said "In Genesis 4:1, we see Eve had a child, and she thought the child was the Redeemer;
Eve knew that 'the woman' was meant to be her. She believed in what God said. So clearly, both Adam and Eve knew that God meant Eve by 'the woman'."

Probably. For Eve is not God, but if we see the harmony of Scripture in salvation history in both the Old and the New Testaments, very clearly the woman God refers to can only be Mary.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Feb 21 2019, 02:50 PM

That's the main problem. To say the scripture interprets scripture. Even between all of us here differ when reading scripture. That's why many see contradictions, and not harmony in scripture. No, says 2 Peter 3:16. Christ gave teaching authority to His Apostles and their successors (Matt 16:19, 18:18, Mark 16:15, Luke 10:16). “Authority” does not mean “power” but “right”—“author’s rights.” The Church has authority only because she is under authority, the authority of her Author and Lord. “No one can give himself the mandate and the mission to proclaim the Gospel. The one sent by the Lord does not speak and act on his own authority, but by virtue of Christ’s authority” (CCC 875).

The authority of the Church has been necessary, for example, for us to know the truth of the Trinity. This most distinctively Christian doctrine of all, the one that reveals the nature of God himself, the nature of ultimate reality, was revealed by God clearly only to the Church. It was not clearly revealed to his chosen people, the Jews. It is not clearly defined in the New Testament. God waited to reveal it to the Church.

"Even if you are talking about type prophecies, Jesus said the all scriptures predicted Him, not Mary."

The role of Mary is dependent on Christ in much the same manner as the role of Eve was dependent on Adam. God, who was no feminist, made salvation dependent on the action of a Man, just as He punished our race because of the sin of a man. Here we need to repeat what many are probably unaware of, namely, that it was Adam’s sin, not Eve’s , which is the original sin. Saint Paul reminds us that, in the order of time, the woman sinned first: “For Adam was first formed; then Eve. And Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression” (1 Tim. 2:13-14). But he also lets us know that Adam’s fall was the fall of the entire race: “For by a man came death: and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22). For Catholics, Adam’s exclusive role in the original sin is dogma. The same is true for many Protestants.

Now, while God was no feminist, He did give woman a special place. Eve was, for Adam, a “helpmate like unto himself” (Gen. 2:18). When she sinned and encouraged him to sin, she failed in that role. All this goes to show, that while Adam’s was the original sin, Eve had a real, active, and causal role. Invert that in the case of the New Adam. The work of redemption was the work of Christ. But He had a helpmate.

The concept of the New Eve taught by the Church Fathers is a case in point because it is a summary and natural extension of Paul’s doctrine of Christ as the New Adam. Irenaeus based his teaching on Ephesians 1:10, where Paul says that God sent Christ "as a plan [oikonomia] for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." For Paul and Irenaeus, God arranged salvation history in such a way that all reality would be incarnated in his Son, Jesus Christ. Everything was put under Christ’s headship (thus re-capitulate). This divine arrangement meant not only that Christ by his obedience reversed the effects of Adam’s sin but also that Mary by her obedience reversed the effects of Eve’s rebellion. The only difference is that Mary’s obedience was derived from her Son’s obedience. She was made a part of his saving plan because Christ made her "full of grace" (Luke 1:28). In Adam and Eve, the human race lost its sonship, and part of Christ’s mission was to restore that filial relationship with the Father. By saying that Christ was born "from the woman," Paul is linking both the Son and the woman with Adam and Eve. Christ the Son is obviously linked to Adam. The only woman who could be linked with Eve is Mary. So, Paul is saying that Mary participated in the Redemption by giving birth to Jesus in the opposite but parallel way that Eve participated in the Fall of man into sin. In our view, the Church Fathers were simply drawing out the implications of what Paul was teaching.

The early Church Fathers are the most direct link to what the early Christians did and believed in. It is haughty and prideful indeed to think that we are closer to the earlier Christians that the early Church Fathers who have the Apostles as their direct teachers after Christ's ascension. OK since you won't accept the Church Fathers, let's have St John the Apostle to tell in the Gospel:

John begins his Gospel in words familiar to first-century Jewish ears: “In the beginning” (John 1:1). In the exact words the author of the creation story used (Gen 1:1), He brought his readers back to the creation, where God created the universe in six days. On the seventh God rested. His work was perfect (at least until Adam and Eve happened).

And if we look carefully, we see John continue his creation story. In verses 29, 35, and 43 of John 1, “The next day” this happened; “The next day” that happened; “The next day”… you get the point. These three verses count from the first day to the fourth day. And then chapter 2 begins, “on the third day” (John 2:1).

by the “third day”, John, “cannot mean the third day from the beginning, since he has already proceeded past that point in his narrative. He must mean the third day from the fourth day, which brings us to the seventh day – and then John stops counting.” So chapter 2 of John’s Gospel brings readers back to that day of perfection and rest. You might imagine that first century Jews would be eager to see what happens on this day.

“On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there” (John 2:1). But when they run out of wine, Mary prompts Jesus: “They have no wine” (v. 3), to which Jesus replies, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (v. 4). Then Mary turns to the servants, saying, “Do whatever he tells you” (v. 5). And at Mary’s request, Jesus turned the water into wine, his first public miracle.

Now some people will read this and question if Jesus being rude to his mom when he called her woman. After all, it wouldn’t be very respectful if I were to address my mother as “woman.”

First of all, Jesus addressed Mary as “woman” when he hung, dying on the cross (John 19:26). Could he possibly have meant to disrespect his mother in his final moments? I think not. And secondly, if Jesus were to disrespect his mother, he would be breaking the commandment to honor his mother (Ex 20:12), which would be sinful.4

Why then on the seventh day does John refer to Mary as “woman” when the other Gospels address her as “Mary” or “Jesus’ mother”? With the striking parallels to the creation story, we may suspect that John is associating Mary with Eve, who was first “woman”.

But let’s not stop here. Our step takes us to the foot of the cross.

John tells us that standing by Jesus on the cross “were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Mag′dalene,” (John 19:25), as well as the beloved apostle.

Now some might find it interesting that St. Paul draws a connection between Christ hanging on the cross, and a quote from the Old Testament: “Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:13, also see Deut 21:23). In its proper sense, the “tree” isn’t a direct reference to the tree in the Garden. Though in Paul’s mind, Jesus is the new Adam who undid the consequences of the first Adam’s sin (Rom 5:14). Prompted by the serpent, the fall of mankind took place around the tree in the garden. Standing around the new tree (the cross), the new Adam, the woman’s seed, defeated sin and death, and ultimately crushed the head of the ancient serpent (Gen 3:15).

Though I’ll point out that Adam was not alone at the first tree. There, as under the cross, stood the woman, Eve. And John was sure to include this, a detail that no other Gospel writer included: “when Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’” (John 19:26-27, emphasis added). Again, woman stood with the new Adam as he battled sin and death. And just as around the tree woman was made mother of all the living (Gen 3:20), we see the new woman become mother of the beloved apostle (John 19:27).

Then John tells us that Jesus, “bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30). As Eve watched as Adam ate of the tree, bringing death to the whole world, now Mary watched as her beloved son died on the tree that he might bring life (1 Cor 15:21).

As we wrap up our search, we find ourselves at the end. Literally. We end up in the book of Revelation. In the heavenly display, John sees an image of a woman clothed with the sun, standing upon the moon, with a crown of 12 stars (Rev 12:1). She is with child, and labors in anguish as she gives birth (v. 2). But another character enters the picture: a great dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads (v. 3). The story continues:

Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God. (Rev 12:4-5).

Michael the Archangel and his angels fought and defeated the dragon and his angels. “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9). Once on earth, the dragon pursued the woman, but when his attempts were thwarted, he “went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev 12:17).

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here. But we should first recall God’s words to the serpent in the garden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15).

With that in mind, who are the characters in Revelation 12? The text tells us who the dragon is: “ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.” The woman’s child is Jesus, the “male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” (Rev 12:5). Then there is the woman. While the woman can represent the faithful of Israel who brought forth the Messiah, much more directly, she is Mary, the mother of Jesus. For Jesus is most directly the seed of Mary.

The enmity between the serpent and Eve was present between the new Eve and the dragon, as was foretold. But while the serpent had his way in the garden, it wasn’t so with the woman, Mary. Mary cooperated with God in bringing the Saviour into the world. Unlike in the garden, the serpent ultimately loses. The new Adam crushed the serpent’s head as he gave up his life on the tree.

Not only is Mary the new Eve, but she is superior to the first Eve. She isn’t just the mother of all the living, but the mother of those who have supernatural life in Jesus. Though she lived in a world tainted by sin, she was there to see the new Adam defeat sin and death. And as is fitting for the fulfillment of Eve, she was born into and remained in a state of innocence. As St. Irenaeus put it, “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary.”7 And through his obedience the new Adam, Jesus Christ, defeated sin and death.

It's fine if you don't accept such typology. But it’s my hope that some will see the biblical evidence for Mary as the new Eve, just as the Church has for centuries, long before anyone did so. The connections are subtle, yet they cannot be denied. And the implications are great.

Even Martin Luther believed in the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

"It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin"

- Martin Luther's Sermon "On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God," 1527.

"She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin—something exceedingly great. For God’s grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil.

- Martin Luther's Little Prayer Book, 1522.

Both quotations derive from Luther's writings after his break from Rome.

Mary’s portrayal as the new Eve is only one of many reasons why the Catholic Church believes that Mary was sinless. There are many other reasons. I hope that this might help us see one more reason why all generations will call her blessed (Luke 1:48).

This post has been edited by yeeck: Feb 22 2019, 11:44 AM

To say Trinity is not biblical is incorrect because it is implicitly implied. Same goes for the other terms such as Bible, Immaculate Conception, etc.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Feb 24 2019, 03:41 PM

Wow....Pope Sylar has spoken....lol

Reading more is better than reading less. LOL. Anything material is graven. The Temple and the Ark also contains graven images. Do you exist in spirit only?

Hmm what sins are they continuing in?

Church building? Calvary in Bukit Jalil I guess?

Wow....such presumption

Because different people have different interpretations of the Bible. Thanks to their Sola Scriptura.

Extra Scriptura is acceptable because Tradition came long before the New Testament was written down, as St John mentioned in chapter 21 verse 25 of the gospel according to his name. What early orthodox Christians believed are definitely different from what Joseph Smith (came only in 19th century) and Mohammad (7th century) taught. If you are using celibacy to counter Catholic teaching, might as well say Jesus and Paul should't be celibate. Very lame.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Sep 7 2019, 10:33 PM

Priests too. They are married to the Church . As for Tradition, definitely not everything from the Jews but from the Apostles and early Christians . We are not Judaizers after all.

The Catholic Church affirms the existence of a common or universal priesthood of all the baptized laity. But this does not exclude the existence of a ministerial priesthood. In the OT book of Exodus for example, just a few verses after the Israelites are called a “kingdom of priests,” one discovers a distinct order of men who are considered priests apart from the people. In the NT, Jesus continued the role of the ministerial priesthood by giving authority to His apostles and their successors to forgive sins and to offer sacrifice (no longer the animal sacrifices as in the old but of the new sacrifice "do this in remembrance of Me".

Having images in churches is not the same as idolatry as shown many times before.

It is the old ceremonial laws which points to the fulfilment of Christ's sacrifice and institution of the New Testament which are no longer to be observed, not the moral laws such as the 10 Commandments. Are you like UW saying that even the 10 Commandments no longer applies?

Thank you for showing that scripture has presbyteros, diakonos. Question. Who ordained them?

The earliest organization of the Church in Jerusalem was according to most scholars similar to that of Jewish synagogues, but it had a council or college of ordained presbyters (Greek: πρεσβύτεροι elders[8]). In Acts 11:30[9] and Acts 15:22, we see a collegiate system of government in Jerusalem though headed by James, according to tradition the first bishop of the city. In Acts 14:23, the Apostle Paul ordains presbyters in the churches he founded.

The term presbyter was often not yet clearly distinguished from the term overseer (ἐπίσκοποι episkopoi, later exclusively used as meaning bishop), as in Acts 20:17, Titus 1:5–7[10] and 1 Peter 5:1.[11][12][13] The earliest writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the Didache and the First Epistle of Clement for example, show the church used two terms for local church offices—presbyters (seen by many as an interchangeable term with episcopos or overseer) and deacon.

In Timothy and Titus in the New Testament a more clearly defined episcopate can be seen. We are told that Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus and Titus in Crete to oversee the local church (1Tim 1:3 and Titus 1:5). Paul commands them to ordain presbyters/bishops and to exercise general oversight, telling Titus to "rebuke with all authority" (Titus 2:15).

That to me is more synonymous with Catholic teaching that authority is passed down from the Christ to the apostles downwards to whomever they ordain, aka distinct roles, rather than the Protestant concept.

"Do this in remembrance of Me" and the authority to forgive or retain sins were given only to the Apostles and not every believer, thus only the episkopos and presbyteros have this authority as they were the select ordained by the Apostles. And certainly this authority was not meant to be only at the first century but meant to last until the end of time until Christ returns again.

The Apostle Paul does not say that a Bishop must be the husband of a wife, but insists upon the expression "one wife." Had he meant that it was necessary to have a wife, he would have been violating the law himself. In the early Church, owing to the scarcity of single men eligible for the Priesthood, married men who wished to be ordained could be accepted provided they had not been married twice. Those presenting themselves must have been the husband of but one wife. That is all that the text means. Catholic Bishops and Priests do not violate that law. A law forbidding a man to have had more than one wife does not order him to have one; nor is it violated by a man who has never had a wife at all. However, as Christianity grew and vocations became more plentiful, single men only were accepted, and had to remain celibates, according to the advice of Paul.

Your question has been answered over and over again. The RCC does not forbid their bishops to be married. It is a vow they themselves voluntarily make.

Catholic priests do not wish to be only natural. They wish to be supernatural. Paul was human, but he did not marry. And like Paul, Catholic priests wish to centre their interests in Christ and share their hearts with no one else. Meantime, they are not forbidden to marry as human beings. They are forbidden as Priests. Prior to their choice of the Priesthood, every Priest could have chosen marriage instead had he wished.

On the practical reason, I can see why this is also a good case for celibacy. If priests are married, there might be grumblings of unfairness when it comes to attention to their own family members compared to the flock which they are supposed to pastor.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Sep 11 2019, 02:32 PM