never abolish use. Should marriage be discouraged because of the
widespread prevalence of adultery and divorce? The Church is called to
uphold the ideal, no matter how many may fail to live up to it.
Third objection: “Did not St. Paul insist that a Bishop should be
‘married only once … (and) if a man has not learned how to manage
his own household, will he know how to govern God’s church’ (1 Tim.
3:2-5)?”
This is a favorite accusation raised by the most heated anti-Catholics such
as Loraine Boettner in his work Roman Catholicism (p. 310). In his book
Boettner launches a series of attacks against so-called enforced celibacy,
religious orders and the monastic system in general, together with his
misinterpretation of St. Paul’s words to St. Timothy. St. Paul’s obvious
intent was to advise the younger St. Timothy on the qualities to look for
when choosing candidates for ordination. St. Paul could not have been
insisting on marriage as a condition for ordination, for he himself––as
mentioned earlier (1 Cor. 7:8)––never married.
One interpretation of St. Paul’s words is the following. If the candidate was
a married man, he must not be in a second marriage which is adulterous.
But if the candidate had been married and was now a widower, he was
eligible, whereas a remarried man was not, since celibacy after widowhood
was more highly regarded: “since he who refrains from marriage will do
better” (1 Cor. 7:38); and “the unmarried man is anxious about the affairs
of the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:32).
An alternative interpretation is that continence, or abstinence, was
demanded of clerics after ordination, and therefore a second marriage was a
sign that a man could not live by such a discipline.
Fourth objection: “But St. Paul was married as well as the other
Apostles according to 1 Cor. 9:5.”
The Revised Standard Version (RSV) of 1 Corinthians 9:5 reads as follows:
“Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other
apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” (1 Cor. 9:5). However,
the Greek word translated as wife here is actually gunaika which according
to the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 27th Ed., means a “woman,”
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